Earth Changes
A great kiskadee - a large, "boisterous" flycatcher typically found in South and Central America, Mexico and the southern edge of Texas - was first spotted by nature photographer Kelley Luikey of Port Royal on the morning of Feb. 9.
"When I arrived at Bear Island that morning, the light and the birds were not cooperating in the areas I had planned on shooting, so I went looking for what else I could find," said Luikey, who was alone.
When she first saw the bird, her view was obscured by branches of a pecan tree, but she was able to keep tracking it because of its call, which is known to be loud and sounds like "kis-ka-dee."
"It was unmistakably something that we do not have here in South Carolina," said Luikey, recalling its bright colors.
China has a four-colour warning system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue. In Beijing, the northern and western parts of the city could see heavy snowfall of approximately 3mm to 5mm, with the remainder of the city likely to have receive between 1mm and 3mm, according to a report from Chinanews.com.
Additional images
Once upon a time, they were all around us - sights and sounds as familiar as the dusky skies their flocks danced in or the wind whistling through the fields. They were the tiny flashes of colour caught by the corner of your eye as you strolled in the countryside. They were the chirps, chatter, coos and caws making music in the hedgerows and the long meadow grasses. But that was before we destroyed their homes. Now, our common farmland birds are not so common.
It's an increasingly rare sight to see a Corn bunting perched on a farm fence before taking off in fluttering flight with its legs dangling, or graceful Yellow wagtail running through wet pastures on its slender black legs. The distinctive orange face and chestnut tail of the once abundant Grey partridge is now glimpsed all too infrequently. When was the last time you admired the splendid crest of a Northern Lapwing or heard the tew it of its display call? How many today would even recognise this once iconic cry? And what of the Barn Owls, Godwits, Corncrakes and Curlews? Or the Redshanks, Whinchats, Twites and Yellowhammers? For the bird lover, the farm has become the tragic symbol of paradise lost.
A man who ignored warnings not to surf off the coast of Reunion Island has died after being bitten on the leg by a shark.
Alexandre Naussance, 26, who was once employed as a shark spotter by a surfing association, was attacked while bodyboarding off the northeast coast of the French territory in the Indian Ocean.
He was pulled out of the water by fishermen but pronounced dead after the animal bit through a major artery in his leg.
"This accident happened even though swimming and other water sports are forbidden in this area," the local government office said in a statement.

A man walks through floodwaters Monday in Salinas. Forecasters issued flash flood warnings Monday throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California.
It was only the second time the spillway had been used, and the first time in 20 years, as officials sought to keep the Don Pedro Reservoir from overflowing.
Residents along the Tuolumne River were not forced to evacuate, but "we are strongly encouraging people to seek shelter and move to higher ground," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said at a news conference. "Our No. 1 priority is the safety and security of the people here in Stanislaus County."
The Don Pedro release came as much of the state's northern half was being hit with a colossal drenching — one expected to drop as much as 9 inches of rain in areas from Santa Cruz County along the coast to the Feather River Basin, far inland. People living along waterways braced for flash floods and evacuations.
It came with memories still fresh of the crisis that developed just over a week ago at Oroville Dam, some 180 miles to the north. Both spillways were damaged, and fears of catastrophic flooding prompted the evacuation of more than 100,000 people.

A woman wades through floodwaters in a flood-hit area in Jatinegara district, Jakarta, Indonesia.
The disaster mitigation agency says more than 50 areas are flooded in Jakarta with waters up to 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) high in East Jakarta.
It said the city's drains couldn't accommodate the runoff and rivers also overflowed.
Floods in 2013 forced killed more than two dozen people in Jakarta and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
The city, which has about 30 million people in its greater metropolitan area, says it has reduced the number of flood prone areas since then by dredging rivers and other measures.
Sources
The U.S. Geological Survey gives a preliminary magnitude of 4.7 for Monday afternoon's quake.
The shaking set off car alarms and local news media said the local subway system was halted.
There are no immediate reports of injuries.
The 2:35 p.m. (1935 GMT) quake was centered 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep about 51 miles (83 kilometers) south-southeast of Panama City in the Gulf of Panama.
Source: AP
There were 5000 cloud to ground lightning strikes. A Weatherzone spokesperson said this amount of lightning was "quite intense" for one area. The spokesperson said the majority of the lightning hit between Bulahdelah and Forster, with the storm heading in a southwesterly direction.They added 26mm of rain fell in Forster during yesterday's (Sunday, February 19) storm.
Can the whistleblowers be believed in this claim, originally made in 2015? And in the further claim that NOAA then rushed this doctored data into print in time for the UN's Paris global warming summit of world leaders, to dupe any doubters that the planet was in fact overheated?
Of course the whistleblowers can be believed, and not just because NOAA repeatedly stonewalled inquiries, even failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. No one paying attention can have any doubt that the governmental global warming enterprise has been a fraud. It's been lies from the start, starting with the very mandate of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which astonishingly ruled out factors like the sun as being worthy of investigation.
Among those astonished was the Danish delegation to the IPCC. It discovered at one of the IPCC's early meetings a quarter-century ago that its scientists could not present their study, newly published in the prestigious journal Science, showing a remarkable correlation between global warming and solar activity. To their further astonishment, to squelch dissent the IPCC cabal set out to destroy the reputation of its chief author, falsely accusing him of fabricating data.
Whistleblowers now know they will no longer be silenced.













Comment: See also: Whistleblower: No more global warming, NOAA scientists falsified temperature data