Green Group discussion

Shore birds are highly relevant to me as Ireland is an island; as most of them are migratory, shore birds also pass over many communities and countries. Just about all species have been hard hit by pollution, habitat loss and food depletion.

Let's collect books and articles about these birds.


Hurricane Sandy apparently undid a lot of stabilisation work on barrier islands, and provided extra habitat for a tiny plover. Life evolved with the natural island / ocean interchanges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/sc...

The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey

Curlew Moon

Swans are shore birds, whether sea or lake shore.
Bewick's Swans are also reducing in number. A researcher decided to fly alongside on their migrations to understand reasons. This was in 2016.

https://www.care2.com/causes/this-wom...

" “I’m humbled by the support that Flight of the Swans has already gained. People all across Europe and Russia are using this expedition as a lever to improve things for the swans, which is all I could have hoped for,” said Sacha Dench.

“Each winter, I’m fortunate enough that a small flock of a couple of hundred Bewick’s swans returns to my workplace – WWT’s Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire, UK. To get there they need safe passage all the way from the northernmost wilds of Russia, and for the last two decades fewer and fewer have made it. It’s crucial that we act now before it’s too late,” she added.

For more info on the expedition and ways to help, check out Flight of the Swans. "

That website tells us:

" Flight of the Swans won Campaign of the Year at the 2017 ENDS Environmental Impact Awards yesterday. Sacha was there at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London to accept the award. The judging panel apparently chose Flight of the Swans for the scale of its ambition, huge profile and international reach. "
https://www.flightoftheswans.org/

Eating plastic makes sea birds sick.
As if that wasn't bloomin' obvious.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/30/he...

Curlews are again warned to be on the verge of extinction in Ireland as a breeding species.

https://www.independent.ie/news/envir...

" A Government appointed task force warns the population has fallen by 96% in 30 years and a combination of loss of habitat to farming and forestry and predators such as foxes and other birds are likely to wipe it out completely.

Their report, submitted after a two-year study, warns: “The population of curlew is critically low…..in the absence of any action, the curlew will become extinct as a breeding species in Ireland within 10 years. "

Action has been and is being taken, but not by enough people in enough places.

Scientific American tells us about the seagulls grouped as white-headed gulls.

" prolonged, consistent declines occurring across large parts of the ranges of certain of these species are cause for concern, especially because they seem linked to things which we know are a problem, like declining marine resources. This is what makes efforts to eradicate or eliminate urban gull populations such a farce – people are, apparently without concern, aiming to reduce species that seems to be in chronic decline and which need help, not persecution. "

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...

Cited in that article:
https://bioone.org/journals/waterbird...

Abstract

An adult Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) was observed baiting Goldfish (Carassius auratus) with pieces of bread. Active bait-fishing is mostly known from herons, and a similar behavior was reported in captivity for a Lesser Black-backed Gull (L. fuscus). To our knowledge, we report the first record of bait-fishing, and second record of complex tool-use, for the superorder Charadrii under natural conditions.

https://gizmodo.com/puffins-seen-usin...

Those comical little puffins have been observed using sticks as scratching tools.

Geolocators on the legs of Godwits are able to record where in the world they are by length of daylight.
Scientists found that they could also see when a bird was sitting on the nest from these records. This allowed them to track if birds had built a second nest in a season, and by what date they stopped setting second nests.

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-geoloca...

Cranes were extinct in UK but the population has been encouraged after a few arrivals. Now it has hit a record level of 200 birds.

https://www.birdguides.com/news/briti...

"In 1979, a small number of wild cranes returned to Norfolk and conservation groups have been working together to encourage the species, which has now spread to other areas in eastern England, before recolonising Scotland and Wales in 2012 and 2016 respectively. In 2010, the Great Crane Project reintroduced birds to the Somerset Levels.

Conservation efforts have yielded impressive results, with as many as 47 of the 56 pairs attempting to breed, raising a total of 26 chicks."

White-headed plovers are increasing on Maine shores. Great news!

https://www.mainepublic.org/post/reco...

Protecting the shore, even to protect human habitation and works, protects habitat.

On the Costa Blanca, Spain -
"More than 3.2 tonnes of ‘seaweed’ has been moved from Torre Derribada and El Mojón beaches in San Pedro del Pinatar to nearby La Llana beach to protect it from erosion.

La Llana beach and its dunes are the only barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the town’s salt lagoons."

https://www.costa-news.com/costa-blan...

Penguins of the past can tell us how penguins evolved. New Zealand had giant penguins in prehistory and apparently a branch of birds called plopterids lived on the Arctic shores. These looked extremely like penguins - as did the great auk,now extinct too.

"Despite sharing a number of physical features with penguins both ancient and modern, plotopterids are more closely related to boobies, gannets and cormorants than they are to penguins.

"What's remarkable about all this is that plotopterids and ancient penguins evolved these shared features independently," says Dr. De Pietri. "This is an example of what we call convergent evolution, when distantly related organisms develop similar morphological traits under similar environmental conditions.""

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-zealand...

More about those giant penguins.

"Paul Scofield, a co-author of the paper and senior curator at the Canterbury Museum, said the discovery is significant because the species is similar to another giant penguin found in Antarctica in 2000 and helps show a connection between the two regions during the Paleocene Epoch.

He said that following the extinction of dinosaurs, marine reptiles and gigantic fish, it seemed there was an evolutionary opportunity for penguins to thrive and grow in size.

"The oceans were ripe for the picking with the lack of mega predators," Scofield said. "It looks like what was going on was that penguins were just starting to exploit that niche."

But he said the giant penguins themselves became extinct within 30 million years as large marine mammals began ruling the waters."

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-giant-p...

The Ferocious Summer: Adelie Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica


Antarctic shore birds; the Adelie penguin.

Bird Watch Ireland tallies terns. Great photos of nests.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/rockablog...

Do have a look at this measure:

"Following on from last year, we laid out a grid of bamboo canes on Lamb Island. The canes were driven into the drought-stricken earth at an angle, at distances of 1 m apart.

The concept was devised by Chris Redfern of the RSPB. Herring, Lesser Black-backed and Great Black-backed Gulls cannot fly between the canes to grab a quick egg or chick sized snack as their wing spans are greater than 1 m. The terns on the other hand, easily flit between the canes as their wingspan is less than 1 m."

Those are island birds whereas tern nests on a strand bring different problems including blocking public access. Again, lovely photos.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/the-re-te...

Lisbon, capital of Portugal, plans a new airport runway in an estuary used by shore birds. These migratory birds visit other lands including Ireland. BirdWatch Ireland has written asking for the plan to be altered.

"The Tagus estuary is the most important wetland in Portugal for waterbirds, and a major stepping stone for migratory species that breed in northern latitudes and migrate south to spend the winter in southern Europe and Africa. Every year, thousands of migratory birds use this estuary for resting and foraging during their migration, and thousands more stay throughout the entire winter period. More than 250 species are known to use this area, many of which are declining and some are already threatened with extinction.

BirdWatch Ireland Chief Executive Officer Nicholas Williams said, “The Tagus is one of the most critically important sites for wintering birds in Europe. For this reason, it is afforded many levels of national and international protection, including as a Special Protection Area, and has UNESCO Biosphere status, just like Dublin Bay. It would be inconceivable to imagine a proposal to build an airport in Dublin Bay. We ask the Portuguese Government to please reconsider this plan in order to protect our shared biodiversity, and to think of the climate impacts too.”

Impacts from the proposed airport would not only affect the birds while they are wintering at the Tagus, but may also affect their survival during migration, and ultimately their ability to return to breeding grounds in good enough physical condition to breed successfully. This could cause population level impacts, in that the effects would be seen at the population level in terms of declines. A declining flyway/global population means that the effects would then be seen at every wetland site along a species’ migratory route, including Ireland."

https://birdwatchireland.ie/planned-a...

A sandhill crane has blown ashore in North Carolina, outside its usual range. I'm thinking it was blown there by the same storm which sent a brown booby to Ireland.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-foot-pr...

Sadly the booby did not survive despite getting good care. This is a Caribbean bird and does not like cooler waters.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/...

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/...

The crested ibis is recovering in China due to being under State protection and birds being bred in captivity and released.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-19...

"According to data from the Hanzhong Crested Ibis National Nature Reserve, the 600 newly-hatched crested ibises included over 40 crested ibises under artificial breeding and over 560 being bred in the wild."

I'm told these birds were down to 10 wild specimens in the 1980s.

Gorgeous photos and excellent camouflage in the Little Terns blog. Ringers are having a great year.

" The last couple of weeks at the Kilcoole Little Tern conservation project have been pretty hectic; nests hatching, chicks running and bad weather looming! Since my last update the wardens have found our 312th nest and have ringed almost 350 chicks. We are well on our way to having another good year!"

https://birdwatchireland.ie/kilcoole-...

Roseate Terns and Common Terns are having a good year too. Look at the artefact nestboxes for them.
The reason extra nestboxes have to be added in this area is because the BirdWatch Ireland workers can't patrol all the possible sites and keep predators off. This island is a controlled environment and the birds will take advantage, but there aren't enough rocks and shelter.

"This season had 1,624 breeding pairs of Roseate Terns. This is a good increase of 60 pairs from last year and is the second highest on record for Rockabill, beaten only by 2018 which had 1642 pairs.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/rockablog...

Lapwings - if the wetland is managed in their favour they respond well.

https://www.wwt.org.uk/news/2020/07/2...#

This article simply explains the problems puffins face off Maine.

https://www.ecowatch.com/puffins-main...

The Rockabill Island wardens are getting ready to return to the rest of the world. The terns have fledged and flown.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0817/115...

" green light for the 659 apartment scheme on lands east of St Paul’s College on Sybill Hill Rd, Raheny in spite of strong local opposition against the plan."

"The appeals board initially granted planning permission in February but this decision was quashed after being successfully challenged by opponents of the plan in the High Court.

The consent order was made in the High Court on the basis the board had not adequately addressed requirements of the habitats directive in relation to an appropriate assessment of the impact of the development on feeding grounds of the light-bellied Brent goose and other protected bird species in Dublin Bay.

The case was remitted back to An Bord Pleanala for a fresh adjudication and now the appeals board has given the project the green light once more in spite of a recommendation by Dublin City Council to refuse planning permission.

The appeals board also granted planning permission in spite of 654 objections lodged against the plan and the objections came from residents associations, sports clubs, environmental groups, local politicians and local residents."

https://www.thejournal.ie/st-annes-pa...

You will not believe how far this bar-tailed godwit flew nonstop. New record.

https://gizmodo.com/record-breaking-b...

Thanks to the coronavirus restrictions meaning fewer disturbances, and to the current La Nina, the Galapagos shore birds are thriving. Great news.

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/10...

"The cormorants on the islands are the only type to have lost their ability to fly, but they have developed diving skills.

"The number of cormorants has reached a record number, according to historical data dating back to 1977, while the number of penguins is at the highest since 2006," said a statement from the Galapagos National Park, which carried out the census.

The population of Galapagos penguins, the only ones living on the Earth's equator, increased from 1,451 in 2019 to 1,940 in 2020, it added.

Flightless cormorant numbers increased from 1,914 to 2,220 over the same period."

Note the plastic in the nest. This plastic gets tangled around the feet of the chicks and can disable them.

Ingesting plastic is causing seabirds to accumulate metals in their livers, according to this study.

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-link-pl...

"The research published in the journal Scientific Reports examined ingested plastic and 11 metals and metalloids in two seabird species and found significant relationships with concentrations of aluminum, manganese, iron, cobalt, copper and zinc in the livers of slender-billed prions.

Lead author Dr. Lauren Roman from CSIRO and UTAS's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies said the effects were small, but given that seabirds already experience multiple challenges of the high seas such as prey shortage and severe storms, plastic may compound the impact of other stressors such as fisheries and climate change.

"Our study is the first to show a relationship in seabirds between plastic pollution, which is increasingly ubiquitous in our oceans, and the concentration of mineral nutrients in the liver," Dr. Roman said."

This excellent study shows how seabirds bring ocean nutrients onto land and provide the basis of a fertile land cover which then transforms the ecology. In the Falklands, scientists now worry that with climate change warming the sea, the seabirds may nest elsewhere.

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-seabird...

""Our 14,000-year record shows that seabirds established at Surf Bay during cooler climates. Seabird conservation efforts in the South Atlantic should be prepared for these species to move to new breeding grounds in a warmer world, and those locations may not be protected," says Groff, who is now a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Wyoming.

The UMaine expedition team, which included Kit Hamley, then a master's student in Quaternary studies and a Climate Change Institute Fellow, collected a 476-centimeter peat column from Surf Bay, East Falkland. The 14,000-year record revealed in the undecomposed tussac leaves of the peat column "captures the development of a terrestrial-marine linkage that supports some of the most important breeding colonies of seabirds in the Southern Ocean today," according to the research team, which published its findings in the journal Science Advances."

More information: "Seabird establishment during regional cooling drove a terrestrial ecosystem shift 5000 years ago" Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb2788
Journal information: Science Advances
Provided by University of Maine

Geese and other shore birds are returning to temperate Ireland from the northerly summer nesting grounds. Birds head north to nest as they can forage in daylight for many hours each day. When cold and dark mean no food, they head south. BirdWatch Ireland keeps a count of when and how many appear on our wetlands.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/irish-wet...

I placed an article (which I wrote for college originally) about the decline of the Eurasian Curlew, on Medium a while ago. Here's the link.

https://medium.com/@clareobeara/decli...

Clare wrote: "I placed an article (which I wrote for college originally) about the decline of the Eurasian Curlew, on Medium a while ago. Here's the link.

https://medium.com/@clareobeara/decli......"

Very nice and full of good info, Clare! Btw, what's the correct way to pronounce "Crotach"?

Cro- tockh is the nearest I can write.
Thanks! Got a good mark.

Monitoring how shore birds survive hurricanes.

"Marsh birds are adept at hiding in dense grasses, so it's more common to hear them than to see them. That's why we use a process known as a callback survey to monitor for them.

First we play a prerecorded set of calls to elicit responses from birds in the marsh. Then we determine where we think the birds are calling from and visually estimate the distance from the observer to that spot, often using tools such as laser range finders. We also note the type of ecosystem where we detect the birds – for example, whether they're in a tidal marsh with emergent vegetation or out in the open on mud flats.

...
"When a tropical storm strikes, many factors – including wind speed, flooding and the storm's position – influence how severely it will affect marsh birds. Typically birds ride out storms by moving to higher areas of the marsh. However, if a storm generates extensive flooding, birds in affected areas may swim or be blown to other locations. We saw this in early June when Hurricane Cristobal blew hundreds of clapper rails onto beaches in parts of coastal Mississippi.

In coastal areas immediately to the east of the eye of a tropical cyclone we typically see a drop in clapper rail populations in the following spring and summer. This happens because the counterclockwise rotation of the storms results in the highest winds and storm surge to the north and east of the eye of the storm.

But typically there's a strong bout of breeding and a population rebound within a year or so – evidence that these birds are quick to adapt. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005, however, depending on the type of marsh, it took several years for rail populations to return to their pre-Katrina levels."

Great article detailing research methods.

https://www.ecowatch.com/how-birds-su...

Article on how flightless birds have been made extinct by humans. I'm putting it under Shore Birds because islands.

"The fossils or other records show that 166 of these extinct species lacked the ability to fly. Only 60 flightless bird species survive today.

Birds that cannot fly were much more diverse than previous studies had assumed, the study shows. The findings also confirm that flightless species were also much more likely to go extinct than species that could fly.

Co-author Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said: "Many bird species can become flightless in environments without their usual predators, for example on islands. Flying expends a lot of energy that birds can use for other purposes if they don't need to take to the air. Unfortunately, though, this makes them easier prey if humans—and their associated rats and cats—suddenly turn up."
...
Dr. Sayol said: "Our study shows that the evolution of flightlessness in birds is a widespread phenomenon. Today, most flightless species are penguins, rails or ostriches and their relatives. Now, only 12 bird families have flightless species, but before humans caused extinctions, the number was at least 40. Without those extinctions we would be sharing the planet with flightless owls, woodpeckers and ibises, but all of these have now sadly disappeared.""

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-flightl...

More information: "Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds" Science Advances (2020). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup … .1126/sciadv.abb6095
Journal information: Science Advances
Provided by University College London

https://medium.com/usfwspacificisland...

"A Reason for Hope: Wisdom, world’s oldest known, banded bird, returns to Midway Atoll"

"An array of seabirds will enjoy safe refuge along B.C.’s West Coast after a quartet of American brothers gifted their family’s private island to protect its natural habitat.

“It’s a wonderful story of cross-border conservation,” Jasper Lament, CEO of the Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC), said of the Whitridge family’s donation.

The new Breton Island-Whitridge Reserve is a 12.6-acre island located in the Discovery Islands archipelago that is wedged between the B.C. mainland and Vancouver Island.

The island’s habitat is exceptional because it’s undeveloped and provides a perfect haven for birds, Lament said.

“One important element is the island provides foraging for a really diverse community of migratory birds.”
...
"For example, the figure-eight-shaped island falls right along the migratory path for harlequin ducks, Lament noted.

Formerly at risk, the ducks are noted for the male’s striking plumage and their habit of breeding in turbulent mountain streams during the spring.

But they make their way to the West Coast’s rocky shores to overwinter, and the island reserve is a perfect habitat for the plucky bird, Lament said."

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020...

An oddly pigmented penguin, more yellow than anything, has been photographed.

https://www.ecowatch.com/rare-penguin...

"Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John Fitzpatrick was asked about the most threatened bird populations in the world, and he answered without pause: the shorebirds of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The flyway spans 22 countries from Alaska in the U.S. and Siberia in Russia south through China, southeast Asia, on to Australia and New Zealand. At its heart is the Yellow Sea and Bohai Gulf, a vital service station for 240 waterbird species, including 22 globally threatened species on the IUCN Red List.

The pace and extent of coastal wetland reclamation along China’s east coast was relentless and seemingly unstoppable. Up to 53% of temperate intertidal mudflats, 73% of mangroves, and 80% of coral reefs have been lost in the past 50 years. The flyway was on the brink of collapse. When professor Theunis Piersma, a world-renowned shorebird scientist from the Netherlands, first visited the Bohai Gulf in China in 2010 and looked out at the heavy machinery, dredges, and pumps that were transforming intertidal mudflats into commercial real estate, he lamented: “So this is the end of a flyway.”

The Cornell Lab’s Fitzpatrick clearly hoped that that was not the case. So did we. A collaboration among the Paulson Institute—a “think and do tank” dedicated to U.S.-China relations, with an emphasis on economics, markets, and environmental protection—the Cornell Lab, BirdLife International, and other partners began to grow, with a focus on conservation of key stopover sites in the Yellow Sea."

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/th...

April 21 is World Curlew Day. A pair of curlews have returned to the shores of Lough Neagh, in Northern Ireland, where they were fledged.
Read about the work of saving the nests and studying the birds.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0421/121...

Ducklings. No matter how popular they are on social media, do not let your kids buy ducklings.

"Videos on TikTok with the hashtag 'ducklings' have amassed more than 275m views.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ms Bird said the DSPCA suspects some people are scooping ducklings from the canals in Dublin and selling them for €5 on the street after "a day in the life of a duckling" became a trend on social media.

Other ducklings for sale are coming from farms.

She said there are huge concerns about the welfare of these ducklings that are very young and should not be separated from their parents.

Ms Bird explained that duckling feathers take up to four weeks to become fully waterproof and that the ducks need to be kept warm and properly fed."

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2021/...

I can't believe curlew eggs were being wilfully destroyed.

"Working closely with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the Royal Air Force, staff from Natural England and the WWT have been out collecting eggs at 8 military and civil airfields across England since late April. The first chicks have now hatched at Pensthorpe Conservation Trust facilities.

Airfields provide the kind of habitat the ground nesting curlew would choose to lay eggs. However, due to the dangers to air safety posed by them nesting close to runways, eggs were - until this project began - destroyed to prevent the risk of collisions between birds and aircraft.

The 2 year project, funded by Defra and Natural England, builds on a local and national partnership already in place between numerous bodies. These include Natural England, Defra, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, British Trust for Ornithology, the Sandringham Estate, the Ken Hill Estate, Defence Infrastructure Organisation, the RAF, Army Flying Service and USAF. Bird control contractors such as NBC Environment, the Zoological Society of London and local landowners are also involved.

It follows a successful trial in 2019, which rescued eggs from RAF airbases in the east of England and led to the release of 54 curlew chicks at WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire.

The curlew is Europe’s largest wading bird and is now red listed, meaning it is of the highest conservation priority, needing urgent action. The UK is home to roughly a quarter of the global breeding population of curlew – some 66,000 pairs. However, the species has suffered very significant declines since the 1970s due to loss of habitat and predation, and numbers have dropped by about half in the past 20 years.

Earlier this week, the Environment Secretary, George Eustice, announced the establishment of an England Species Reintroduction Taskforce, led by Natural England, to deliver a more ambitious approach to reintroducing species or helping their populations recover.

As well as helping the recovery of the curlew, a key aim of this project will be to assess how nature recovery networks help other priority species bounce back from population declines or be reintroduced to their former ranges."

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sa...

Flying drones over bird sanctuaries is wrong. Here's why.

"Roughly 1,500 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a rogue drone crash-landed and scared off thousands of birds, the Orange County Register and New York Times reported this week.

Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, a stretch of protected coastal wetlands in Southern California, on May 13, according to the Register. When one of the drones went down on the reserve’s largest nesting island, several thousand terns fled their ground nests, fearing an attack from predators."

https://gizmodo.com/frightened-terns-...

A swan's tale to warm your heart.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0610/122...

Lovely Irish Setter can be seen during the clip; do watch. You see the swan's life in a few seconds.

"A Co Cavan family, whose dog retrieved a swan's egg from a local lake a year ago, have released the fully-grown bird back to the wild.

The remarkable story began last May when Declan McCabe's dog Sam came back from a lakeside walk with a swan egg in his mouth."

Storks: they search for snails where it's easy, in new-mown meadows. How do they know where to go? Scent, says the research team.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-fine-no...

"Until now, the sense of smell has played a rather subordinate role. When meadows are freshly mowed, storks often appear there to search for snails and frogs. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Radolfzell and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have now studied the birds' behavior and discovered that the storks are attracted by the smell of the mown grass.
Only storks that were downwind and could thus perceive the smell reacted to the mowing. The scientists also sprayed a meadow with a spray of green leaf scents released during mowing. Storks appeared here as well.
This shows that white storks use their sense of smell to forage and suggests that the sense of smell may also play a greater role in other birds than previously thought."

More information: Martin Wikelski et al, Smell of green leaf volatiles attracts white storks to freshly cut meadows, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-92073-7
Journal information: Scientific Reports , Animal Behavior
Provided by Max Planck Society

Puffins.

"The Environment Minister of Iceland, Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, has announced that Lundey Island off the north coast of Reykjavík has been declared a protected area due to the ten thousand seabird pairs that nest on the island every year.

Lundey joins the declaration of protected areas alongside its neighbors within Reykjavík’s Kollafjörður fjord, including Engey, Viðey, Þerney, and Akurey. These islands are already on the Nature Conservation Register, with the latter declared as a protected area in 2019. Once inhabited by people, this collection of islands now host a variety of bird and plant life.

“Akurey in Kollafjörður was the first area to be protected in a protection campaign that I launched in 2018 and now it’s time for her sister, Lundey,” explained Guðbrandsson.

Lundey is playfully nicknamed as puffin island as puffins are the prominent species that breed there, while kittiwakes, black guillemots, and eider ducks are also residing on the island. Plantlife, including common meadow grass, green sorrel, arctic fescue, and meadow buttercup, also call the island home."

https://www.icenews.is/2021/06/12/puf...

Great news!

The whimbrel is the smaller cousin of the curlew.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/W...

"Hope was the name given to a female Whimbrel captured on the coast of Virginia in 2009 and fitted with a satellite transmitter. Over the next three years, researchers Hope for more than 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) traveling back and forth between her breeding area on the Mackenzie River in western Canada and her wintering site, at Great Pond on St. Croix, British Virgin Islands. She returned to her wintering grounds for five more seasons, recognized there by her leg band. The subject of a children’s book, Hope became an ambassador for shorebird migrants—and ultimately was the reason for the preservation and protection of Great Pond."

Birdwatch Ireland:

"The Irish Wetland Bird Survey (or I-WeBS, for short) is the main way by which we monitor the populations of non-breeding waders, waterfowl and other waterbirds across Ireland, as well as the health of the wetland habitats upon which they depend.

Managed by BirdWatch Ireland and funded and supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the survey counts are carried out by teams of dedicated counters each month from September to March. The latest issue of our annual I-WeBS News newsletter has just been published and has been posted to our team of counters, but you can download it for free."

https://birdwatchireland.ie/app/uploa...

Penguins again; these are newly discovered long legged penguin fossils.

https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021...

"In 2006, a group of schoolchildren on a Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club fossil hunting field trip in Kawhia Harbour, New Zealand, led by the club's fossil expert Chris Templer, discovered the bones of a giant fossil penguin.

Researchers from Massey University and Bruce Museum, in the US, visited Waikato Museum in Hamilton to analyse the fossil.

They used 3D scanning and compared the fossil with digital versions of bones from around the world.

They also produced a 3D-printed replica of the fossil for the Hamilton Junior naturalists.

Dr Daniel Thomas, a senior lecturer in zoology from Massey's School of Natural and Computational Sciences, said the fossil is between 27.3 and 34.6 million years old and from a time when much of Waikato was under water.

He added: "The penguin is similar to the Kairuku giant penguins first described from Otago, but has much longer legs, which the researchers used to name the penguin waewaeroa - te reo Maori for 'long legs'."

Cyclones are not good for shore birds.

https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021...

"Thousands of seabirds that wash up on Atlantic coasts every year could have been starved to death by cyclones that whip up "washing machine" waves, a new study says, with experts warning the phenomenon could worsen with climate change.

Puffins, auks and guillemots - hardy little birds that nest in the Arctic - head south each year to more hospitable but isolated islands off Newfoundland, Iceland, Norway and even Ireland.

But many are found washed up on beaches in mass die-offs that scientists now think are caused by violent winter cyclones that prevent them from feeding.

"Imagine winds blowing at 120 kilometres per hour, waves 8 metres high and turbulence in the water that disturbs plankton and schools of fish the birds feed on," said David Gremillet of the French CNRS research institute, which coordinated the study published yesterday in Current Biology.

"They're caught in a big washing machine," he told AFP.

Unable to fly clear of the storms, some of which last days, the birds likely cannot dive into the sea to feed or are perhaps unable to see their prey in the troubled waters."