Its written by a Dr Roger Lederer  and published by Chartwell Books  2011

It's a lovely book to dip into at random, and discover all sorts of wonderful things you may never have known about birds e.g.  in the 18th century, eagles flesh was used to treat gout while the beak of an osprey was used to ease toothache by picking at the gums with it until the gums bled.

Or you could discover that  in Old Norse the word for owl is ugla

Or that a flock of vultures is called a venue if its on the ground or a kettle if they are rising and falling in the air currents.

Or even that In Bangladesh, people collect eggs of the Watercock and put them in a half coconut shell. They tie this against their body and carry it with them until the eggs hatch three weeks later. The birds are prized for food and fighting.

Who knew??????????

Five immature rockhoppers washed ashore on the beaches around Denmark over a period of  several weeks in January; previous to this, only one or two had been seen over a ten year period.

The penguins, around 50cms high with a black and yellow drooping crest over their eyes, are normally found over 4000 kms from Australian shores, at Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean.

All five birds were in good physical condition when they were found indicating they were not ill, and authorities believe it is most likely their inexperience in negotiating the strong southern ocean currents in search of food,  led them to stray so far from their home.

A representative from the Denmark Vet Surgery says the birds were captured and confined for their own safety.

"The birds had to come ashore because they were moulting and at that stage, their new feathers haven't become waterproof and they can't swim," she said. "They need to find somewhere nice and sheltered where they can wait for the feathers to grow, but they are very vulnerable to dogs or foxes or even cats during that time and that's why we decided to confine them."

Photo courtesy of Denmark Vet Clinic

Conservation groups have speculated that food supplies in the southern oceans may be scarce this year due to a rise in ocean temperatures or a change in acidity levels but admit, without further research, it's hard to find a definite answer for the increase in landings.

Dr Nick Dunlop from the Conservation Council of WA told ABC Radio the possibility of diminished food supplies was a worrying development.

"We do know it's got to do with changes in ocean climate at the time which normally affects food supply, their fish move away or their fish abundance declines," he said."There's a consequence in change in sea temperature or change in current flows.

"Normally the climate-induced effects are much greater than the fishery ones but they may actually work in concert in some situations

All five penguins have been released back into the ocean  and authorities are confident they will be able to navigate their way home.

Communities in the region have been asked to keep watch for any further beachings and notify authorities at once of any unusual sightings.

Researchers within Deakin’s Centre for Integrative Ecology Professor John Endler and Dr Laura Kelley, with significant support from James Cook University, have been studying the male great bowerbird’s use of visual illusions in constructing bowers. They have found that the quality of the visual illusion created within the bower promotes mating success. The results of their research are published in the latest issue of Science.

“Last year we revealed that male great bowerbirds use an optical illusion known as forced perspective to construct their bowers. The scene created only works from the female’s viewing angle and could trick the female by altering her perception of the male’s display. We have now found that the quality of the illusion ultimately predicts mating success,” Professor Endler said.

The great bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis) is found in northern parts of Australia and, as with all bowerbirds, is well-known for the large and elaborately decorated bowers the males construct to attract females.

The bird’s bower consists of a 60 centimetre long tunnel-like avenue made of sticks that leads to a court area decorated with stones, shells and bones. As part of the mating ritual, the female stands in the avenue to watch the male put on a show in the court; he flashes his purple crest and waves coloured objects to entice the female to mate.

“The forced perspective within the bower is generated by a gradient of court object sizes where smaller objects are placed closer to where the female is watching within the avenue and larger objects are further away, all within her field of view. This gives the illusion that the court is smaller than it is and anything displayed within the court is larger than it really is,” Professor Endler explained.

“We know that this doesn’t happen by chance. When we improved or reversed the size order of the objects in the courts, the males put them back within three days. Bower geometry is obviously very important to them.”

The latest findings show that the males that produce the best perspective gradients are more successful at gaining mates.

“We found that there is a lot of variation in how well the males can construct the ideal gradient,” Dr Kelley said.

“The best quality bowers had a steeper gradient where the size of the objects increased more rapidly with distance and had a more regular, smoother pattern. The best predictor of mating success though is when we consider how the gradient looks from the female’s point of view: males that construct courts that look evenly patterned to the female within the bower attract the most mates.

“Forced perspective may affect how the female perceives the male’s display in a number of ways. The regular pattern of the court may make the male’s crest and coloured objects more conspicuous, or the perspective and other illusion effects may make them appear larger. Further illusions may also be produced when the male waves his display objects. This is a clever act of deception by the male bowerbird.”

John Endler and Laura Kelley speak about the visual illusions created by male great bowerbirds   http://youtu.be/eiwrAseBNcU

The researchers are now analysing video footage of the males building their bowers to determine how they construct the gradients.

“We want to figure out exactly what males do after we have reversed or removed the gradients,” Professor Endler said.

“There could be a number of ways they are constructing the gradients. Do they have a direct sense of perspective and put the objects back in the right order straight away; do they put them back at random and go inside the avenue and look and move objects by trial and error; or is there a simple rule of thumb in placing small things closer, big things further out and everything else in between?”

Source: Deakin University

Kelly Ryan

TENNIS fans want Zorro the wedge-tailed eagle let loose to scare pesky seagulls away from the Australian Open.

Zorro and another eagle, Matilda, cleared the MCG of gulls for last year's football finals and his owner says one steely eyed stare from the head of the raptor food chain would do the trick at Melbourne Park.

A huge flock of squawking seagulls interrupted Monday night's match between Lleyton Hewitt and Novak Djokovic.

"They were pooping on people's clothes and food and the health risks associated with that must be considerable," said Peter McClelland, an Australian teacher who lives in Shanghai.

"It was completely distracting for the players with ball kids having to stop and wipe the mess off the court, and it was a distraction to spectators who spent more time looking up than following the game."

"Tennis Australia hasn't approached us … but because we've got the birds on public display anyway, people just presume we are here to keep the gulls away," she said.

Photo: Fiona Hamilton Herald Sun

Comparing microstructures called melanosomes in the fossil to a database of 115 living bird species, the team concluded with 95% certainty the feather was black. That’s not to say that all of it’s feathers were black. It might just as well have had a white body and black wings. Evidence from more complete fossils might give a better picture.

This video from Brown University, academic home of lead author Ryan Carney, suggests the microstructures responsible for black color also made the feathers stronger than other types of feathers, supporting the idea that Archaeopteryx was a true flier and not simply a glider as some have argued.

The report appeared Jan. 24 in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: University of Texas Austin

A full-size, complete first edition of John James Audubon's "The Birds of America" has been sold for $7.9 million at auction in New York to a private American collector, Christie's said.

The four-volume bound set of 435 hand-colored engravings in excellent condition and more than 3 feet in height is considered one of the most prized books of ornithological art ever produced.

Francis Wahlgren, Christie's international head of books and manuscripts, said the $7.9 million sale on Friday was the third-highest price for a printed book at auction.

"This strong result for Audubon's masterpiece confirms its iconic status and now holds the top three auction records for printed books," he added.

Christie's said the book was purchased by William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, the fourth Duke of Portland sometime after 1838.

"Audubon's masterpiece 'The Birds of America' is possibly the highest achievement in ornithological art today," according to Christie's.

Book experts estimate that the entire first edition consisted of just 200 completed copies produced during an 11-year period. Christie's said 120 complete sets are known to exist with 107 in institutions and 13 in private hands

In a paper published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, UNE’s Dr Paul McDonald reports that Noisy Miners (Manorina melanocephala) can discriminate among the calls of individuals – even individuals from a distant colony. This is the first publication to demonstrate such an ability in a cooperative avian species. (http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2011.1118)

“The research reported in the paper shows that miners attend to information encoded in their calls – an ability that could contribute to the complexity of their social organisation,” Dr McDonald said. “Given that Noisy Miners call to solicit aid from others, the ability to differentiate callers may underpin the many social interactions in this species.”

“Miner society is similar to ours in some respects,” he said. “A colony – typically comprising 100 to 120 birds – includes relatives and non-relatives that may all work together cooperatively. With their ability to discriminate among the calls of individuals, it’s possible that they can actually identify individuals within the colony from their calls alone.

“The more we look at them, the more complex their society is. Through research such as this we’re finding out that they have cognitive capabilities that 10 years ago we were attributing only to animals such as primates, marine mammals and elephants.”

As well as demonstrating the birds’ ability to discriminate among individuals’ calls, Dr McDonald’s experiments – using a testing procedure pioneered on humans – have shown that that discrimination is based on frequency patterns within the calls. Together, these findings open the way for further exploration of the intriguing world of Noisy Miner vocal communication. By experimentally manipulating a call’s frequency components, for example, it could be possible to isolate the component that encodes information on individual identity.

“Repetitions of a particular call by a single individual show an extraordinary degree of variation,” Dr McDonald said. “So the call could contain a lot of information in addition to that which signals individual identity.  It’s exciting: this work is opening up a lot of possibilities for further research.”

“I think Noisy Miners are a very much undervalued species in our environment,” he said. “They’re not just those annoying colonists of the backyard; they’re actually doing things that are pretty amazing.”

Source: University of New England

JIUJIANG, Jiangxi – If weather permits, China will launch its first airdrop of food on Tuesday for starving migratory birds that have taken up residence around its largest freshwater lake. 

Around 2 tons of fish and corn will be airdropped to a 133-square-kilometer reserve near drought-hit Poyang Lake, said Zhao Jinsheng, director of the food and resources office of the Jiangxi Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve Authority. 

"If many birds turn out to eat the dropped food, we will arrange the next round of airdrops after Spring Festival," Zhao said, adding that a total of 25 tons of food has been prepared, including 10 tons of fish, 10 tons of grain and 5 tons of corn. Spring Festival falls on Jan 23. 

Zeng Ming, Yangtze program manager at the World Wildlife Fund (China), said it is good to see authorities are working hard to protect birds. 

Poyang Lake is connected to the Yangtze River, the country's longest river, and provides a habitat for half a million migratory birds, such as hooded cranes. Because the fish population in the lake has dwindled due to the drought, birds are finding food scarce. 

Since November, nearly 200,000 migratory birds have gathered around the lake for the winter, about 50,000 more than the average amount in the past decades, according to the statistics from the reserve. 

"More birds have come, but the drought has largely reduced the number of fish and shrimp in the lake, posing a threat to the birds until they leave in March," Zhao said. 

Every year, Zhao's team distributes food manually to birds, but this year they thought it necessary to do an airdrop because the ongoing drought has forced birds to search for food in a wider area around the lake. Only an airdrop can help reach them, Zhao said. 

The Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve Authority also plans to release 165 million newly hatched fish into the lake to boost the food supply for birds. 

The shrinking aquatic population in the lake has also endangered the freshwater finless porpoise, a species unique to the Yangtze River. 

Locally called "river pigs", some finless porpoises have been found starved to death in Poyang Lake, said Wang Kexiong, a professor of the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

Wang said most of the dozens of river pigs he tracks are suffering hunger. 

In addition, "river pigs like to live in deep water, and when the dry season comes, they could dive into mud by mistake, and some will be choked to death", Wang said. 

The Yangtze River has been regularly affected by dry spells since 2000. On Monday, Poyang Lake spanned an area of 230 square kilometers, which is only a fraction of the 4,900 square kilometers it covered at its peak. 

China Daily 

(China Daily 01/17/2012 page7)

The "extra-tropical“ department of the parrot researchers group of the International Ornithological Union (IOU) with Roelant Jonker (City Parrots & CML Leiden University) and Michael Braun (Heidelberg University) organize the global parrot count. The main focus of the study are neozoon parrots, meaning parrots which have been introduced by man to locations they are not native to. Since the 1960s several parrot species have established viable breeding populations especially in the Northern Hemisphere. But also in tropical countries and the Southern Hemisphere non-native parrots have became established as breeding birds. We would like to find out how many species there are and if those populations are of conservation importance. One example are the populations of endangered Mexican yellow-headed amazon (Amazona oratrix) in Germany and the U.S.

The most common species we expected to be the Asian Ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri) and the South American monk parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus). However in recent years many more species have become established. We are looking to cooperate with partners all around the world to make this count a success.

Who can contribute?

Everybody who is interested in the study and who is able to make a parrot roost count in the evening is invited to take part. Therefore it is necessary to know the places where the parrots roost at night. It is important to find that place, the exact roosting trees and a good position for counting them. For scientific reasons we are not only interested in the number of parrots, but also the key factors of the roosting sites like tree species or the habitat structures (trees, forests, buildings, streets etc). It is best to find some birding friends to help, which will not only make the count more accurate but also pleasurable.

How can you contribute?

Roelant Jonker and Michael Braun will coordinate the count. Please contact us by email parrotcount@cityparrots.org before the count takes place, so we can send you tips on how to effectively contribute to the count.

The result of the count can be send to us using this form. Which will allow you to send us all relevent information.

Alternativly you can suply us with your results by filling in this Excel-sheet.

When will this count take place?

The global parrot count will be held in Jaunary & Februari 2012. This is the hight of winter on the northern hemisphere and the time when parrot roost most concentrated.

Ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri) Leiden, The Netherlands

What happens with the results?

We will share our results with the partners involved and publish those results in a scientific magazine. Everyone contributing to the study will be listed with full name and location in the acknowledgement of the publication. If you would prefer to stay anonymous, please let us know in advance.

What consequences does this count have?

As we are parrot researchers, we are basically not interested in how to reduce or kill non-native parrot populations. We would like to study them and get more useful field data to share with colleagues in the field. The results will contribute to parrot conservation. If we continue these surveys for several years we get good and reliable data that show how fast an introduced parrot population may grow and which key factors are needed for successful establishment. We can use these data for re-introduction programs of threatened species which will become a major parrot research field for the future.

Life history data?

If you have any information about the early establishment phase of parrot populations, where they breed and how they develop, please don’t hesitate to share your knowledge with us. This knowledge may be important for future conservation work.

What about counting native parrots?

If you are able to count native parrots in your country or city, you are most welcome. We chose neozoon parrots because they usually live in cities and are well known. Wild native parrots are much harder to study. But if there is any person who would like to join the “world parrot count” please feel free to!

http://cityparrots.org/world-parrot-count/2012/1/6/world-parrot-count-2012.html