David Sibley shares some ideas for dealing with birds flying into your windows over at Birdwatching Magazine. I particularly like the idea of using monofilament fishing line on the outside of the windows.
Study concludes that green-rumped parrotlets name their chicks (insert dramatic chipmunk).
Remember those wildfires in Arizona? Early estimates indicate that 80% of nesting sites for hummingbirds were lost and important fueling areas for migrating hummers is gone and KAYTEE is putting together emergency kits for hummingbirds!
Whooping cranes with satellite transmitters show that the birds are stopping in dangerous oil lands areas.
Interesting development and information regarding the sustainability of a sandhill crane hunt in Kentucky over at Vicki Henderson’s blog.
Bird coloration guide? Would you purchase a guide to bird color descriptions to help you describe and id birds?
What Non Birding Bill made me for breakfast.
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Your conversation about the coloration guide reminded me of the Munsell Color Charts I learned about in geology field school earlier this summer. I definitely think that having a single basis and naming scheme both for description of phenotype and expression is incredibly useful. That said, phenotypic plasticity is something geologists don’t have to worry about. I’m sure we’ve all seen cardinals, robins, and tanagers with such different shades of red, orange and yellow respectively yet still identified as the same species.
The Munsell chart might be useful for all those brown birds though without too much tweaking! I am surprised that research ornithologists using preserved specimens haven’t been using a color standard though. The red I see isn’t the red you see, but the 2.5 YR 6/6 on the Munsell chart is the same 2.5 YR 6/6 that you see (though they may look different to each of us).
It also cuts through the aberrations caused by color-blindness for the same reasons.
What happened to the musical intro?
the thought of more monofilament line out there makes me nervous. If it comes loose and a bird is tangled……….
There was a glitch with the musical intro, it should be back with future casts.