A 6 year old male Blue & Gold Macaw was stolen on Friday 21/4/2012 from FORBES PARROT FARM in New South Wales. Police have been notified.
The macaw is microchipped, closed rung and registered with AAR. If anyone has information regarding the safe return of this bird please contact the owners Warrick & Christine Whitney on (02) 68516583 or 0418625001.
Up to 900 tropical bird species could 'go extinct'3.
By Anna-Louise Taylor Reporter, BBC Nature News
The finding is modelled on the effects of a 3.5C Earth surface temperature rise, a Biological Conservation Journal paper shows.
Species may struggle to adapt to habitat loss and extreme weather events, author Cagan Sekercioglu says.
Mountain, coastal, restricted-range, and species unable to get to higher elevations could be the worst affected.
Depending on future habitat loss, each degree of surface warming could affect between 100-500 species, says Mr Sekercioglu, assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah.
"This gives us a clear big picture. The problem is most species in the world are highly sedentary... the public perception is most birds are migratory and so climate change is not a problem for them," he says.
Mr Sekercioglu says tropical mountain species are among the most vulnerable. He says bird species will need to be able to adapt physiologically to changes in temperature and be able to move to higher altitudes if they are to survive.
He says cooler, more humid forests could recede higher up mountains and combined with human settlements at higher altitudes, forest habitat could "get pushed off the mountain".
This would create "an escalator to extinction" he says.
"Coastal species are also vulnerable - as coastal forest can be sensitive to salinity, and these forests can get hit harder by hurricanes and typhoons, and these events are also expected to increase."
Birds in extensive lowland forests with few mountains in places such as the Amazon and Congo basins - may have trouble relocating, while tropical birds in open habitats such as savanna, grasslands, scrub and desert face shrinking habitats.
Tropical birds in arid zones are assumed to be resilient to hot, dry conditions, but they could suffer if water sources dry out.
Mike Crosby, senior conservation officer in Asia at Birdlife International says: "We know that quite a lot of tropical birds are not very good at dispersing so this could be a big issue in the future if the suitable climate moves several hundred kilometres or even tens of kilometres, some of the birds might not be able to move their ranges sufficiently quickly in response to that.
"We might have to take novel conservation measures in the future such as translocation of birds from one site to another."
The study looked at how manakins, of which there are 45 species in the neotropical region, would cope. Results showed that manakins limited to the lowland habitats of the Amazon and Cerrado in Brazil, would be most affected as they could lose up to 80% of their habitat; as many as 20% of the Cerrado manakin species are expected to go extinct.
Cagan Sekercioglu says: "Manakins show the importance of having a wide tropical area of mid-elevation forests, and being able to move to higher elevation forests."
He says while overall "birds are one of the least threatened groups of animals" by climate change, "they are the 'best case' scenario".
"The findings are likely to be much worse for all other groups of animals," he says.
"We need to be planning protected areas with higher elevations in mind and leave breathing room for endangered species in higher elevation areas," says Mr Sekercioglu.
Mr Crosby says: "We've got to prepare ourselves to be measuring temperature in protected areas, and measuring rainfall, and monitoring what's happening to species, so that we can respond in the appropriate way. It's very difficult to predict very precisely what's going to happen."
He adds that visitors to the region could help protect the birds they travel to see.
"People who go bird watching in the tropics can gather very useful data, given that the current data that we have is basically pretty poor in many parts of the world. Amateur bird watchers can really make an important contribution."
Scientists are finding out a little more about the birds and the bees -- and surprisingly, infidelity -- by studying the mating habits of our feathered friends.
In an attempt to figure out what makes birds cheat, evolutionary ecologists at North Carolina State University and Columbia University reviewed over 400 studies about the separation tendencies of more than 200 species of birds from around the world.
Their findings, reported in the science journal PLoS One on Thursday, suggest that birds are more inclined to seek out new partners when climate conditions become unpredictable or variable.
The likely reason? The researchers found that birds, regardless of whether they're male or female, seek out diverse genes for their young when they're uncertain of what the future may bring. Cheating improves a bird's chances of combining their genes with other genes best suited for whatever environment their chicks may be born into.
The flighty findings could provide us with more insight into what makes human beings stray, said Carlos Botero, one of the study's lead researchers.
“Humans have been able to transform the environment to such a level so that basic processes like rainfall and temperature affect us very little,” Botero told Discovery.com. But humans have considerably less control over changes in the stock market or other outside economic forces -- the human equivalent of an unpredictable climate, as Discovery.com points out.
Source: Green on HuffingtonPost.com
Over the past four years, the WPT’s ongoing efforts to stop wild-caught bird trade has led to the confiscation of almost 5000 parrots from illegal trade, with over 2,000 of these rescued birds already released back to the wild! Donations have assisted greatly in aiding this effort.
In 2011 the need for intervention rose dramatically but World Parrot Trust worked hard to:
World Parrot Trust works with a diverse range of species:
Grey Parrots, Red-masked, Orange-fronted, Cactus and Brown-throated Conures, Scarlet, Blue and Yellow and Great Green Macaws, and Yellow-shouldered, Red-lored, Blue-fronted and Vinaceous Amazons.
Regrettably, many more birds will need help in the coming year if they are to be returned safe and free back to the wild.
Donations are an integral part of the ongoing work of the WPT.
Click for more information and to help save more birds in 2012.
Source http://www.parrots.org/flyfree
The African Grey Parrot Project
This project has been created to better the understanding of the ecology and natural productivity of the African Grey Parrot in relation to its exploitation for the pet trade.
PI has committed to provide $10,000 per year for the next three years in support of the
program of research being developed by Dr Stuart Marsden of the Manchester Metropolitan University on this scientifically neglected but economically important bird species. This study will bring new insights into the management and control of trade in the species throughout its range, which is regarded as essential for both conservation and welfare reasons.
Click to donate to the African Grey Parrot Project
Source http://parrotsinternational.org/
Graphics by Tony Sanchez
Scientist Heather Coffin said ‘smell is likely the primary mechanism for kin recognition to avoid inbreeding within the colony’.
Penguins live in colonies made up of thousands of birds and they live in monogamous pairs – making them ideal subjects of this study. Penguins have the ability to find their mate after days of travelling foraging food in the ocean and despite the large community groups.
This is the first study to provide evidence for odour-based kin discrimination in birds. Research on other sea birds has shown that smell helps guide birds to their home territory and helps them forage for food. Other research has shown that birds could use sound and sight to recognize each other, but no other studies have shown that smell might be used in connection with kin recognition.
Researchers took odour samples from glands near the penguin' tails, where an oil that the birds use for preening is secreted. They put the oil on cotton swabs and rubbed the odour inside dog kennels, similar to the enclosures penguins at a zoo use for their nests. They also put the odour on paper coffee filters and placed them under mats inside the kennels.
When the penguins were released to the area containing the kennels, the researchers found that the penguins spent more time in the kennels with familiar odours. The penguins were able to distinguish between the odours of birds they spent time with and the odours of unfamiliar penguins.
The ability of birds to be able to recognise familiar scents and thus be guided to their home territory also has potentional value to naturalists, 'You could imagine that if you were trying to reintroduce birds to an area, you could first treat the area with an odour the birds were familiar with. That would make them more likely to stay'.
Story taken from Futurity, Friday 23 September 2011
http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/birds-may-identify-their-kin-by-smell/
(Photograph Credits: Jim Schulz/Chicago Zoological Society)
Male hummingbird species go beyond the usual avian song-making methods to attract their mates using their own method of sound production. Using the turbulence around their tail feathers when plummeting through the sky, the hummingbird adds a new depth to their conventional songs.
Christopher J. Clark, Damian Elias, and Richard Prum explain, ‘We show that these sounds are produced by air flowing past a feather, causing it to aeroelastically flutter and generate flutter-induced sound. Neighbouring feathers can be aerodynamically coupled and flutter either at the same frequency, resulting in sympathetic vibrations that increase loudness, or at different frequencies, resulting in audible interaction frequencies. Aeroelastic flutter is intrinsic to stiff airfoils such as feathers and thus explains tonal sounds that are common in bird flight. Although aeronautical engineers take extreme precautions to avoid flutter and its catastrophic consequences for aircraft, birds have instead repeatedly evolved novel acoustic communication signals from these incidental vibrations.’
Check out this You Tube clip for further information http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MytPNRW6ugQ
(Story taken from New York Times 8 September 2011)
Research indicates same sex monogamous animals can be just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with members of the opposite sex. This behaviour has become apparent after a study on Zebra Finches.
Julie Elle, University of California Berkley Neuroscience and Psychology researcher, raised some male Zebra Finches without the presence of any females. More than half of the males paired and eventually started practicing normal breeding paired behaviour such as singing and preening each other.
Julie suggests ‘relationships in animals can be more complicated than just a male and a female who meet and reproduce, even in birds’.
There have been other examples of same-sex bonding observed with female gull and albatross pairs that raise their young after brief encounters with males to mate.
Info taken from http://www.earthweek.com/2011/ew110819/ew110819b.html
A pair of Toco Toucan chicks have hatched at Paignton Zoo, Devon, UK. These birds—the largest type of Toucan—rarely breed in captivity.
The male came from Leeds, UK whilst the mother came from Attica Zoo in Greece, last year.
This species are native to South American woodland and savannah. They have the largest beak relative to body size of any bird. It is thought that the huge bill could be for display, to scare off other birds, or a visual warning. Research has suggested that one function of the large bill is heat exchange, like the ears of an elephant.
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