This week in birds - #693

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Blue-capped Hummingbird, a resident of the forests of the Mexican highlands. This stunning little bird, also known as the Oaxaca Hummingbird, is seriously endangered and its population is decreasing. It is estimated that there may be less than 1,700 left in the wild. As is true of so many of the birds of Central and South America, the chief threat to the species is habitat loss due to deforestation. Conservation organizations are working to protect its habitat and help to ensure its continued survival.

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Thursday mornings at the Morrell Nature Sanctuary in British Columbia find volunteers removing nonnative plants that threaten that ecosystem. 

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In this political season, toxic waste that is bubbling up in Ohio has become an issue in the gubernatorial race.

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There are more than 1,500 kinds of bat spread across every continent except Antarctica but where did the species originate?

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Protecting habitats is the key to saving species such as endangered sharks and rays.

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This is the Leopardus tilcayo, a three-pound wildcat found in the cloud forests of the Andes Mountains in Bolivia. It is the first new feline species to be discovered in a century.

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You can track the migration of Pacific Northwest monarch butterflies on a new app.

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Two new stick insect species have been discovered in Australia.

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The current administration in Washington is making it easier to kill endangered wildlife.

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On a Mexican island, pygmy raccoons are learning to make toys and to sip margaritas!

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China's electric grid is emitting a super-pollutant that is cooking the planet.

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In a first, sea turtles have been spotted nesting on the U.S. West Coast. It may be thanks to the super El Niño forming in the Pacific.

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In northern Iran, the conservation effort to save the Caspian red deer, or maral, continues in spite of the war.

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An Aztec Codex, one of the most prized visual accounts of Aztec history, has been returned to Mexico City on loan from France and will be on display there for three months.

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Humans have breached seven of the nine "planetary boundaries" necessary for life to flourish on our planet.

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This little cutie is the Karure, or Black Robin, a critically endangered species found only on the remote Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand. It is that country's 2026 Bird of the Year.

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And finally, here are fifteen wonderful photographs of Kenya's wildlife.

Poetry Sunday: The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur

Searching for a poem to feature this week, this one called out to me as I turned the page. I think it was the image of the Queen Anne's Lace, a plant that I have always loved. It's true that autumn is not as colorful here in southeast Texas as it is in more northern climes but we do have Queen Anne's Lace. All is not lost! 

The Beautiful Changes

by Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water; it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   

In such kind ways,   

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

This week in birds - #692

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

A hummingbird that is about the size of a butterfly is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is the Short-crested Coquette, a bird of the state of Guerrero in Mexico. It is one of the rarest of Mexican hummingbirds. It is estimated that there are less than 1,000 left in the small area that it inhabits and that its population is decreasing. The main threat to its habitat comes from unsustainable logging and agricultural expansion.

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A new species of cat has been discovered in the cloud forests of the Andes in Bolivia. It is smaller than our house cats.

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It turns out that not all "invasive" plants are all bad. Some serve a useful purpose. 

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Three wild dogs in Zambia have made a record-breaking journey of more than 2,500 miles in search of mates.

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It seems that human evolution (which is still ongoing) favors genes linked to red hair and less male-pattern baldness.

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The current iteration of the Environmental Protection Agency, which does not live up to its name, has announced that it is eliminating a rule that limited planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.

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A federal judge has ruled that the administration's plan to halve the workforce of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is illegal.

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A 66-million-year-old feather trapped in dinosaur poop may offer a clue as to how some birds survived extinction.

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Meanwhile, dinosaur footprints discovered in North Dakota might represent the first T. rex trackway that has ever been found.

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Five hundred adult Partula snails are being mailed from the Detroit zoo to Tahiti giving a whole new meaning to the term "snail mail." It's part of an international effort to reestablish wild populations of the snail.

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A new study suggests that some of the fish living in the Great Lakes might be more than four hundred years old.

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A strange object sticking out of a creek in California turned out to be a mastodon tooth.

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Iceland is one of the three countries that still hunts whales but it is currently considering a bill that would ban the practice.

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A tomb discovered this year in Peru contained 38 individuals and a rich trove of funerary goods from the pre-Inca Chimu' civilization of 600 years ago.

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A new map that traces where petrochemical emissions come from shows that just ten percent of facilities produce 53% of the industry's emissions.

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When elephants raid farms they may actually be looking for medicinal plants.

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Tasmanian devils and humans lived alongside each other in northwestern Australia as far back as 45,000 years ago.

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Here are some ways that people of the past used magic to protect their homes.

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Two mountain-dwelling marmots have been discovered living in the San Francisco Bay Area many miles from normal habitat. It's unclear how they got there but there is speculation that they hitched a ride in the engine compartment of an automobile. Regardless of how they got there they were described as "chonky" and very well-fed.

Poetry Sunday: Fall by Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch describes the way that fall goes in some parts of the world.  Around here, the leaves are still green and still hanging onto their limbs. Maybe by December we'll see some change. But already we are seeing some difference in the light and we hope that soon we might see some difference in the temperatures as well. Fall has fallen and change is coming.

Fall

by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season

Changes its tense in the long-haired maples

That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves 
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition 
With the final remaining cardinals) and then 
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last 
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground. 
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees 
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever 
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun 
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance, 
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud 
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything 
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s 
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment 
Pulling out of the station according to schedule, 
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It 
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away 
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet, 
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving 
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us, 
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets. 
And every year there is a brief, startling moment 
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and 
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless 
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: 
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; 
It is the changing light of fall falling on us. 

This week in birds - #691

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is a species that was only discovered in 2017 in the mountains of southwestern Ecuador. It is a member of the hummingbird family, the beautiful Blue-throated Hillstar. Because of the destruction of its habitat and loss of its favored nectaring plants, it is considered to be critically endangered and thought to be decreasing. There may only be around one hundred individuals left in the wild.

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When Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out twenty years ago, he listed buying energy-efficient appliances including lightbulbs as one way to combat climate change. Some thought that was a very paltry suggestion for fighting such a big problem but it turns out that in that as in so many other things, Al Gore was right.

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A federal judge (appointed by Trump) has ruled that Americans have no right to safe drinking water.

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August 2026 tied for the month with the hottest global temperatures on record.

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Trump has ordered a "review" of Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves and Mexican wolves. It is likely that that is a first step in removing those protections.

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Some hunter-gatherers of 25,000 years ago were apparently users of betel nuts which are known for their mind-altering properties.

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This country's symbol, the Bald Eagle, was saved from extinction with the help of Canada.

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Toxic dust and PTSD may be accelerating brain aging among 9/11 first responders.

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The state of Illinois now classifies plastic pellets as a pollutant.

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The extinct cat that once roamed North America was long thought to be a cheetah, but it turns out that was wrong. It was more closely related to the puma.

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Peruvian archaeologists have discovered ancient tombs from the Chimu kingdom that have not been touched by looters.  

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A study has revealed that almost half of the world's farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year.

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New York City's Mayor Mamdani has released documents that reveal that first responders who rushed to the World Trade Center twenty-five years ago were likely exposed to dangerous toxins.  

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Hawaii has often dodged the path of hurricanes but not this summer.

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How did vertebrates first develop eyes?

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It seems that the smallest planet in our solar system, Mercury, is getting even smaller. 

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A gene that helped bowhead whales adapt to frigid Arctic waters may also be a key to their extraordinary longevity.

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As important as it is to save the whales, it may be just as important to save the microbes.

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Birds are migrating, mostly by night. Help them by turning off outside lights.

Remembering...

On September 11, 2001, at 7:00 a.m., I went to my job as a supervisor of twelve social caseworkers and six secretaries at the Texas Department of Human Resources. About fifty minutes later, one of my caseworkers came running down the hall to my office, in tears, telling me we had been attacked. At first I couldn't make sense of what she was saying. She had had her radio on in her office and had heard the awful news from New York. 

When I finally could understand what she was telling me, I turned on my own radio and Bob Edwards on the NPR station that I routinely listened to delivered the news, haltingly, in a voice that told me he could hardly believe what he was saying. Two planes had been commandeered by members of al-Qaeda, a global Islamist terrorist network, and had been flown into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York. We were indeed under attack. 

Soon the news came that the attackers had also struck Washington where the Pentagon was hit. The bad news just kept coming as we learned that another plane headed for Washington had crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In that case, we later learned the passengers on the plane had realized what was happening and had fought back. That plane, it is believed, had been headed toward the U.S. Capitol or the White House but the bravery of ordinary citizens prevented it from completing its mission. 

Were there other attack planes headed toward other cities? My thoughts, of course, turned to Houston. Would we be attacked? Did I need to go and pick up my children to have them with me? I called my husband, the newspaper editor, who I knew would still be asleep after working the night before on the day's paper. He would now have perhaps the biggest story of his career to edit.

On December 8, 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt had gone before Congress to request a formal declaration of war against Japan. In that speech, he had described December 7 as "a day that will live in infamy." The statements after September 11, 2001 were perhaps not as eloquent but no less heartfelt. 

As long as this nation endures September 11, 2001 will be another day that lives in infamy in its history. Twenty-five years later we remember those who died that day. Let us strive to honor them by doing our civic duty to try to make this country a nation that lives up to the ideals expressed in its founding documents and is truly worthy of their sacrifice.

Poetry Sunday: Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare

Yes, I know I've featured this poem before. It is one of my favorite Shakespeare sonnets, so here it is again. After all, it is that time of year when we begin to behold some yellow leaves, at least in some parts of the world. Here near the Gulf Coast they are still mostly green and will remain so. But I do remember autumn and those yellow leaves, one of my favorite times of year.

  
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.