Helmeted Woodpeckers Roost Exclusively in Decay-Formed Tree Cavities
Woodpeckers make holes in trees. Don’t they?
Tracking Cultural Evolution in House Finch Song, Part 2
So what did we learn about how House Finch songs have changed since the 1970s—the equivalent of a millennium of cultural evolution in human terms? Here are the main results, and how we interpret them.
Tracking Cultural Evolution in House Finch Song, Part 1
The first bird song I ever recorded was that of a House Finch. When I was a kid growing up in Leominster, Massachusetts, the bird that nested behind my front porch lamp would fly out to a particular birch tree or the telephone wire and belt out a complex four-second warble over and over again.
How to Hide a Godwit
Marbled Godwits are common and conspicuous North American shorebirds. On its prairie breeding grounds, the godwit’s raucous call and proud flight display alerts all to its presence, and the species is equally obvious on its temperate nonbreeding grounds along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts due to its gregarious nature and telltale alarm call. So how did such a charismatic species go largely undetected in Alaska until the 1980s?
Do Burrowing Owls Disperse Plague-Infected Fleas?
Western Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia hypugaea) and Pulex irritans, the so-called human flea, have a curious host-parasite relationship. Although we’ve known about it for some time, many details of their connection remain unclear, including why it appears mainly in the northwestern portion of the Burrowing Owl’s range despite the fact that both species have much broader geographic distributions.
How Google Images Can Help Us Understand Martial Eagles’ Diet and Decline
The Martial Eagle is one of the largest and most powerful of the booted eagles. These menacing giants dominate the skies over sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from Senegal to Somalia and down to South Africa.
How Do Gunnison Sage-Grouse Fare After Translocation?
Humans moving animals around for conservation?! This may not immediately sound like an action we should advocate for, but the purposeful movement of individuals from one place to another is often an effective way to give small, declining populations a boost in size or increase their genetic diversity.
How Vulnerable are California’s Great Gray Owls to Wildfire?
Throughout western North America, the combination of longer, hotter dry seasons and dense forests is yielding more frequent, larger, and more severe wildfires, including immense “megafires.” Habitat loss from increased fire activity could put wildlife species that depend on mature forest at risk.
Road Proximity May Boost Songbird Nest Success in Tropics
In the world’s temperate regions, proximity to roads usually reduces the reproductive success of birds, thanks to predators that gravitate toward habitat edges. However, the factors affecting bird nest success are much less studied in the tropics—so does this pattern hold true? New research published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications shows that interactions between roads, nesting birds, …
Possible Oahu Populations Offer New Hope for Hawaiian Seabirds
The two seabird species unique to Hawaii, Newell’s Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels, are the focus of major conservation efforts—at risk from habitat degradation, invasive predators, and other threats, their populations plummeted 94% and 78% respectively between 1993 and 2013. However, a new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications offers hope of previously undetected colonies of these birds …