This week in birds - #613

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

I first met the Greater Roadrunner at the Princess Movie Theater of my youth where the cartoon between the Saturday double feature regularly starred the roadrunner outwitting the dastardly but dimwitted coyote. Many years later I finally met the bird itself in a field in Texas. It did not disappoint. The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is currently extending its range from Mexico and the southwestern states into the states farther east. 

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Is our planet finally doomed to be drowned in a sea of plastic? The world's countries seem unable to come to an agreement on curbing plastic pollution. The greatest stumbling block to reaching such an agreement is Saudi Arabia.  

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Meanwhile, the extreme marine heat wave that hit California's coasts ten years ago may, in fact, have been a glimpse of the future.  

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And in a world that is heating up, the permafrost may not be permanent.

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In Canada, the woodland caribou population is threatened by human activities, but an Indigenous group in Quebec is working to protect them and to ensure that they survive into the future.

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How did the bond between dogs and humans come about? Scientists are finding answers to that question in ancient DNA.

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The Hawaiian crow, the Alala, went extinct in the wild decades ago, but now five of the birds have been released on Maui as part of the ongoing attempt to reestablish the bird in its native habitat. It is a second chance for these brainy birds.

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A rare attack by a polar bear in Canada ended with the bear dead and the man who tried to prevent the attack on his wife in the hospital. A neighbor came to the rescue of the man and his wife and shot the bear. It is believed that the aberrant behavior of the bear may have been provoked by changes to the climate.

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The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been protected from drilling for the last four years but with the coming change of administrations in Washington that protection may not continue. 

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In Scotland, the bumblebee population has made a dramatic recovery thanks to a rewilding project.

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An ancient forest in Tasmania teems with an astonishing variety of wildlife.

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The latest fashion trend among orcas in the Puget Sound is dead salmon hats.

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Pufferfish are cute and toxic and, just perhaps, Nature's greatest artist.

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Did hunting by early Americans help lead to the extinction of megafauna?

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The keepers at a bird park in England kept waiting for their "female" King Penguin to lay an egg, but it turns out Maggie the penguin is actually Magnus.