McCreedy

In 59 years of #birdbanding at #PalomarinFieldStation, only 26 #BeltedKingfishers have ever been caught. Therefore, it was a huge surprise to our banders when they caught this #HotBirdInHand at Palomarin on 7/13 + a second one only 3 days later at the nearby Pine Gulch! 🤯📅🌎🦉🧪🌐

How Scientists Started to Decode Birdsong Language is said to make us human. What if birds talk, too?

Scientists have been trying to understand the vocalizations of birds—and discovering that the animals have intellectual abilities far greater than most people had imagined.

In Tucson. I drove through almost 2 hours of steady rain to get here, and to see the drought, and the blasted creosote and wrecked palo verde amidst vast stretches of standing water from this incredibly unlikely storm was breathtaking. I was so lucky to see this today.

A day in the field, training point count protocol followed by recon of Piru Creek sites, the northern peak of Least Bell’s Vireo expansion. There were < than 10 vireo pairs on the Santa Clara River in the 1980s, now there are several hundred. A pale swallowtail on prickly phlox in Piru Canyon.

2025 U.S. State of the Birds Report Addresses Conservation Needs Across Habitats and Species The release of the 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report was announced today at the 90th annual North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The report, produced by ...

“We have clear evidence that conservation works in halting declines,” said Michael J. Parr, President of American Bird Conservancy. “The science is solid on how to reverse the damage done, but to succeed, these issues need to be taken seriously.”

Learn more at abcbirds.org/news/2025-st.... 🐦

Psyched that this is complete and released, with important information on aridland birds in the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico.

I love this, thanks.

It's National Invasive Species Awareness Week!

Did you know that domestic cats are among the world's most harmful invasive species? You can help keep your cat and other animals safe by keeping your #CatsIndoors.
#NISAW

I want to be clear: the private sector, as it presently exists, *cannot* quickly spin up to fill any void left by substantial dismantling of #NOAA. Full stop. If that were to happen, people would die in extreme weather events who would not have otherwise, & economy would suffer.

The deep pool of black light that is a Coastal California Gnatcatcher’s eye. These are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

We found this buddy while exploring Least Bell’s Vireo habitats and damage from an invasive beetle in the Tijuana River Valley last week.

A lovely California Towhee from Amy Tan. I’ve spent several years working on an endemic Mojave Desert population of them in the Argus Range. I love unique takes on species we think of as ‘common’!

Thank you @abcbirds.bsky.social for sharing this with me ❤️

[projects] Science Informing Management Jump to navigation

Thanks to @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social for highlighting our research on habitat changes caused by wildfires in the #MojaveNationalPreserve! This study compiles vital data to support bird conservation & guide fire management strategies. 🐦🌵🔥
🔗 https://buff.ly/4hwFMt0

Please forgive crosspost of this question on Threads, not sure which platform is best. Can you link me to this NWS precip map site? I used to use the Precipitation Analysis page, which then got folded into an NOAA National Water Prediction Service GIS interface that is a bit clunky. Thank you

A screenshot of Maggie Smith's "Good Bones" Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Poetry Foundation not fucking around with today's poem of the day
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/...

They Built a Home to Fend Off California Wildfires. But Will They Stay? The Vogts designed their Malibu house to withstand disasters. But they were only beginning to learn the mental toll the fires would take on them.

Fascinating

They Built Their Fireproof Dream Home. Even if It Lasted, Would They? www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/u...

Both Things Can Be True, Says Man Lying Twice

The whole thing is stacked against people, and expressions of people, to save a couple people’s bottom lines, or to get someone a little promotion for selling us out.

It reminds me of the robot recordings that play after you call a business on the phone, asking us to rate the person’s performance. They never ask us to rate the robot’s performance, just like there is never retraction or admission when AI sucks.

Damn, all of this AI crap they keep forcing on us. With your writing, your music, your art, you are communicating yourself. Why would anyone abdicate that to a machine, other than tacitly admitting that you don’t trust yourself?

Weighing in at 2-3g, the Volcano Hummingbird is one of the smallest birds in the world.

Pros: Its short bill can only feed from flowers too small for many other species.
Cons: It takes about 2,700 flowers to meet daily metabolic needs.

Learn more at BOW!
buff.ly/4ffYtPQ

California Wildlife Conservation Board Awards Amargosa Restoration Projects In a remarkable year for the Amargosa River and Basin, the California Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has awarded two critical grants to support the

Thank you California #WildlifeConservationBoard The WCB has awarded funding to @abcbirds.bsky.social and several partners, including #AmargosaConservancy, UC Davis, and #CaliforniaBotanicGarden for set of restoration actions within the Amargosa Basin. Read more at abcbirds.org/amargosa-res...