#raptor-conservation

#raptor-conservation

"It's the way they walk. That's what the main attraction is," said self-described amateur birder Sheeba Garg, who traveled to Bryant Park specifically to see the American woodcock during its migration.

"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."

The choices we make now will set Britain on a path either towards accelerating biodiversity loss or towards nature recovery.

When faced with a choice between a box with eyes painted on it and a plain box, the gulls were slower to approach the box with eyes and less likely to peck at it.

Bay Area peregrine falcon numbers began plummeting after a massive, global outbreak of avian flu in 2020, the study documents, with only about a third of the nesting sites still in use as of 2025. The news, while dire, nevertheless helps scientists understand how the disease is impacting local populations, and what we can expect for their recovery.

It's an opportunity for people to get out and see birds without pressure, no matter how long it takes or how many birds we see, said OBara, a retired nurse who has been leading the accessible outings for three years. She said disabled people often cannot keep up on traditional outings, especially when competitive birders are focused on checking off a list of the greatest possible number of species.

An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.

Around a third of UK gardeners use pesticides, and our studies found that house sparrow numbers, for example, were nearly 40% lower in gardens where the pesticide metaldehyde was used. By reducing pesticide use, you can actively encourage birds back into your outdoor spaces, as they rely on invertebrates such as slugs and snails as natural prey.

Discovered on a ship arriving at the Port of New York & New Jersey from Southampton, England, the red fox was placed in the care of the Bronx Zoo on Feb. 19, one day after it was "safely secured" by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to Thursday's journal Science. The study is the first to look at more than the total bird population by examining the trends in their decrease, where they are shrinking the most and what the declines are connected to.

Animals' risk of becoming roadkill depends on several factors, including how many vehicles are on the road, how many animals are on the road, and how animals and human drivers behave, explains Tom Langen, a professor of biology at Clarkson University, who studies animal-vehicle collisions. DST can minimize these collisions, however.

On a quiet Montreal street of low-rise brick apartment buildings on one side and cement barrier wall on the other, a crowd has gathered, binoculars around their necks and cameras at the ready. A European robin has taken up residence in the neighbourhood, which is sandwiched between two industrial areas with warehouses and railway lines and, a few blocks away, port facilities on the St Lawrence River.

Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet's largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too. Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest.

The wolves arrived in May of last year, just days after Paul Roen had driven his cattle back up to their summer pasture in Northern California's Sierra Valley. He started finding the bleeding bodies of calves-some still alive, so badly paralyzed that they'd need to be shot. After weeks of this, Roen finally saw a kill himself. "One wolf grabbed a cow and spun her around, while another grabbed a calf," he told me. "He tore it into three pieces in 30 seconds."

"I feel very lucky to have them on the farm. It's an important thing to try and keep a healthy population of them. They are absolutely beautiful," he said.