Pennsylvania Game Commission officials are urging wildlife enthusiasts to join the tens of thousands of volunteers throughout the United States in the Audubon Society’s 114th Annual Christmas Bird Count, which will take place Dec. 14 through Jan. 5. The Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running citizen-science survey in the world, and the data collected through the count allows researchers, conservation biologists, and other interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. Local counts will occur on one day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5. Volunteers can pick the most convenient circle, or participate
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Imagine flying to the moon and back four to six times in one lifetime. Wisdom, a banded 62-year-old Laysan albatross, has traveled enough miles—up to 3 million—to cover those trips and still have miles to spare. Wisdom repeats her 50,000-mile trip across the Pacific Ocean each year to the Midway Atoll to hatch a chick. She has probably raised at least 30 offspring during her lifetime, and the most recent hatchling was born in February. This is just one of the amazing stories to come out of the U.S. Geological Survey Bird Banding Laboratory in its 93-year history. The Lab was established
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Members of the Georgia Bobwhite Technical Team, representing 15 conservation and/or land management organizations, recently turned out in support of a Memorandum of Agreement at the Go Fish Education Center in Perry, GA as a continued commitment to the recovery of bobwhite quail and other early successional habitat dependent species, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division. “The northern bobwhite quail is an iconic wildlife species being formally designated as the state’s Game Bird,” said DNR Commissioner Mark Williams. “We are pleased that the partnering organizations that make up the Georgia Bobwhite Technical Team have formally
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The Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act Communications Team has developed an online Communications Toolkit for staff, partners, and the media. The toolkit provides key messages, statistics, graphics, and other resources for those who wish to communicate about the NMBCA. You can access the toolkit at: http://www.fws.gov/birdhabitat/Grants/NMBCA/outreach.shtm Feel free to distribute this link to anyone in your professional network who might be interested. Let’s engage the bird conservation community in raising awareness about this fabulous program!
The Fall 2013 issue of The All-Bird Bulletin, the newsletter of the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI), highlights North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) projects in Mexico. Mexico’s wetlands represent a wide range of coastal and continental habitats, from mangroves to ciénegas to lagoons. The importance of these habitats to migratory birds is without question. Priority wetland sites in Mexico support impressive congregations of wetland-dependent birds and serve as critical wintering and migratory stopover sites for many species that breed in the United States and Canada. Approximately five percent of NAWCA’s annual appropriation is allocated to projects in Mexico each year. In
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The NJDEP Division of Fish and Wildlife has hired a contractor to harvest 5 acres of sawlogs and firewood on Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area beginning in late November, 2013, through April, 2014. The project is intended to create habitat for imperiled species like the golden-winged warbler which need the dense structure of reverting forest interspersed with shrubs and herbaceous vegetation in order to nest. The site, outlined in yellow on the area map, is near a powerline right-of-way and Collins Pond in the center of the Sussex County WMA. Many species of birds are “shrub specialists”, and like the
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