In this week’s roundup: the Hooded Warbler’s comeback in Canada, animal cruelty in Malibu, and shorebirds confronting hurricanes during fall migration. —How will shorebirds on the cusp of fall migration be affected by Tropical Storm Isaac? [American Bird Conservancy] —The New York Times interviews filmmaker Chris Jordan about his in-production documentary Midway on plastic ingestion … Read more
In this week’s round-up: Starving California Brown Pelicans showing up inland as they hunt for food, Black-browed Albatrosses on the rebound in the Falklands, and the anti-aging mysteries of Brünnich’s Guillemots. [Black-browed Albatross photo by W. Ryan Holliday] —California Brown Pelicans venture inland in what appears to be an unprecedented occurrence — and International Bird … Read more
It’s a sight that one perhaps wishes to have never seen, and certainly never forgets: the carcass of a Laysan Albatross, its stomach filled with disposable lighters, chocolate wrappers, water bottle caps and other plastic debris amassed throughout the world’s oceans. “I had to laugh out loud to keep from crying,” Victoria Sloan Jordan, an … Read more
In this week’s round-up: sobering factoids on the Pacific Plastic Gyre, American White Pelicans on the rebound in North Dakota, Magellanic Penguins turn up on Ipanema Beach, and Congress passes a bill to help restore the Gulf, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster: —The volume of plastic debris in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre … Read more
I am one of the few people who have been fortunate enough to visit Midway Atoll in the northern part of the Hawaiian Archipegelo; in fact, I’ve made it there twice! Midway is famous as a nesting site for millions of pelagic seabirds such as Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses, Bonnin’s Petrels, endangered Laysan Ducks and … Read more
An exotic seabird that arrived in Los Angeles as a stowaway aboard a ship from Korea is taking an unusual flight home to Hawaii this week having been rehabilitated at International Bird Rescue’s Wildlife Center in Los Angeles. The Red-Tailed Tropicbird, a solitary plunge-feeding seabird which rarely fishes within sight of land and nests on … Read more
Hello everyone, There has been a catastrophic oil spill on a remote island in the mid-South Atlantic Ocean that is threatening an entire colony of endangered Northern Rockhopper Penguins. The MS Oliva ran aground on Nightingale Island, one of three islands of the Tristan da Cunha group, on March 16, 2011. All 22 crew were … Read more
Just in time for Earth Day: The 5 Gyres Project has news and videos of even more plastic trash circulating in the North Atlantic Ocean. The researchers found a soup of garbage in the Sargaso Sea – an area from Bermuda to the Azores Island – that contained stew of floating trash similar to the … Read more
The newest State of the Birds report is out and the news is not good. The 2010 Report concludes that accelerated climate change continues to alter the natural world as we know it, diminishing the quality of our environment and leaving a lasting impact on many bird species. The new report was released this week … Read more
Garbage at the beach may be as common as salt in the ocean, but a recent public service campaign adds a disturbing and humorous twist. A “Catch of the Day” campaign by the Surfrider Foundation uses beach trash wrapped like supermarket fish items to educate people on the amount and kinds of pollution dumped into … Read more