The NY Times reports on a study comparing bird nesting behaviors  of 202 bird species in the Sierra Nevada mountains today with what they did 100 years ago. They found:

Of 32,000 birds recorded in California mountain ranges in the old and new surveys — from thumb-sized Calliope hummingbirds to the spectacular pileated woodpecker — Dr. Tingley and his colleagues discovered that most species now nest about a week earlier than they did 70 to 100 years ago.

Ecologists generally believe that birds adapt to rising temperatures by moving to higher elevations or heading north. They shift their nesting time for a different reason: to sync with food availability, like an early appearance of plump caterpillars or swarms of insects.

The new study offers a plausible explanation. If the birds lay their eggs earlier, they can stay in their centuries-old range, with no need to migrate to higher altitudes.

Read…

This video is about kingfishers, both male and female.

August presses towards September with its usual quiet birding as the post breeding birds moult and hide out of sight and generally lay quiet. The garden is often full of squeaky youngsters including great tits, coal tits, blue tits and long-tailed tits and are joined by the occasional young robin or blackbird. The skies seem strangely empty after the last screaming swift was seen over the village on the 11th August.

Scruffy young robin typical visitor at this time of year

This is the best time to pick out swallows and house martins all around the village but only as stray birds head inexorably south to their wintering grounds in Africa. There is still a chance to see swallows and house martins locally with Wong farm and the Around the Wong walk being good for swallows filling the wires with waiting birds. This weekend a trip to…

This video says about itself:

The Lion Chaser: The Invention That Changed Farming in Kenya | BBC Innovators | Earth Unplugged

22 August 2018

Richard Turere was just 11 when he came up with a way of stopping lions from killing his cows and goats. His Lion Lights became a global success and this young Masaai boy became an African superstar.

But what happened when the spotlight disappeared? We returned to Kenya to find out what happened to the child prodigy.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

In a perfect dovetail with yesterday’s nod to one science writer, today we nod to the contributions of ancestral ways in helping scientists better understand the life cycles of forests. Thanks to Richard Schiffman for this interview:

Lessons Learned from Centuries of Indigenous Forest Management

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, botanist Charles M. Peters discusses how, in an era of runaway destruction of tropical forests, the centuries-old ecological understanding of indigenous woodland residents can help point the way to the restoration of damaged rainforests.

Over centuries, even millennia, indigenous communities have developed interdependent systems of agriculture and forestry that are uniquely suited to the ecological requirements of the land they inhabit. Yet even today, says Charles M. Peters, the Curator of Botany at the New York Botanical Gardens, that skill and knowledge often remain unacknowledged, with some government officials and conservationists arguing that indigenous communities…

The Bureau of Land Management doesn’t have a Director or an Acting Director.  Brian Steed is the Deputy Director, Policy & Programs, but he is “Exercising Authority of the Director.”  There are 8 “Acting” Directors under him.

Source:  BLM

DEPUTY DIRECTOR, POLICY & PROGRAMS

From the New York Times,
Designing the Death of a Plastic
by Xiaozhi Lim, August 6, 2018

Decades ago, synthetic polymers became popular because they were cheap and durable—Greek for “many parts,” because they are long chains of many identical molecules — polymers were not designed to disintegrate or disappear. On the contrary, they were meant to last as long as possible once they began replacing metals and glass in long-lasting things like automobiles and airplanes..

Now, scientists are creating material that self-destructs or breaks down for reuse on command.

So, here we are, with literally billions of tons of plastic waste, filling up landfills, strewn all over the environment, floating in great mats in the ocean. Some estimates show that a mere 10% of all plastics are recycled every year.

Many places are trying to ban single-use plastics, but much more needs to be done. Happily, scientists who…