Nature in the News

Birdnuts wrote: »

I see the article mentioned the group Songbird Survival - most professonal conservation bodies like the RSPB etc. have publicly dissociated themselves from this group since there is increasing evidence that they are simply a front for owners of vast shooting estates that want to weaken protections for pretty much every raptor species you care to mention. Indeed rarely a week goes by now when a dead raptor including Kites and eagles turns up on some shooting estate in the UK - its well known that some of those closely associated with estates involved in the illegal killing of Raptors are heavily involved with SS too.

http://networkedblogs.com/dODGO

PS: There is now a general consensus among birders and raptor professionals in the UK that the the famous "photo" of the eagle clutching the dead lamb was faked. In addition any studies on this issue in Scotland have to date shown that eagles do not represent a threat to lambs

Moses Faithful Slime wrote: »

I thought a thread with recent news items of interest to Wildlife watchers might go down well. Not the Daily Star type "Badger eats baby while driving steamroller" type but genuine news or discoveries.

A southern Arizona hog farmer said Thursday that she watched in horror as thousands of bees swarmed a 1,000-pound hog during an attack that lasted about two hours.
"I went out three times to hose him down," June Hewitt told The Associated Press. "The very last time I went, he lifted his head when I called his name, flicked his ears, and that was the end."
Farmers were trying to move a hive that weighed around 200 pounds when about 250,000 Africanized bees swarmed like a black cloud and attacked animals and workers, KOLD-TV reported.

trebor28 wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-14416809

i would say it was more of an accident on the birds part, it over reached.

DNA confirms it: the New Zealand storm petrel is officially back from the dead.
The tiny, enigmatic seabird was considered extinct for more than 150 years, meaning its comeback eclipses that of other "extinct" birds such as the takahe and Chatham Islands taiko.
It was rediscovered by birdwatchers Ian Saville and Brent Stephenson, near the Mercury Islands in the Hauraki Gulf.
"It was a complete fluke," Saville said. "We'd seen heaps and heaps of the common storm petrels, the white-faced storm petrels, and then I just saw this little black and white thing. It raced toward the boat, did a quick circle, raced off again and that was it."
That sighting was in January 2003. Since then the birds, in flocks of up to 40, have been seen every summer in the gulf, "almost within sight of the Sky Tower", Saville said.
But there has been confusion in the scientific community as to how and where the bird survived, and whether it is in fact a separate species, or just a more common species of storm petrel, with odd colouring.
Bruce Robertson of the University of Otago has just matched DNA from birds caught and released in the gulf, to tissue fragments from three museum specimens in England and France.
That confirms that the birds in the gulf are the same as those last seen in the 1800s, and that the New Zealand storm petrel is a distinct species.