Annual competition inundated with a record number of votes after comedian took the Australasian crested grebe under his wing
New Zealand has crowned a bird that grunts, pukes and has a highly unusual repertoire of mating rituals as its bird of the century.
The threatened Australasian crested grebe, or pūteketeke, was thrown into the global spotlight by a powerful backer, British-American comedian and talkshow host John Oliver.
Continue reading...A number of flights delayed or redirected after unusually large number of birds ‘invade’ the runway
Venice’s Marco Polo airport has been forced to close briefly after an unusually large number of seagulls “invaded” the runway, leading flights to be delayed or redirected.
Various tools were deployed to ward off the gulls on Friday morning, including a falconer and an acoustic deterrent, according to Save, the airport’s management company.
Continue reading...McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, is largely covered with glass, making it a lethal obstacle for birds
At least 1,000 birds died from colliding into a single building in Chicago on Thursday, 5 October, as they migrated south to their wintering grounds. Volunteers are still recovering bird carcasses within 1.5 miles of McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America, which is largely covered with glass.
“It’s the tip of an iceberg but it’s it’s a huge, huge amount of birds we found both dead and injured,” said Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, adding that this was the highest number of bird strikes that the group recorded from the grounds of one building in a single day.
Continue reading...An Australian take on how the emu won the 1932 battle premieres this month, before shooting on the UK comedian’s film has begun
A troupe of Australian comedians appears to have gazumped John Cleese to bring the bizarre story of the great emu war to the big screen.
In 1932, soldiers armed with machine guns were deployed in Western Australia to battle huge flocks of the giant native birds. Their annual migration from the arid interior to the coast had increasingly met the rapidly expanding wheat belt, to the delight of the emus and the horror of the farmers.
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Continue reading...… to be announced at 12.30pm AEDT. Follow our live blog from 11.30am for the red carpet, emotional speeches and all the reaction
The campaigns are over. The votes are in. The scrutineers are in the tally room.
The winner of the 2023 Guardian/BirdLife Australian bird of the year will be announced at 12.30pm AEDT on this website, after voters culled a field of 50 down to 10 for the final day of voting on Thursday.
Find all our bird of the year content
Guardian Australia has produced a glorious A3 poster of Australian birds that can be downloaded here as a high-resolution jpeg or pdf to be printed out. (The pdf is a large file so may take a while to load.)
Continue reading...Some of Australia’s most recognised feathered denizens have been flying under the popularity radar for far too long
Is there anything more thrilling than seeing an underbird soar? Keep that in mind when casting your vote in this year’s Guardian/Birdlife Australia bird of the year poll.
Previous polls have revealed a shocking bias. Support for some of Australia’s most recognised birds has been consistently weak. Let’s ruffle some feathers and give these underbirds a chance.
Continue reading...Scientists confirm three birds have died from virus as park authorities redouble efforts to protect islands’ endemic birds
National park authorities on the Galápagos Islands have heightened biosecurity measures to protect the archipelago’s unique fauna from the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza after scientists confirmed that three birds had died from the virus.
“From preliminary tests of the five specimens, three of them have tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza,” Danny Rueda, director of the Galápagos national park told the Guardian. Two frigate birds and one red-footed booby were confirmed to have died from the virus on Tuesday, after samples were sent to Guayaquil on the Ecuadorian mainland for examination.
Continue reading...Conservation groups say plan contains no meaningful action to address bird’s key threat of native forest logging
The swift parrot recovery plan announced by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to mark threatened species day was not actually finalised and had not been shared with the experts who helped to develop it.
Once they had seen it, conservation groups and scientists said the recovery plan released on Thursday contained no meaningful action to address the key threat to the survival of the species: the logging of native forests.
Continue reading...Sightings of birds, which appear to have come from Yucatán in Mexico, reported in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and the Carolinas
Flamingos have been spotted as far north in the US as Ohio and Pennsylvania in recent days, after they were blown off course by the powerful Hurricane Idalia that hit Florida late last month, experts say.
The distinctive birds have been reported in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, also in Texas and further north from their typical habitats, in Kentucky and even Ohio, Jerry Lorenz, the state director of Audubon Florida, told CNN. They were also seen in Franklin county in southern Pennsylvania on Thursday, NPR reported.
Continue reading...Hollow bricks are ‘easy win’ to help several endangered species, say experts and Zac Goldsmith who is tabling amendment
An amendment to make swift bricks mandatory in new housing will be debated in the House of Lords this week in what campaigners call a “golden opportunity” for the government to halt wildlife decline.
The change to the controversial levelling up bill is being tabled by the Conservative peer Zac Goldsmith, who resigned from government over Rishi Sunak’s “apathy” towards environmental issues.
Continue reading...Large-scale study indicates population declines after collation of data from country’s conservation organisations and birdwatchers
A report on India’s bird population has painted a grim picture for many of the country’s species.
The State of India’s Birds (SoIB) report – published on Friday – showed worrisome declines, with 178 species of wild birds identified as needing immediate priority for conservation.
Continue reading...Authorities and neighbors seek culprit after pet bird Pete the peacock found impaled by arrow
A beloved Las Vegas neighborhood peacock has been killed with a hunter’s bow and arrow, and authorities are trying to find who was behind it.
Animal protection services officers are investigating the death of Pete the peacock, a pet that belonged to a resident in a gated neighborhood, the local news outlet KVVU reported on Thursday.
Continue reading...Zambia study finds egg variability and random nest selection by cuckoos helps fork-tailed drongos rumble impostors
Cuckoos might be the ultimate avian con artists, laying lookalike eggs in the nests of other birds to avoid raising their own young, but researchers say at least one potential victim is remarkably good at rumbling the fraud.
Scientists studying the African cuckoo have revealed that while the birds are able to produce almost identical-looking eggs to those of the fork-tailed drongo, the latter is likely to reject an impostor egg about 94% of the time.
Continue reading...Project close to bird sanctuaries in Outer Hebrides gets go-ahead after no objections from Scotland’s environment agencies
Plans to build a spaceport on the small Hebridean island of North Uist, close to heavily protected bird sanctuaries, have been given the green light despite significant local opposition.
The proposed spaceport at Scolpaig Farm, on the north-west coast of the island in the Outer Hebrides, will host up to 10 launches a year, firing small sub-orbital rockets out over the Atlantic.
Continue reading...A species almost wiped out by tree snakes is being returned to the wild and, eventually, to its Pacific island home
As arks go, the shipping container that has been placed inside Sedgwick County Zoo, in Wichita, Kansas, looks an unlikely vehicle for saving species.
Nevertheless, work there is expected to play a key role in undoing one of the world’s worst conservation disasters: the accidental introduction of brown tree snakes to the Pacific island of Guam. The snakes’ arrival, at the end of the second world war, eventually wiped out huge numbers of indigenous birds, mammals, and lizards including the Guam kingfisher, the Guam rail, and the Guam flycatcher.
Continue reading...Virus has spread around the world, with 200,000 wild birds dead in Peru alone and concerns Australia could be next
Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica.
Continue reading...Dutch study identifies several examples of corvids’ ‘amazing’ ability to adapt to the urban environment
Birds have never shied away from turning human rubbish into nesting materials, but even experts in the field have raised an eyebrow at the latest handiwork to emerge from urban crows and magpies.
Nests recovered from trees in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium were found to be constructed almost entirely from strips of long metal spikes that are often attached to buildings to deter birds from setting up home on the structures.
Continue reading...Calls grow for legislation requiring developers to include hollow bricks for endangered nesting species
Conservative MPs are joining calls for a new law to guarantee swift bricks in every new home to help the rapidly declining bird and other endangered roof-nesting species.
Pressure is growing to amend the levelling up bill so that developers are required to include a hollow brick for nesting birds in all new housing, with MPs to debate the issue in parliament on 10 July.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ecologists say there are early signs that the population is recovering in remote forests
It is a discotheque for Britain’s biggest type of grouse. Before dawn, male capercaillie will begin their courtship rituals, their black tail feathers erect and fanning out, chests puffed out, their heads thrust high into the cold spring air.
Their dancefloors are forest clearings in the Highlands which echo the males’ wheezing, popping and clattering mating calls. Often perched in surrounding pine trees, hens will carefully watch as their potential mates compete to win their affection.
Continue reading...Environment minister says redesign would ‘avoid most adverse impacts’ on Gouldian finch, while critics point to Australia’s ‘terrible record on extinctions’
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has approved habitat clearing for a defence housing development in Darwin despite acknowledging there is a significant risk for what has been described as one of Australia’s most beautiful endangered birds.
Plibersek had been asked last year to reconsider the development in savanna woodlands at Lee Point after more than 100 endangered Gouldian finches were spotted in bushland marked for imminent clearing.
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