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By 2080, birds like the northern saw-whet owl, the scarlet tanager and the Baltimore oriole could all but disappear from Pennsylvania. Climate change is expected to shrink and shift northward the ranges of these and hundreds of other species across North America, according to a groundbreaking National Audubon Society study. Citizen science was crucial to this report. Audubon scientists relied on tens of thousands of observations from the U.S. Geological Survey’s North American Breeding Bird Survey, along with Aubudon’s own Christmas Bird Count. It combined these observations with historical climate data and climate changes predicted in the Intergovernmental Panel on...

Half of all bird species in North America — including the bald eagle — are at risk of severe population decline by 2080 if the swift pace of global warming continues, the National Audubon Society concluded in a study released Monday. "The scale of the disruption we're projecting is a real punch in the gut," said Gary Langham, chief Audubon scientist. Langham led an Audubon study that examined more than 500 bird species and determined that more than 300 in Canada and the United States face large climate shifts that could reduce their habitat by half or more by 2080.

Death estimates range from 1,000 to 28,000 per year The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. Unlike many other solar plants, the Ivanpah plant does not generate energy using photovoltaic solar panels. Instead, it has more than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door. Together, they cover 1,416 hectares. Each mirror collects and reflects solar rays, focusing and concentrating solar energy from their entire surfaces upward onto three boiler towers, each looming up to 40 stories high. The solar energy heats the water inside the towers to produce...

Now, the population of the cormorants on East Sand Island has burgeoned from about 100 breeding pairs to 14,900, and a federal agency wants to have thousands of the seabirds shot to protect the fish, including some that are protected or endangered. The birds eat lots of endangered wild fish, as well as hatchery stocks — an estimated 11 million a year — mainly in May as the young fish head for their years in the ocean. In June, the corps released its plan to kill 16,000 of the birds. A public comment period has been extended to Aug. 19....

There is growing evidence that birds flying in the vicinity of a solar thermal power project in California’s Mojave Desert are being injured and even killed either by the solar heat that’s focused with mirrors on its three energy-collecting towers, or by colliding with the mirrors themselves. Yet a task force set up to investigate the problem at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) has brushed aside several recommendations by the forensics laboratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), according to the minutes of a meeting on the subject obtained by the Los Angeles public television station...

Video of some very smart birds who have learned to open automatic doors.

>It appears the federal agency entrusted with protecting fish and wildlife in the U.S. has a new mission - to promote and further wind and solar energy projects on public lands, despite the cost to fish and wildlife programs.< >The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is one of several agencies under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior (DOI). In recent years DOI has evolved into a vehicle to further the Obama administration’s push for “clean” energy, using the more than 500 million acres the Department manages to further this goal.< >Many Outdoor Wire readers remember the FWS’s...

The tree trimmer at the center of a federal and state investigation into the destruction of nests and slaughter of baby birds in Oakland said Thursday that he "screwed up" because he allowed his crews to chain-saw trees even as baby birds were falling out. Pulido was the supervisor for a crew of tree trimmers hired Saturday by the U.S. Postal Service's Civic Center Annex in Oakland. The post office ordered trees containing the nests of egrets and black-crowned night herons, species protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Act, to be cut because the nesting birds were defecating on mail...

Necessity has become the mother of invention for certain birds of prey looking for a place to lay their eggs and raise their young as their natural habitats are lost to development. Local ospreys, for instance, are getting creative about selecting nesting sites in the wild ... or not-so-wild sites in the area. Pairs of ospreys, one of North America's largest birds of prey with a wing span of up to six feet, are currently building nests in densely developed sites in the region. One of the couples is weaving branches together atop a utility pole along busy Post Road...

An elderly woman violated her probation by leaving bread crumbs out in her yard for crows and will remain behind bars. Eighty-one-year-old Mary Musselman was first arrested last month for feeding bears in her backyard. One of the bears was euthanized over it because the Fish and Wildlife Service said the bears might learn not to be afraid of people anymore and then get aggressive. The judge in the case warned Musselman not to feed any more wild animals of any kind: A judge gave her probation at the time, and made it clear: Do it again, and go to...

The UK’s renewable energy plans have been set back after the companies building the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, London Array, ditched a second phase of the huge project, largely because of uncertainties about its impact on birds. **SNIP** Basking sharks and a rocky seabed helped kill off plans to build ScottishPower Renewables’ Argyll Array wind farm off the western coast of Scotland in December. That move came just weeks after RWE, a German power company, pulled the plug on its £4bn Atlantic Array offshore wind farm after saying the cost of overcoming technical challenges were “prohibitive” in the current...

This is what the world's largest solar plant looks like when it's catching rays By Jacob Kastrenakes on February 13, 2014 01:44 pm Email @jake_k 172Comments  59inShare     A massive solar plant in the Mojave Desert officially began operation today after years of construction, testing, and development. Co-owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy, and Google, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is said to be ready to generate nearly 30 percent of all solar thermal energy produced in the United States. The plant consists of three 459-foot tall towers each with tens of thousands of robotic, garage-door sized mirrors that...

This Is Really Amazing: Crow Solves An 8-Step Puzzle To Get Food!

TYBEE ISLAND, Georgia — Endangered piping plovers blend into the background of sandy beaches like Tybee's, where these small shorebirds are known to visit. First decimated by the use of their feathers in women's hats in the late 1800s, plovers have since suffered from having to compete with humans for beach space. Now only 60 or so breeding pairs remain in the smallest of their three known populations. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has identified global warming and wind turbines as emerging threats to these birds.

This is well outside California, but it may well have ramifications in the Golden State: A lawsuit threatened by a pair of bird conservation groups has halted a wind power development the federal government had planned along the Lake Erie shore in Ohio. **SNIP** "We are absolutely elated that the Air National Guard has halted this project, at least temporarily and possibly for good," said BSBO Executive Director Kimberly Kaufman, adding that BSBO would continue to gather petition signatures despite the ANG's decision. "We want to document the full extent of the opposition to this -- and similar projects in...

A U.S. military project to erect a 131-foot-tall wind turbine with rotor blades 135 feet in diameter in what a conservation group calls “one of the greatest bird migration corridors in the Western Hemisphere” has been abruptly halted. The decision to stop work on a 600-kilowatt turbine at Camp Perry along Lake Erie was revealed in a letter [PDF] from the National Guard Bureau (the entity that runs the National Guard) to the attorneys representing the American Bird Conservancy and Black Swamp Bird Observatory, who earlier this month had threatened a lawsuit if the project proceeded. **SNIP** “The victory sends...

We have about a foot of snow on the ground here at Valley Forge. Birds have been very active at our feeder. We're using Cherry-Scented Dark Oil Sunflower Seeds - no squirrels!! This morning, about 6*F, we had lots of Cardinals plus the usual assortment of Juncos, Sparrows, Black-Capped Chickadees, Purple Finches, and Blue Jays. I did a double take this afternoon as I saw a Carolina Wren - the eyebrow and beak were unmistakeable - for the first time ever. We had a Northern Flicker a few weeks back but he hasn't returned. Just wondering what you've had at...

How are birds in your area dealing with the cold weather? Any sightings or interesting stories worth sharing here? There are reports of Arctic birds coming down into North America, including parts of the United States during this 'polar vortex'.. Any sightings? Some birds flee the cold areas for warmer climates, and some stay and endure it by hiding in sheltered areas such as hollow or thick trees in groups. If you have the means to set food out for birds, finding food is more of a problem for them during cold temperatures than enduring the temperature is.

California's newest wind turbines may be killing more than 100,000 birds a year, according to a peer-reviewed study to be published in December. Those mortalities seem to climb the taller wind turbines get. And California wind turbines kill more wildlife per megawatt than identical turbines in other parts of the country. ... The study, conducted by Scott R. Loss and Peter P. Marra from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Will, appears in the December 2013 issue of the journal Biological Conservation. The study was based on a survey of...

Two months ago, 34 birds were found dead or injured on the site of the Ivanpah solar plant owned by BrightSource Energy in east San Bernardino County, California. Almost half suffered from singed feathers after running afoul of the plant’s reflected beams of sunlight, according to a report from The Desert Sun. This was not an isolated incident: another 19 were found dead at the 500-megawatt Desert Sunlight plant, which is also located in California. So what’s going on here? Why are birds dropping like their winged-brethren, flies, around these plants and what can we do? The Californian desert has...