In my last post, I catalogued a variety of issues facing owls in different places around the world- while a lot of that was focused on the northern spotted owl, the issue of habitat loss is pretty well universal. I had expected that most of the recent literature on owl conservation would investigate complex relationships […]
Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category
The ups and downs of owl-dom
Why didn’t I spot that?
In deciding to focus on owls for this month’s posts, I clearly had forgotten about one of the biggest debates over timber harvesting- the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) gained lots of publicity as a bone of contention in the discussion of what to do with old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. As birds […]
A word for the wise
I spend a lot of my time in an urban area with lights on every corner and sirens as my nightly serenade, but I have lived in areas where I could listen to owls calling to each other in the darkness. I was reminded of that fact a few days ago while looking at specimens […]
Keeping parrots in their place
Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking into conservation issues involving parrots, and it turns out that there are two very different sides to this story: on the one hand, habitat destruction and the pet trade are threatening wild populations around the world; on the other hand, the pet trade (and to a certain […]
A colorful invasion
In my last post, I looked at the status of several wild parrot species which have been negatively impacted by habitat loss, hunting, and other human activities. This week in my reading I investigated the other side of the equation: invasive parrot populations around the world. To be perfectly honest, although I had been vaguely […]
Out of the cage
Over the past week, I’ve looked into aspects of parrot conservation, and there seemed to be something of a split between two lines of investigation: parrots threatened in their native range, and parrots causing problems as introduced species. This week I’ll concentrate on the former and then next week, I’ll gather some information on the […]
A different feather
I had some time during a recent road trip to think about the topic for this month- many ideas came to mind as I wondered about this aspect of conservation or that issue of research, but I kept coming back to birds, maybe because they show up so often as you travel (such as the […]
This one’s for the birds
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the chance to look at the status of migratory song birds, some of which are doing quite well (Baltimore orioles, for example: stable population, large range, sports team), while others are facing very bleak conditions (for a sobering experience, check out Golden-cheeked warblers, or, if you want to […]
Three migrant birds, three migrant birds, see how they change
This week I investigated three migratory song bird species to see how things were changing on a smaller scale, and while I chose these species largely because I love their plumage (I’ll admit to being shallow here and not considering the “inner-bird”), I also selected them because they represent three different scenarios: a complicated situation, […]
Lost in Migration
I feel like I’ve spent the last week swimming in a very, very big lake of migration information. I think I may have made my goals for this month a little too broad given the sheer volume of data out there- maybe I should have concentrated on a specific area or genus of birds. Trying […]