President-elect Obama’s phone has been ringing off the hook. Democrat leaders call to congratulate, world leaders want to talk policy and special interest groups hope that Obama will pay better attention to their cause than the Bush administration did. One group seeking Obama’s ear is the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP).
President-elect Obama’s phone has been ringing off the hook. Democrat leaders call to congratulate, world leaders want to talk policy and special interest groups hope that Obama will pay better attention to their cause than the Bush administration did. One group seeking Obama’s ear is the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP).
Beneath the surface of the Earth’s oceans lurks a strange and wonderful world filled with unique sea creatures that no one has ever seen before. But thousands of the marine animals have begun to surface recently, thanks to an Olympian effort by a consortium of roughly 2,000 scientists from 82 countries. The latest findings of the survey, called the Census of Marine Life, were reported this week at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Valencia, Spain. Since 2000, when the census began, survey scientists have identified 5,300 possible new species (more than 100 have so far gone through the rigorous process to gain the official designation as “new”).
Beneath the surface of the Earth’s oceans lurks a strange and wonderful world filled with unique sea creatures that no one has ever seen before. But thousands of the marine animals have begun to surface recently, thanks to an Olympian effort by a consortium of roughly 2,000 scientists from 82 countries. The latest findings of the survey, called the Census of Marine Life, were reported this week at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Valencia, Spain. Since 2000, when the census began, survey scientists have identified 5,300 possible new species (more than 100 have so far gone through the rigorous process to gain the official designation as “new”).
Emperor penguins are the only birds that nest on ice, right? Wrong! The bird world has been shaken to the core (well, at least astonished) by news of a small finch that builds its bulky nest on glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes. The species is known as the white-winged diuca-finch (Diuca speculifera) and inhabits high mountain meadows in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. It belongs to the large Emberizidae family, making it a far distant relative (in geographic terms) of the American tree sparrow, Lapland longspur and snow bunting, all of which breed on the Arctic tundra in not-quite-so-harsh conditions.
I grew up on two and a half acres of woodland in northcentral Florida. That may not sound like a lot, but to a kid (or a property-starved metropolitan), it was a universe just begging me to explore. Fall was an ideal time to do so, as the southern sun had tamed a bit and the humidity subsided. I fondly remember scouring the ground for felled sweet gum balls, lichen, and other detritus— ingredients I added to a sodden tree hollow which, to the imaginative mind, was a cauldron of sorts, brewing an earthy stew. I kind of wish I'd had Michael W. Robbins's (a former editor of Audubon) and Henry W. Art's WoodsWalk (Storey Books, 2003) with me, however, to help teach me a thing or two about what I discovered—and direct me to other treasures I might have otherwise overlooked.
Hawaiian Petrels Trump Digital TV
11/11/2008
The transition to digital television next February is an inconvenience for me and the dozen or so other Americans who still get their TV via antennas. But for Hawaiian petrels, which are already vulnerable, it could be life threatening.
To avoid the destruction of the petrels' nests, Hawaii has moved up the switch to digital TV to January 15, according to The Associated Press.
Hawaii will get digital TV a month earlier than the rest of the U.S. to protect nesting Hawaiian petrels.
Identifiable by a pronounced marking passing over the eyes, the Black-browed Albatross (Diomedea melanophris) is one of the most beautiful of the albatrosses. They nest on islands in the South Atlantic, but the largest populations live in the Falklands. Steeple Jason is one of the most remote islands, situated in the extreme northwest. It remains an unspoiled haven for wildlife due to its location, rugged topography, and private ownership.
When the birds of summer and the migrants of autumn clear off the eastern Maine coast, the avian pickin' s are sometimes meager. Oh, we have neat birds when the ice piles up on the shore and snow disintegrates into a cold rain. Bald eagles, harlequin ducks, and purple sandpipers may beguile the tedium of a bleak day, but the birds that seem omnipresent are the gulls. Herring gulls, great black-backs, Bonaparte's, and occasionally an ivory gull. They are not to be disrespected.
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