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Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

“Genyornis was two meters tall and 200 kilos. We don’t know exactly what it would have looked like because it’s been dead for a while and there are few skeletal remains available. It was certainly a flightless bird with some characteristics shared with ostriches, like the big chest and small wings, but it would have looked more like a big goose or duck,” The evidence that humans were eating these large eggs comes from burnt eggshells found among the remains of ancient cultures. Scientists studying these sites find two different types of eggshells, one of which comes from emus and...

Meidum Geese (via Romilio, J of Arch Sci: Reports, 2021) ============================================================ Artwork that had adorned the walls of an Egyptian prince's tomb for more than four millennia has been found to contain images of a bird completely unknown to modern science - until now. Although archaeologists have been eyeing the representations of local waterfowl since the fresco's discovery at the dig site of Meidum in 1871, it's taken an evolutionary biologist's clever taxonomic sleuthing to see the birds for what they really were. Last year Anthony Romilio from the University of Queensland in Australia took a closer look at the...

WoW, just WoW! Trump is gob-smacking the leftist loons right now, Democrat spittle flying all over the place. Did you see his tweets where he's telling the four dem freshman to go back to the countries of their origin. Geese Louise! But really, they are not loons, they are goons, they are the spirits of the gargoyles, they are demon possessed alien beings ripping at the American patient, trying to dislodge the organs while they beat, just to watch the patient writhe in pain and eventually die. But there's this beast of a man who jumps in the fray, elbowing...

he past few days, the Internet has been filled with commentary on whether the National Science Foundation should have paid for my study on duck genitalia, and 88.7 percent of respondents to a Fox news online poll agreed that studying duck genitalia is wasteful government spending. The commentary supporting and decrying the study continues to grow. As the lead investigator in this research, I would like to weigh in on the controversy and offer some insights into the process of research funding by the NSF. My research on bird genitalia was originally funded in 2005, during the Bush administration. Thus...

In Bayou L’Ours, east of the south Lafourche levee system, long narrow strips of marsh stretch across an area that was once a pocket of open water. The new land is the result of a marsh terracing project planned since 2012 in conjunction with nonprofit Ducks Unlimited, Lafourche Parish government and landowner ConocoPhillips. The project, now in the second of five phases, is designed to restore eroded marsh of Bayou L’Ours, protect the levee system and create a productive habitat for fisheries and waterfowl, said Lafourche Parish Administrator Archie Chaisson. Chaisson described the terraces as mini-levees. Four marsh buggies work...

>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...

**SNIP** Tens of thousands of diving ducks and other waterfowl spend their winters in the southwest part of Lake Michigan each year, said Douglas Stotz, conservation ecologist and ornithologist at the Field Museum. Most years, they fly from places like Canada and Alaska and spend their time here diving for mollusks and fish without major problems. But then came Chicago’s frigid winter, which as recently as last weekend had blanketed about 93 percent of Lake Michigan in ice. Hundreds of waterfowl likely have died as a result, experts say, many more are near starvation and a winter storm — the...

Some photos we took of some birds while we were trying to avoid the News.

Over 1,000 mallard ducks die in Idaho By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 13, 7:37 PM ET BOISE, Idaho - More than 1,000 mallard ducks have died along a single creek in southern Idaho, and officials on Wednesday tested tissue samples to find out why. ADVERTISEMENT The symptoms — lesions in the lungs and hemorrhaging in the heart wall — likely point to a bacterial infection, not avian flu, said Dave Parrish, regional supervisor for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. State wildlife biologists and U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigators were not ruling out any...

A 73-year-old Inuit woman was referred for a barium enema after an incomplete colonoscopy. A preliminary abdominal radiograph showed that the appendix was completely full of lead shot, with the contour of the appendix easily visualized. The natives of northern and western Alaska hunt waterfowl in the spring and fall and often inadvertently swallow some of the lead shot embedded in the meat. Although most of the metal undoubtedly passes through the intestine over time, buckshot in the appendix is commonly seen in Alaskan natives (but usually not to the extent pictured here). Decades of ingestion probably resulted in this...

PARIS, Oct. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- A mysterious disease hit waterfowl in west Iran, leaving thousands of dead birds, the cause is still unknown, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said here on Thursday. "A high mortality has been observed among wild waterfowl in Poldasht (in West Azerbaijan province)" said the Paris-based organization on its website. It noted that there was no pathological agent identified nor particular lesion appeared at the autopsy and that weakness and death are only signs of this affection. The OIE said a total of 3,673 wild waterfowl had died since thephenomenon was found on Oct....

<p>WATERFOWL hunters got some good news this week with the announcement that the daily bag limits for Canada geese hunting during September have been increased in almost all of New York's waterfowl hunting zones. The increase, from five geese per day to eight, will help local authorities reduce the numbers of these birds, who have become numerous and a nuisance in many parts of the state.</p>

[Source: <http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtondc/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/1026993413147730.xml>] More From The Oregonian Washington D.C. News Effort to limit Klamath Basin farming fails 07/18/02 JIM BARNETT WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House on Wednesday rebuffed an effort by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to limit planting of commercial crops in two Klamath Basin wildlife refuges, but not before the proposal fanned an argument over urban and rural priorities. Blumenauer, who represents the Portland area, proposed ending production of alfalfa and row crops such as onions, potatoes or sugar beets on 2,000 acres of leased lands, saying the ban would cut water consumption, trim use of pesticides and protect wildlife....

Big-city politician takes aim at leases 7/16/02 By RYAN HARPER Klamath Falls Herald and News A Democratic congressman from Portland planned to introduce legislation today that would limit agriculture on a portion of the lease lands in the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath national wildlife refuges. Some local interests say the measure could do more harm than good. Earl Blumenauer, who represents Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, is offering an amendment to the Interior appropriations bill that would prevent alfalfa and row crops from being grown on lands whose leases expire this year. It would also prevent chemical use on those...