This week in birds - #621

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

This striking bird is the Phainopepla and it is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is a bird of the desert riparian scrub and high elevation oak woodlands and canyons. I have seen it on trips to West Texas and New Mexico and I can attest that it is just as handsome in the feather as it is in this picture.

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The arrival of La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean could have been expected to lower the planet's average temperature but, in fact, last month was the hottest January on record.

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The heat is even affecting the Greenland ice sheet, causing it to crack more rapidly than ever.

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The new administration's freeze on foreign aid threatens to hamper Brazil's efforts to fight deforestation.

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The recent flurry of executive orders has disrupted the work of scientists studying environmental health. The environmental justice movement is gathering its resources and making plans to fight back against the attacks by the administration. 

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The West Coast fires are in some instances fed by the actions of humans. Here are some steps that could be taken to reduce the risk.

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Meanwhile, the water the administration ordered released from two dams in California's Central Valley was an entirely political action which had no effect on the fires. And that water will now not be available to help fight any fires that come later in the year.

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RSPB Geltsdale in the north Pennines of England is now the country's largest bird sanctuary. 

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Spotted hyenas are returning to Egypt after vanishing from the area 5,000 years ago.

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Neonicotinoid pesticides continue to be a threat to birds.

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The annual Great Backyard Bird Count will take place next weekend, February 14-17. Will you be a part of it? 

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As the climate warms, urban conditions become more friendly for rats and their numbers are soaring. 

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The Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring Program is providing important information necessary for the conservation of those wetlands.

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A California man who had had to evacuate because of the wildfires returned home to find a 500 pound black bear had taken refuge under his house. The bear was safely lured out, captured, and relocated to the Angeles National Forest. 

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In New Zealand, a mountain called Taranaki has been given legal personhood status as a way of protecting it.

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USAID is an agency that supports efforts to reduce wildlife trafficking, deforestation, and other threats to the world's environment so, of course, the new administration wants to shut it down. 

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The Archipelago of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) off the coast of Canada has participated in Christmas Bird Counts since 1982.

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What is killing the great white sharks? Canadian and American scientists are trying to solve the mystery.

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North Atlantic right whale numbers are declining and the situation is being made worse by their entanglement in fishing gear. A federal court has just restored protections for the species.

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What is the source of the mysterious lights that appear around Summerville, South Carolina, a town northwest of Charleston? A seismologist thinks they may be related to low-level seismic activity.

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Remember Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo? Has her popularity helped to improve the situation for wild pygmy hippos?

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Margaret Renkl urges us to rethink our relationship to the natural world and learn to coexist peacefully with it.