ReportWire

Tag: Songbirds

  • Ditch the chatbots and take your AI nature apps on a birdwatching hike

    [ad_1]

    I didn’t notice the scarlet tanager until the alert appeared on my phone: “Merlin heard a new bird!”

    Despite its brilliant plumage — jet-black wings on a crimson body — the songbird can be a hard one to spot in a forest because it prefers to stay high in the canopy. It sounds a little like a robin to an untrained ear.

    But the free Merlin Bird ID app detected a scarlet tanager was likely nearby by using artificial intelligence to analyze my phone’s live sound recording. I paused my hike, quietly scanned the treetops, saw the bird as it kept singing and clicked a button to add the species to my growing “life list” of bird sightings. Digital confetti dropped on my screen.

    Like a real-world version of Pokémon Go, a gotta-catch-’em-all drive to add to my Merlin list has helped me find a great kiskadee in Mexico and a rusty-cheeked scimitar-babbler in the Himalayas. But sometimes the greatest revelations are close to home, as more AI nature app users are starting to discover.

    “Our stereotypical demographic five years ago would have been retired people and already-avid birders,” said the Merlin app’s manager, Drew Weber, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Now we’re seeing a lot of 20-and-30-year-olds posting stuff on their TikTok or Instagram.”

    “Am I a bird person now? Am I a bird person now?” exclaims one incredulous TikTok user whose Merlin app detected a tufted titmouse, a cardinal and a Carolina wren within five seconds of her switching on the app.

    Another video shows Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold gushing about the technology.

    “That was a northern mockingbird,” says a smirking Darnold, then 27 and now 28, holding his phone up high while sitting in an outdoor lounge chair.

    The app isn’t always perfect, and mockingbirds — because they mimic other bird sounds — can sometimes confuse the AI. Was that really a great horned owl that flew over your home and hooted while you left the app on record by the window screen? Maybe, maybe not.

    “Low-frequency sounds can be challenging because there’s other low frequencies, like cars driving past, that can trick it,” Weber said.

    Built-in computer vision technology on newer iPhones and Android devices makes it easier to identify plants and other creatures without having to download an app. Simply look at the flower you just photographed and — on iPhones — a leaf icon appears that, when clicked, can suggest the species.

    But their AI accuracy isn’t always the best for more obscure fauna and insects — and they are missing the immersive community and citizen science experience that free apps like Merlin and the image-based iNaturalist offer.

    Every observation submitted to iNaturalist, run by a nonprofit, and Cornell’s Merlin is potentially helping with conservation research as animal extinctions and biodiversity loss accelerate around the world.

    iNaturalist’s executive director, Scott Loarie, sees someone’s urge to identify a backyard plant as just the start of their engagement with the app.

    “Our strategy is really building this community of really passionate, engaged nature stewards who are not only learning and sharing knowledge about nature, but they’re actually huge engines for creating biodiversity data and conservation action,” Loarie said.

    Submit an incorrect ID suggested by iNaturalist’s AI and someone with real expertise will often politely correct you. Once there’s enough consensus, you’ll be notified that your observation has made it to “research grade.”

    On the search for huckleberry, a favorite of jam makers and grizzly bears, I kept iNaturalist handy on an August hike through the Wyoming wilderness.

    And while I had a hard time finding a huckleberry bush, iNaturalist helped me discover other fruits: a type of serviceberry known as the saskatoon; the big-leafed, raspberry-like thimbleberry and the vibrant orange berries of the Greene’s mountain-ash, a type of rowan. After cross-checking many other resources, I tasted all three. The first two were sweet, the last bitter and disgusting.

    “You should never trust any sort of automatic ID or a stranger on the internet for something as important as edible plants,” Loarie said. “So, I definitely don’t want to endorse that. But I’d certainly endorse getting to know plants and animals.”

    iNaturalist’s executive director, Scott Loarie, sees someone’s urge to identify a backyard plant as just the start of their engagement with the app. The nonprofit also owns a sibling app, Seek, that is kid-friendly and less complicated.

    Elsewhere, I’ve found it particularly helpful in identifying things to avoid – poison ivy, poison oak, disease-carrying ticks – and things to destroy, like a nymph of the invasive spotted lanternfly that’s now infesting at least 19 U.S. states.

    ————-

    Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How do animals react during a total solar eclipse? Scientists plan to find out

    How do animals react during a total solar eclipse? Scientists plan to find out

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — When a total solar eclipse transforms day into night, will tortoises start acting romantic? Will giraffes gallop? Will apes sing odd notes?

    Researchers will be standing by to observe how animals’ routines at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas are disrupted when skies dim on April 8. They previously detected other strange animal behaviors in 2017 at a South Carolina zoo that was in the path of total darkness.

    “To our astonishment, most of the animals did surprising things,” said Adam Hartstone-Rose, a North Carolina State University researcher who led the observations published in the journal Animals.

    While there are many individual sightings of critters behaving bizarrely during historic eclipses, only in recent years have scientists started to rigorously study the altered behaviors of wild, domestic and zoo animals.

    Seven years ago, Galapagos tortoises at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, “that generally do absolutely nothing all day … during the peak of the eclipse, they all started breeding,” said Hartstone-Rose. The cause of the behavior is still unclear.

    A mated pair of Siamangs, gibbons that usually call to each other in the morning, sang unusual tunes during the afternoon eclipse. A few male giraffes began to gallop in “apparent anxiety.” The flamingos huddled around their juveniles.

    Researchers say that many animals display behaviors connected with an early dusk.

    In April, Hartstone-Rose’s team plans to study similar species in Texas to see if the behaviors they witnessed before in South Carolina point to larger patterns.

    Several other zoos along the path are also inviting visitors to help track animals, including zoos in Little Rock, Arkansas; Toledo, Ohio; and Indianapolis.

    This year’s full solar eclipse in North America crisscrosses a different route than in 2017 and occurs in a different season, giving researchers and citizen scientists opportunities to observe new habits.

    “It’s really high stakes. We have a really short period to observe them and we can’t repeat the experiment,” said Jennifer Tsuruda, a University of Tennessee entomologist who observed honeybee colonies during the 2017 eclipse.

    The honeybees that Tsuruda studied decreased foraging during the eclipse, as they usually would at night, except for those from the hungriest hives.

    “During a solar eclipse, there’s a conflict between their internal rhythms and external environment,” said University of Alberta’s Olav Rueppell, adding that bees rely on polarized light from the sun to navigate.

    Nate Bickford, an animal researcher at Oregon Institute of Technology, said that “solar eclipses actually mimic short, fast-moving storms,” when skies darken and many animals take shelter.

    After the 2017 eclipse, he analyzed data from tracking devices previously placed on wild species to study habitat use. Flying bald eagles change the speed and direction they’re moving during an eclipse, he said. So do feral horses, “probably taking cover, responding to the possibility of a storm out on the open plains.”

    The last full U.S. solar eclipse to span coast to coast happened in late summer, in August. The upcoming eclipse in April gives researchers an opportunity to ask new questions including about potential impacts on spring migration.

    Most songbird species migrate at night. “When there are night-like conditions during the eclipse, will birds think it’s time to migrate and take flight?” said Andrew Farnsworth of Cornell University.

    His team plans to test this by analyzing weather radar data – which also detects the presence of flying birds, bats and insects – to see if more birds take wing during the eclipse.

    As for indoor pets, they may react as much to what their owners are doing – whether they’re excited or nonchalant about the eclipse – as to any changes in the sky, said University of Arkansas animal researcher Raffaela Lesch.

    “Dogs and cats pay a lot of attention to us, in addition to their internal clocks,” she said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nearly half of the world’s migratory species are in decline, UN report says

    Nearly half of the world’s migratory species are in decline, UN report says

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Nearly half of the world’s migratory species are in decline, according to a new United Nations report released Monday.

    Many songbirds, sea turtles, whales, sharks and other migratory animals move to different environments with changing seasons and are imperiled by habitat loss, illegal hunting and fishing, pollution and climate change.

    About 44% of migratory species worldwide are declining in population, the report found. More than a fifth of the nearly 1,200 species monitored by the U.N. are threatened with extinction.

    “These are species that move around the globe. They move to feed and breed and also need stopover sites along the way,” said Kelly Malsch, lead author of the report released at a U.N. wildlife conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

    Habitat loss or other threats at any point in their journey can lead to dwindling populations.

    “Migration is essential for some species. If you cut the migration, you’re going to kill the species,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not involved in the report.

    The report relied on existing data, including information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, which tracks whether a species is endangered.

    Participants of the U.N. meeting plan to evaluate proposals for conservation measures and also whether to formally list several new species of concern.

    “One country alone cannot save any of these species,” said Susan Lieberman, vice president for international policy at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society.

    At the meeting, eight governments from South America are expected to jointly propose adding two species of declining Amazon catfish to the U.N. treaty’s list of migratory species of concern, she said.

    The Amazon River basin is world’s largest freshwater system. “If the Amazon is intact, the catfish will thrive — it’s about protecting the habitat,” Lieberman said.

    In 2022, governments pledged to protect 30% of the planet’s land and water resources for conservation at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Ornithological society to rename dozens of birds — and stop naming them after people

    Ornithological society to rename dozens of birds — and stop naming them after people

    [ad_1]

    Birds in North America will no longer be named after people, the American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday.

    Next year, the organization will begin to rename around 80 species found in the U.S. and Canada.

    “There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” the organization’s president, Colleen Handel, said in a statement. “Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely.”

    Rather than review each bird named after a person individually, all such birds will be renamed, the organization announced.

    Birds that will be renamed include those currently called Wilson’s warbler and Wilson’s snipe, both named after the 19th century naturalist Alexander Wilson. Audubon’s shearwater, a seabird named for John James Audubon, also will get a new name.

    In 2020, the organization renamed a bird once referring to a Confederate Army general, John P. McCown, as the thick-billed longspur.

    “I’m really happy and excited about the announcement,” said Emily Williams, an ornithologist at Georgetown University who was not involved in the decision.

    She said heated discussions over bird names have been happening within birdwatching communities for the past several years.

    “Naming birds based on habitat or appearance is one of the least problematic approaches,” she said.

    Earlier this year, the National Audubon Society announced that it would retain its name, even as critics and some voices within the organization have argued that it should dump the association with a man, John James Audubon, whose family owned slaves.

    “The name has come to represent so much more than the work of one person,” Susan Bell, chair of the National Audubon Society’s Board of Directors, told Audubon magazine in March, adding, “We must reckon with the racist legacy of John James Audubon.”

    A 2020 encounter in New York’s Central Park served as a public wake-up call about the discrimination that Black people sometimes face when trying to enjoy the outdoors.

    Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher, was looking for birds when he asked a white woman, Amy Cooper, to follow local rules and leash her dog. Cooper called 911 and was later charged with filing a false police report, though the charges were later dropped.

    Soon after, a collective of birdwatchers organized the first Black Birders Week to increase the visibility of Black nature lovers and scientists.

    And a group called Bird Names for Birds sent a petition to the ornithological society urging it to “outline a plan to change harmful common names” of birds.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Endangered hooded vulture escapes from Bay Area zoo

    Endangered hooded vulture escapes from Bay Area zoo

    [ad_1]

    Officials were working Thursday to capture an endangered hooded vulture that escaped from a zoo aviary in the San Francisco Bay Area that was destroyed after a massive tree fell on it during a storm

    OAKLAND, Calif. — An endangered hooded vulture escaped from a zoo aviary in the San Francisco Bay Area that was destroyed after a massive tree fell on it during a storm. But the bird has remained on zoo grounds, and officials were working Thursday to entice it back.

    The male hooded vulture and five other exotic birds, including two pied crows and three superb starlings, flew out from the aviary at the Oakland Zoo on Tuesday amid a wind-packed storm that pummeled the Bay Area, zoo spokeswoman Erin Dogan said.

    But the birds stayed on zoo grounds, and a team of at least 12 zoo workers armed with binoculars, nets, and crates has already recovered the three starlings, Dogan said.

    “They are choosing to stay near the zoo and near the aviary because it seems that’s where they feel safe,” she said.

    The team has been working since Tuesday to entice the vulture with dead rats and the crows with mealworms to trap them and bring them back to safety, she said.

    All the birds hatched in captivity, and it’s not clear if they would know how to survive outside the zoo, Dogan said.

    “These are all birds that were raised in human care, so they haven’t had to fend for themselves,” she said.

    None of these birds are birds of prey, and they are not a threat to other animals or people, Dogan said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Gear, goods to celebrate birds and a big global count

    Gear, goods to celebrate birds and a big global count

    [ad_1]

    If you’re planning to take part in the four-day, global Great Backyard Bird Count this month (Feb. 17-20), or if you just love birds, there’s plenty of gear and goods to help you enjoy them.

    RECOGNIZING AND RECORDING

    Merlin and eBird are the apps recommended by the count’s organizers to help you identify birds, get acquainted with local species and enter your findings in a database. Others birding apps include iNaturalist, Song Sleuth and others more specific to regions or species, such as Raptor ID.

    You’ll want a field guide, too. Chad Witko, senior coordinator of avian biology for Audubon’s Migratory Bird Initiative, lists some for U.S. bird watching: “There’s the National Audubon Society `Birds of North America,′ `The Sibley Guide to Birds,′ the Peterson Field Guide series, and renowned naturalist and birder Kenn Kaufman’s books.”

    Witko recommends getting guides with paintings as well as photos so you can see more angles and variations of a species.

    Note and sketch your own observations in a pocket-size waterproof notebook, such as those from Rite in the Rain and Field Notes.

    Periodicals like Birds & Blooms and Bird Watcher’s Digest (BWD) offer birding basics.

    Witko also recommends finding a birding mentor. Social media sites often have bird-watching groups where more seasoned birders share their knowledge and promote outings.

    “So many tips, tricks, ID advice and more are passed down through generations of birders,” he says.

    BIRD SPOTTING

    Witko recommends binoculars with a magnification of 8x for beginning birders. That means you’ll see an object 800 meters away as if it were 100 meters away. “They’re the most versatile,” he says.

    Aleta Burchyski, an outdoors writer and birder in Santa Fe, New Mexico, says it’s easy to spend $500 or more on field binoculars, but for casual birdwatching she has a pair of rugged Nocs, which go for $95, and are waterproof and fog-proof. They weigh significantly less than many higher-end binoculars, and the 8x magnification is enough to see feather and beak details.

    Witko also suggests getting a longer strap than the one that comes standard with most binoculars.

    “Buy one that can be extended to wear over the shoulder like a sling, or purchase a harness to keep the weight off your neck,” he says.

    Harnesses can also help steady your focus. You’ll find options from outdoor brands like Nyack Exchange, Trummul and outdoors retailers.

    Nocs makes a photo ring adaptor that attaches to binoculars and aligns your phone lens to them for photos and videos.

    And digiscoping is a trend. You use a spotting scope to line up with your smartphone or camera to zero in and capture images more accurately than if you had just pointed your regular lens at the subject.

    FEEDERS

    Watching birds from your window can yield great results, and different bird feeders are designed to attract different birds.

    “Tube feeders filled with sunflower seeds are great for most backyard birds, as are hopper or tray feeders,” says Witko. “Black oil sunflower seeds are hands-down the best and will attract the most species — chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, jays, doves, sparrows, grosbeaks and finches.

    “I also recommend thistle feeders to attract finches like goldfinches, siskins and redpolls. And suet feeders for woodpeckers, nuthatches and wrens.”

    If your feeder is on a deck or porch, consider “no mess” seed mixes that have no shells.

    Bird Buddy’s AI-equipped feeder alerts you when winged visitors come calling. If you aren’t able to take the photo yourself, it will do that, and also identify the birds and organize the photos into a collection. A solar panel is available to power the gadget. Mount the feeder on a wall or post, and you can add suet balls or water dispensers too.

    Squirrel-proof feeders hang on a branch or mount on a pole. Dunford’s has a metal skirt that drops when a squirrel tries to climb aboard, closing off the seed portals.

    “Always keep feeders far enough from the house so that birds aren’t likely to fly into windows,” says Witko. Also, place feeders in an area that allows birds to hide if they need to, and that lets them see any approaching predators like cats and hawks.

    Cleaning feeders is also critically important, he says.

    BIRDHOUSES

    There are all kinds of birdhouses made of weather-resistant materials and painted in all kinds of designs. If you want to make your own, Duncraft and BestNest are among those with DIY kits, for wrens, bluebirds and purple martins.

    ORNITHOLOGICAL HOME DECOR

    Just want to show your love of our avian friends indoors too?

    From Charley Harper, the artist who was known for modern, graphic illustrations of birds, comes a set of decals that let you create your own migratory flock on a wall. Glassware features cardinals and other wild birds, and there are coasters, doormats and wall art, all at the Charley Harper Art Studio.

    A more low-key flock can be found at West Elm. Mej Mej has a wall decal set showing a dozen watercolored birds; another includes a pair of bluebirds.

    A set of three carved bronze birds perched on wooden columns are at Pottery Barn for a contemporary display on a side table or bookshelf. The retailer also has an organic percale duvet set patterned with colorful birds.

    And side tables at Society 6 have tops featuring depictions of birds from all corners of the skies.

    —-

    New York-based writer Kim Cook covers design and decor topics regularly for The AP. Follow her on Instagram at @kimcookhome.

    —

    For more AP Lifestyles stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/lifestyle.

    —

    CORRECTS: This story was first published on Feb. 15, 2023. It was updated on Feb. 16, 2023, to correct the name of a scientist at Audubon’s Migratory Bird Initiative. He is Chad Witko, not Chad Witco.

    [ad_2]

    Source link