Free Republic

To keep the big America's Cup contest afloat, San Francisco has agreed to spend $150,000 to study whether the racing boats - and their towering sails - will scare birds on the bay. The study, which will be conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, is part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by a group that included former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. "It's not that we're trying to head-shrink the birds," said Mike Lynes of the Golden Gate Audubon Society. "But when they take off because they are frightened, they expend energy, and that can affect their...

Officials say birds struck Vice President Joe Biden's plane as it was landing Thursday night at Santa Barbara Airport in California. Nobody was injured. Maj. Michelle Lai of the U.S. Air Force 89th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office says two to three birds hit the right side of Air Force Two.

Derrill Rockwell told police he grabbed his rifle, the .22-caliber he kept handy to kill rodents around the house, about 5 a.m. Oct. 5 and walked outside to confront it. The bird. Possibly, he told police, the same fowl he suspected of harassing his cats recently around his home near Orchard Mesa Cemetery. It was red, sitting at the top of a hill about 90 feet away from Rockwell. “His intent was to spook it away,” Deputy District Attorney Jason Conley told District Judge Richard Gurley on Friday. Rockwell shot once but said he didn’t see the bird fly away....

When it comes to fearless battlefield feats – there can be few to match that of the crab that amputated its own claw. Filmed on the remote Pacific island of Clipperton, the crustacean is initially part of a raiding party on the nest of a group of Boobie birds. However, he gets separated from his comrades and comes under a vicious attack. The angry birds relentlessly peck him and in the end badly injure one of his claws. But this is no defeat for the crab. Instead of feeling sorry for himself he courageously cuts off the limp limb and...

THE mass attack by seabirds on a coastal town that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Birds may finally have been explained. Biologists have blamed toxic algae eaten by the birds for damaging their brains and making them so aggressive that they dived at people, buildings and moving cars in Capitola, California, in 1961. Hitchcock's film, released two years later, was inspired partly by the event and partly by a short story by Daphne du Maurier about an unexplained avian attack on a Cornish farm worker and his family. In the Californian incident, hundreds of normally unaggressive sooty shearwater gulls suddenly,...

Birds in central California are significantly larger than they were 25 to 40 years ago, and researchers believe it may be because they are bulking up in body weight to ride out severe storms related to global climate change. Over the last 25 years, a robin, for example, has increased about an eighth of an inch in wing length and about 0.2 ounces in mass, according to a paper published online in Global Change Biology. The findings fly in the face of assumptions based on an ecological benchmark known as Bergmann’s rule: Birds and mammals tend to be larger at...

One of seven oil companies charged with killing migratory birds during drilling operations in North Dakota has agreed to plead guilty and pay $12,000. Slawson Exploration Co. Inc., of Wichita, Kan., was charged under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act with for killing 12 birds that died after allegedly landing in oil waste pits in western North Dakota from May 6 through June 20. Under a plea agreement filed in federal court Monday, Slawson will pay $12,000 — or $1,000 per bird — to the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The maximum penalty for each misdemeanor charge under the Migratory...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

Robots of a Feather... LIS/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology A rendering of flying robots in Switzerland; connecting lines indicate Wi-Fi links. Relying on algorithms created to render flocks of birds in computer graphics, engineers have created flying robots that travel in swarms.

Does San Francisco have a serious problem with birds flying into tall buildings? Was there a good reason the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a "bird-safe" building ordinance last month? I asked Supervisors David Chiu and John Avalos on Saturday why they supported the measure, at a mayoral candidates debate hosted by the West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Their answers were instructive. Chiu seemed put out that he had been asked such a trivial question. The board has spent about "40 seconds" on the measure, he assured me, less time than during Saturday's debate. Avalos answered that he knows...

A Story of Love, Compassion, Friendship & Loyalty About eight years ago a wild Australian Sulphur Crested Cockatoo flew into a car and broke its wing. The motorist took it to the Vet in Nerang, Queensland, who had to amputate the wing. We adopted her - for which we needed a National Parks and Wildlife permit - and kept her in a cage outside where she was often visited by wild Cockatoos. One of the things that impressed us was how she would push lettuce leaves through the bars of the cage, offering food to visitors.

On my last trip to the thrift shop there was a mysterious Nauguhyde bag in the show case. Y'all know me, LOL, I just had to look!The Pentax ME Super was made around 1980, it's a compact by SLR standards but built like a brick. This is the SE version, top ot the crop.I got a 50mm f2 Pentax lens and an 80-200 f4,5, all in mint condition, a 2X TC and a bunch of filters, plus a really nice bag.These are with the 80-200 f4.5.I had the film run at Walgreens and scanned the negatives on my Epson 3590.

An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan is further evidence that giant birds roamed - or flew above - the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs. Writing in Biology Letters, researchers say the new species, Samrukia nessovi, had a skull some 30cm long. If flightless, the bird would have been 2-3m tall; if it flew, it may have had a wingspan of 4m. The find is only the second bird of such a size in the Cretaceous geologic period, and the first in Asia. The only other evidence of a bird of such a size during the period was...

Title and link only -- Gannett stationhttp://wusa9.com/news/article/161065/158/Woodpecker-Saving-Daughter-Costs-Mom-500

One of the world's most famous fossil creatures, widely considered the earliest known bird, is getting a rude present on the 150th birthday of its discovery: A new analysis suggests it isn't a bird at all. Chinese scientists are proposing a change to the evolutionary family tree that boots Archaeopteryx off the "bird" branch and onto a closely related branch of birdlike dinosaurs. Archaeopteryx (ahr-kee-AHP'-teh-rihx) was a crow-sized creature that lived about 150 million years ago. It had wings and feathers, but also quite un-birdlike traits like teeth and a bony tail. Discovered in 1861 in Germany, two years after...

According to this Mother Jones article, cats kill birds -- many of which are vital to the ecosystem -- at an alarming rate. Wind tunnels have nothing on Kitty. Also, feral cats are disease-toting menaces -- and their population has tripled over the last four decades. Efforts to staunch the numbers with trap-neuter-return aren't enough. (They do not, however, suck the breath out of new babies. At least give them that.) Seems harsh, yes? I am not a cat lover. In fact, I'm a card-carrying not-cat lover, though I've owned cats -- if you can actually own a cat. I...

A pair of bald eagles nesting near the U.S. Post Office in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, has taken to dive-bombing customers, in one case drawing blood, authorities said on Tuesday.

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten sightings and also heard the characteristic "kent" calls of this species on two occasions. Scientists...

A central Kansas family hopes to learn what caused the deaths of dozens of birds that fell from trees outside their house. Elizabeth Stange says it started with one or two birds tumbling to the ground Thursday afternoon, followed by dozens more. The Sterling woman told KWCH-TV that the birds all died within minutes of each other. By evening, Stange says, she and her family collected about 50 birds from their driveway and yard. Stange says a local veterinarian told her the birds probably ate something poisonous. But a few were sent to Kansas State University for a closer look....

This captioned photo was too good not to share. Anybody want to try for a better caption?