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Bird influenza viruses have a variety of strategies to cross the species barrier and spreadThe 2009 H1N1 influenza virus used a new strategy to cross from birds into humans, a warning that it has more than one trick up its sleeve to jump the species barrier and become virulent. In a report in this week's early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that the H1N1, or swine flu, virus adopted a new mutation in one of its genes distinct from the mutations found in previous flu viruses, including...

My favorite pond has been dried up for a while but rain over last weekend took care of that. It doesn't take any time for the marsh birds to move in, when the pond is dry they have to go quite a way for fresh water.

We didn't see the Sun until mid afternoon, it broke through pretty good them but still mostly cloudy. When the Sun gets really low the reflections on the water start to flame, and the Spartina grass turns golden. I barely caught the Little Blue Heron, they can be hard to see on a bright day. Their feathers aren't at all reflective

There are blue/grey herons around the world, and there are 3 in the USA, plus the Reddish Heron which has a blue cast. I seldom see a Reddish Heron this far North.I got the main trio today in just a few minutes. Little Blue Heron Egretta caerulea Tricolored heron Egretta tricolor Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias

Maria Sanchez Lake is almost downtown St. Augustine, a residential area with older homes. The lake is a bird magnet and there are often some nice flowers in yards around the lake. If you don't see any birds near the water look up in the Oak trees. This Great Egret and the White Ibis were waiting for the tide to start in. This flower is a Lycoris, it was almost hidden by someone's garbage can.

DISCLAIMER: I did not take these pictures nor do I know who the photographer is. They were sent to me as an effort to brightened my day ----which it did!!

I met another photographer on a forum, turns out he lives not far from the swamp. He rode over today and we went shooting. The tide wasn't really right, had to improvise and go looking for models. There is always something just waiting to be a picture!

A butterfly species equipped with tiny ears on its wings can distinguish between high and low pitch sounds, possibly as a way to listen in on nearby birds, new research suggests. Scientists thought butterflies were deaf until 1912 when the first butterfly ears were identified. Only in the past decade or so have researchers examined the anatomy and physiology of butterfly ears, which they are finding to be quite diverse and present in several butterfly species. The latest discovery was made with the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho peleides), which dazzles with its bright-blue wing coloration when it flits about in...

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

Ibis, Snowy Egrets and Roseate Spoonbills today. I got more but too tired to process until after a nap. Good thing y'all don't pay me by the hour!While I was out today my daughter came in my room, evidently with a bulldozer, it is all neat and tidy for a change! She found all kinds of stuff I thought was lost, LOL!

Grandson Gerry has ROTC drill Tuesday after school, and I pick him up. I leave early and sit by the pond, or cruise around looking for models. I timed it right, the pond crew started showing up about the same time I did. The season change is bringing in a lot of new birds, the Boat Tail Grackles were back in the marsh today.The double Hibiscus was growing in a yard close to the street.

Low-quality females prefer low-quality males, at least in the avian world. This is according to research published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, testing female zebra finches' taste in males. As adults, the low-quality females showed a preference for the songs of males of the same quality, and for the male birds themselves. Evolutionary biologists previously thought that females would always opt for the best male available. The study was led by Marie-Jeanne Holveck from the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France. She explained that low- and high-quality birds differ in almost every important characteristic, including...

I've been stranded for several days, the ignition switch on the Ford locked up and stranded the kids in town last Saturday. Replacing an ignition used to be a ten buck, 20 minute job, it isn't anymore! For some reason the car decided that someone was trying to steal it, and shut everything down. Thinking back to all the times I've been 20 miles from a paved road I sure am glad the vehicles I drove were repairable in the field. The pond was busy, All these shots but the Osprey were taken from one spot.

If birds hosting flu virus are exposed to the waterborne pollutant, they might develop drug-resistant strains, chemists worry The premier flu-fighting drug is contaminating rivers downstream of sewage-treatment facilities, researchers in Japan confirm. The source: urinary excretion by people taking oseltamivir phosphate, best known as Tamiflu. Concerns are now building that birds, which are natural influenza carriers, are being exposed to waterborne residues of Tamiflu’s active form and might develop and spread drug-resistant strains of seasonal and avian flu. For their new study, Gopal Ghosh and his colleagues at Kyoto University sampled water discharged from three local sewage treatment plants...

I managed to slip through town without getting tarred and feathered by the local democrats, and hung out by the pond for a while. If I time things for high tide there is usually something going on there.

Chinese scientists today reveal the discovery of five remarkable new feathered dinosaur fossils which are significantly older than any previously reported. The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, at last providing hard evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Talking from the conference in Bristol, Dr Xu Xing, lead scientist on the report published online in Nature today, said: “These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now. Now it all fits neatly into place and we have tied up some of the loose ends”. Professor Michael Benton, from the University of...

Couldn't sleep last night, got out early and just roamed around with my cup of black coffee. The high seasonal tides are still here, we call them marsh hen tides because the high water pushes the Rails out so they can be hunted. Didn't see any marsh hens but the Great egrets were perching in the Black Mangroves, the water is too deep to wade. The Snowy egret was chasing grasshoppers by the pond. If they can't hunt in the water they do fine on shore. This is a young Snowy egret, still some yellow showing on the legs. Mature...

What is happening with alternative "green" energy, involving such environmentally-unsound measures as erecting windmill generators along Appalachian ridgelines which are migration routes for songbirds, raptors, and Monarch butterflies, is a boondoggle, a fiasco, a travesty -- but it is all very politically correct, so none of that matters.

I was sick much of last month, still don't feel good, I'm just old, tired, aggravated and worn out, I suppose. First is a LITTLE BLUE HERON, next a GREAT BLUE HERON, different birds altogether. I love the color of the Magnolia seeds, nothing else quite like it.

Authorities removed 432 animals from a Citra home Thursday and Friday, to the delight of neighbors who say the menagerie was noisy and unsightly.Almost 200 animals were living cramped inside the home, including more than 150 birds, 37 dogs and two cats. The rest, including 23 goats and sheep, 74 geese, 15 turkeys, some exotic birds, snakes and gopher tortoises, were scattered around the fenced, half-acre lot in a rural area of Citra, officials said.Dawn Stephen, an animal compliance official for Marion County, said authorities became aware of the problem when paramedics were called to the residence to treat the...

A woman on the Isle of Skye is asking people to send her dead midges so she can turn them into food for wild birds. Housewife-turned-entrepreneur Elaine Bunce adds the biting insect to beef dripping and flour to create her Original Highland Midge Bites. She has advertised in a local newspaper for people to send her expired insects, as it takes a thousand for each ball. Mrs Bunce discovered that midges, notorious for blighting Scottish holidays, are a good source of protein. She currently has five litres of midges in her freezer. She hoping to collect more from midge killing...

Eight days ago, a pair of pit bull-mix terriers attacked Leonard Garrett, 70, and his wife, Beulah, 75, in the front yard of their Metairie home, viciously snapping and chewing on their hands and arms. "I'm just sick. It was so bad," said Leonard Garrett, who was recovering at home Friday. His wife could remain hospitalized for another week or more. The dogs' owner, next-door neighbor Marcus Alleman, agreed to turn them over to Jefferson Parish animal control. They were destroyed after temperament tests determined they were unsafe, said Deano Bonano, chief administrative assistant to Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard....

WASHINGTON – Aircraft design standards aren't tough enough for planes to withstand collisions with growing numbers of large birds, safety investigators examining an Oklahoma crash that killed five men said Tuesday. The Federal Aviation Administration requires the bodies of commercial aircraft to withstand a collision with a bird weighing 4 pounds or 8 pounds depending upon the section of the plane — standards that haven't been updated since the 1970s, investigators told the National Transportation Safety Board. An FAA advisory committee spent 10 years examining whether the standards should be updated and then disbanded without reaching a conclusion, investigators said....

The big kingfish tournament was this past weekend and everything was chaos. It was pretty much calmed down today, the marsh birds were just waiting for the tide change.

Pretty day, the Skeeters aren't as bad as they have been. The young Little Blue Heron is getting bluer by the day. The Great Blue kept dozing off, only came up out of the Mangroves for a drink. The Cannas is right by the road, I shot this out the car window.

June 9, 2009 — “The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.”  That statement is not being made by creationists, but by science reporters describing work at Oregon State University that cast new doubt on the idea that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs.  The main idea: their leg bones and lungs are too different.     Science Daily’s report has a diagram of the skeleton showing...

CORVALLIS, Ore. Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

( monogamous couple taking care of business) Bird uses body as dam to stop drainpipe soaking chicks UK Telegraph 31 May 2009 A bird used her body as a dam to stop overflowing drainpipe water from soaking her chicks. The female thrush's body is semi-submerged in the water of the gutter as she holds back the flow, protecting the nest and her chicks The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood. But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and...

GOLDENDALE, Wash. — A golden eagle was killed by a wind turbine blade at a southwest Washington wind farm, a state biologist says. The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Wash., reported that it is the first known eagle fatality caused by a Washington wind project. The 10-pound bird had a broken wing and two broken legs after the April 27 accident at Goodnoe Hills Wind Project southeast of Goldendale, said Travis Nelson, the state's lead biologist on wind power issues. "This is certainly not the outcome that anyone who was involved in planning and permitting this operation would have wanted, especially...

Given away by bird poop on his socks, fancy pants here was charged Tuesday in California with smuggling exotic Asian songbirds from Vietnam into the United States by strapping them onto his legs. Droppings on Sony Dong's socks and feathers peeking out from under a pant leg tipped off a Los Angeles International Airport inspector in March, who arrested the 46-year-old. Dong wore an elaborate set of leggings with buttoned cloth wrappings, which held more than a dozen birds (pictured), the Associated Press reported. Inspectors had flagged Dong for inspection because he had abandoned a suitcase of 18 birds in...

From the St. Augustine gator farm rookery, every stage from eggs to half grown chicks. The smaller herons and egrets are just getting started, the stork and great egret chicks are growing like crazy. I should have gone earlier, the light would have been better for catching white feather details.

"In the past, people thought birds were stupid," laments the aptly named scientist Christopher Bird. But in fact, some of our feathered friends are far cleverer than we might think. And one group in particular - the corvids - has astonished scientists with extraordinary feats of memory, an ability to employ complex social reasoning and, perhaps most strikingly, a remarkable aptitude for crafting and using tools. Some corvids, such as rooks, live in large groups Mr Bird, who is based at the department of zoology at Cambridge University, says: "I would rate corvids as being as intelligent as primates in...

Every spring, we get a lot of goldfinches in our backyard, along with the house finches who stay here, year 'round. (I'm in central California.) This spring, I noticed a larger black-and-yellow bird on one of our feeders, and I don't think it's a goldfinch. He's fast, so I did my best to snap a few pictures. Any ideas what kind of bird he is? The yellow bird on our sunflower seed feeder. Goldfinches (for comparison) on a different feeder A visiting squirrel Our cat, Smudge, watching the birds and the squirrels.

They wouldn’t blow away the competition on ‘Dancing with the Stars’, but it turns out that some birds got rhythm. After studying a cockatoo that grooves to the Backstreet Boys and about 1,000 YouTube videos, scientists say they’ve documented for the first time that some animals “dance” to a musical beat. The results support a theory for why the human brain is wired for dancing. In lab studies of two parrots and close review of the YouTube videos, scientists looked for signs that animals were actually feeling the beat of music they heard. The verdict: Some parrots did, and maybe...

I hadn't planned a trip today, but my grandson needed to get to school early, for an ROTC drill, and I ended up at the gator farm. I've loaded some pics to my Photobucket, a lot more still to process. The smaller herons and egrets are just starting to nest and sit eggs, I'll go back next month for more.

The Wood stork was watching boats come in, if anyone started cleaning a fish it would beg for a share. I don't get so close to a Whimbrel very often, they tend to be secretive. They hunt fiddler crabs with that long curved beak. I got the Snowy Egret with my old 2MP Olympus C2100UZ. At 10 years old it is still a super little camera.

The big flower and garden show is this weekend, I took a sneak preview, it's looking super. The young Little Blue Heron is still hanging out at the little pond, you can see some blue/gray feathers starting to show. I got more, too tired to mess with it now.

The recent rains filled the little water hole by the saltmarsh to the brim, and that makes it a busy place. I should have used the tripod for these shots, they are all at 400mm equivalent, and I got a little bit of motion blur, from being lazy! These are from the Sony A-200. I don't often see 2 generations of Little Blue Heron together, the older birds chase the young ones off this time of year. The Snowy Egret is just beginning to show some red tinge to it's lores, when it's breeding they will be bright crimson. I...

"Each year, millions of wild animals are captured overseas and imported into the United States," said Michael Markarian, executive vice president of The HSUS. "This trade results in the suffering and death of large numbers of animals, poses unnecessary risks to public health and jeopardizes native wildlife populations here and abroad. We are grateful to Congresswoman Bordallo for working to address this global problem."

HONOLULU – Hawaii's native avian population is in peril, with nearly all the state's birds in danger of becoming extinct, a federal report says. [snip} The Interior Department's report, called "The State of the Birds United States of America 2009," noted Hakalau's populations of the Hawaii creeper and akiapolaau have increased dramatically. [snip] Scott Fetz, wildlife program manager at the state's Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said he was confident such efforts could help restore all of Hawaii's endangered species, excluding those that have already become extinct. "The basic, fundamental problem that we have is a lack of funding to...

More bathing birds, White Ibis. They work at getting seriously clean, after trolling around on the mudflats.

I slept late, finally dragged my old tail out the door, rode to the pond by the saltmarsh, and sat. After a few minutes the gulls started coming to bathe, the the Ibis showed up, then the Grackles and Fish Crows, and down in the middle of this comes a Little Blue Heron in full breeding plumage. I ended up with 238 pictures in the camera. On the way home I saw my little buddy the Red Shouldered Hawk, and grabbed a shot of him. He's a wiry, gnarly little guy, his mate is a real butterball, that's not to...

With temperatures lingering well below freezing on many days, January turned out to be one of the coldest in 25 years — cold enough to attract birds from the Arctic and force others to head south. Because of the cold, North Jersey ponds, creeks and marshes have iced over. Unable to feed, some water birds have shifted their home base to the region's more open waters while others who usually winter here have packed up and flown south, according to local naturalists. Meanwhile, birds not normally seen this far south have appeared in the Meadowlands — including owls who normally...

Freepers, I know we have a lot of bird watchers and book collectors here. I am in search of something I hope you can help me with. I am looking for an early copy of "Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty" by Dr. Henry Nehrling (my great-great grandfather, image below). Most of the copies have been donated to museums but I would like to own a copy. I am taking a wild chance that some of our members may have a lead on this. This is about the only place I know to trust posting this (correctly in chat...

In a bid to save the endangered whooping crane, biologists and self-taught conservationists are donning hooded costumes and taking to the skies to lead the birds on their annual migration.

Golden Sunshine, blue skies. The bank of the pond was lined with turtles, soaking up the Sunshine. The mixed flock of gulls at the county boat ramp was huge, they recognized me, and came in begging.

It was twilight at Laird's Landing, a barren, lonely ranch 20 miles from the nearest town, when bald eagles began swooping over the tundra to perch in a leafless clump of cottonwoods.Before the full moon inched over a treeless ridge in the distance, more than 40 of the regal raptors had arrived for their nightly roost. Sometimes, the trees hold 130 or more."How can you not love this?" said retired Mare Island rigger and eagle aficionado Charlotte Ann Kisling, as the temperature dropped below 20. "It's so peaceful, and so awesome. I don't care about TV or movies - this...

Vermont waterfowl hunters will get an opportunity to hunt snow geese next month as part of an effort to reduce the population of birds.A special "conservation order" was issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow the season, which will run from March 11 through April 15 in Vermont.Similar seasons have been authorized in five other states.

Clouds, rain, possible thunderstorms, I'm trapped! Got these on the way to the Doctor today, my BP is still way out of line, it will be worse after two days stuck inside! The Hooded Merganser was dancing for a lady duck, he never knew I was there! The city is building a concrete wall behind where the Great blue Heron is, that will be the end of that location. I avoid pictures of concrete.