Odisha has overtaken the north eastern State of Assam to top the country's human fatalities rate due to elephant attack for the second year in a row.
The State reported 93 human deaths due to elephant attacks in 2020-21 while Assam witnessed 91 human casualties, followed by Jharkhand (74) and West Bengal (47). While the year saw 462 human deaths due to elephant attacks across the country, the State accounted for 20% of the cumulative fatality toll, said officials.
In 2019-20, the State also topped the fatality chart with as many as 117 dying due to elephant attack followed by West Bengal (116), Jharkhand (84), Chhattisgarh (77) and Assam (75), they added.
A bird sighted last week only for the third time in California has hundreds of birders flocking to Palo Alto's Midtown neighborhood.
The Oriental turtle-dove, also known as the rufous turtle-dove, has been hanging out near Greer Road and Maddux Avenue since Feb. 2. The bird was first spotted by wildlife biologist Andrew Bradshaw, who saw it feeding with local mourning doves under his bird feeder, he said by phone on Wednesday. Since then, the dove has attracted avian aficionados from all over the country.
Armed with birding scopes, binoculars and cameras, gaggles of birders can be seen training their equipment toward the trees. Sometimes, the bird appears in a tall, thin redwood visible from the Matadero Creek overpass on Greer Road; other times, it perches in a high tree on Colorado Avenue at Higgins Place.
A sinkhole opens in Landreth Park in Joplin, Missouri.
Shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon Joplin Police and Joplin Public Works were notified of a sinkhole forming in the northwest corner of Landreth Park.
Joplin Police responded and secured the area. They tell us on scene the hole appears to be about 25 feet deep at this time. Water is in the bottom of the hole. It is about 8-10 feet across.
The Road and Coastal Administration reported record-high waves at the south coast of Iceland as a severe storm swept the county on February 7-8. A total of ten waves of 25 meters high and four waves over 30 meters high were recorded. One wave was so powerful, the wave measuring buoy broke down, but 40 m was the highest point it managed to measure. This is the highest wave recorded since 1990. Further analysis of the data is yet to be provided.
Earlier this week, the Icelandic Met Office forecasted winds reaching 35 meters per second accompanied by snowfall. According to Guðrún Nína Petersen, a meteorologist at the Icelandic Met Office the wind speed at certain regions exceeded calculations made earlier. "Such events are rare," said Guðrún.
The Road and Coastal Administration operates 11 wave measurement platforms around Iceland. More info on weather and sea conditions can be found at sjolag.is.
A female humpback whale nearly 10 metres long (31 feet) was found dead after washing up on a beach near Calais in northern France early Thursday, a rare occurrence on the Channel coastline according to specialists.
"It's an exceptional event for the region," said Jacky Karpouzopoulos, president of the CMNF mammal preservation association and head of its "marine stranding" team.
He said tractors would pull the massive animal, weighing 20 to 25 tonnes, away from the coastline to make sure it is not swept out by the tide, "because it could be dangerous for boats" in the busy shipping lane.
An autopsy will be carried out directly on the beach, he added.
"It's like there were hundreds of birds in the sky and all of a sudden they just died and fell to the ground"
A woman driving home was greeted with an "eerie sight" as she came across dead birds lying on a road in Pembrokeshire.
Michaela Pritchard said it looked like a "massacre" as she travelled on the road between Waterston and Hazelbeach on Thursday evening.
There was seemingly little explanation for what caused around 200 birds to die so suddenly, with some pointing to the nearby Dragon LNG plant as a possible cause.
One man added he heard a loud bang before seven or eight birds rained down on his car in nearby Waterston.
Some videos circulate on social networks of the exact moment when hundreds of birds fell dead in a community in Chihuahua.
A video began to circulate on social networks in which hundreds of migratory birds can be seen crashing into the ground in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua.
The events would have been recorded on Monday around 05:00.
According to local media, the residents of the sector, seeing the strange behavior of the birds, spoke to the authorities. At least 100 dead migratory birds of the Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus) species were found at the site.
These animals migrate from northern Canada to northern Mexico where they spend the winter.
Nine small earthquakes have shaken Lake Erie off Lake County, Ohio, in the first six weeks of 2022, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources seismic monitoring.
The Earth is trembling underneath Lake Erie.
Nine weak, shallow earthquakes have already struck central Lake Erie in the first weeks of 2022, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which, alongside the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), tracks seismic activity in the region.
The quake epicenters are clustered about two miles offshore of Lake County east of Cleveland. They range from 1.3 to 3.0 in magnitude and some are being felt locally on shore. Quake depths range from 2.1 to 7.4 kilometers under the surface.
Comment: Notably, and possibly as a sign of an uptick in geologic activity in the region, a study of Lake Michigan published in March of 2021, using a 30-year data set of deep water measurements, found that deep water temperature there had been rising, and 'scientists don't know why'.
Impressive columns of red lava that jump into the sky from the huge crater of the Etna volcano, on the Italian island of Sicily.
Mount Etna volcano, on the Italian island of Sicily, erupted again early this morning, Thursday, February 10. According to the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), the eruption occurred inside the southeast crater area, causing a slight and discontinuous ash shower.
The recorded tremors came from a depth of around 3,000 metres above sea level, reaching average values. A forecast model predicts the volcanic plume will travel in a south-westerly direction.
Vincenzo Bellini airport in Catania remains fully operational, and has not been affected by the expulsion of ash, which was described as "discontinuous and slight".
The two Eindhoven skiers (20 & 21) lost their lives in an avalanche in the French Alps on Monday afternoon. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that they were skiing outside the guarded slopes, according to rescue services.
It concerns two men of 20 and 21 years. They were taken to the hospital in Grenoble. They were skiing off-piste near Saint-Colomban-des-Villards. Their families have been informed by the Ministry.
Around one o'clock in the afternoon, a ski lift attendant from the Les Sybelles ski area saw a snow cloud on one of the slopes of the Col de Bellard. He immediately suspected that it was an avalanche, so two patrols went to check it out. They discovered footprints off the slopes of the Saint-Colomban-des-Villards ski station. This was reported by De Telegraaf, who spoke to people involved in the rescue operation.
Comment: See also the following article for the years prior: Report says 3,310 people died due to wild elephant attacks in last 7 years across India - Rise in number of deaths 'alarming'