Something weird is going on up north. It's a little early for rare owls to be visiting Maine, but here they come. An invasion from Canada is underway.

The star of the show is a northern hawk-owl in Lincoln. It first appeared about two weeks ago in the area between the Lincoln Regional Airport and Penobscot Valley Hospital. Once a rare northern owl finds a place he likes, he tends to stay awhile. This one has.

Snowy owls have been popping up all over southern Maine. They're also early. The owl sighting in Biddeford Pool doesn't surprise me. They've had a habit of visiting the area for years, usually perching offshore on Wood Island. But the other owls have appeared in places where they are not customarily seen. A young male in Kennebunk settled on top of Mt. Agamenticus for a day. It perched on the rail of an observation platform in full view of an existing web cam maintained by the Regional Conservation land trust. The rare owl spent several hours on camera for the world to see. Now that's just lucky.

It's too soon for qualified scientists to offer opinions on why an owl invasion is happening, but nothing prevents unqualified columnists from speculating. I assume it has little to do with weather. No frigid blasts have forced other subarctic birds such as northern shrikes and rough-legged hawks to fly south in unusual numbers. Generally, invasions are triggered by one thing: food scarcity.

Chino Valley, Arizona - Last year, about this same time, residents in Verde Valley heard some mysterious, unexplained booms.

Reports of similar booms are once again being called in to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office. This time, primarily from the town of Chino Valley.

"The way to describe it is like a hammer being slammed down next to the house," said Chino Valley resident Chris Schaich. "It was two hard hits and the house jumped, if felt like a jump, and I could hear the windows rattle a little bit, some glasses rattled."

In the last 100,000 years or so, our planet has endured an Ice Age and a few mini-ice ages. But now, with the earth on track to be four degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, a "Heat Age" is looming over us all.

This is not fear-mongering. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), by 2100 we can expect a mean increase in surface temperature of 3.7ºC, with a likely range of 2.6-4.8 degrees. A warmer world will lead to mass migration from stricken areas and exacerbate existing wealth gaps between countries. In the words of David Victor, of the University of California, San Diego, the coming Heat Age will be "nasty, brutish, and hot."

Greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to reach a record high of 36 billion tons this year. That figure is expected to grow dramatically, as the great emerging-market boom of recent decades, which has lifted billions out of poverty and raised living standards around the world, puts increasing strain on the world's environment and resources. Indeed, by 2030, three billion new middle-class consumers - most of them in Asia - will add to the ever-growing burden of emissions.

We can already get a sense of the far-reaching consequences of climate change. In 2010, a major drought in eastern China damaged the wheat crop, forcing the country to rely on imports. This, combined with major wildfires in Russia's wheat-producing areas, helped to double average food prices in global markets.

In the Arab world, many people must spend around half of their income on food, compared with just 5-10% in Europe or the United States. Not surprisingly, the spike in food prices was a contributing factor in the civil unrest that sparked the Arab Spring.

As the link between global food prices and political instability demonstrates, we live in a globally interconnected world, in which we are failing to produce in the right way or create the right economic incentives to address profound environmental threats. As World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has put it, climate change is a big problem with small solutions.

Bulgaria is expecting a blizzard with 20 cm snow. Code orange for dangerous weather has been declared for half of Bulgaria. There will be strong winds, heavy snow and frost in Vidin, Montana, Vratsa, Pleven, Lovech, Gabrovo, Veliko Tarnovo and Smolyan.

In Sofia, there is a winter scenery and all cleaning machines are on the road, the capital's mayor Yordanka Fandakova told bTV. In her words, there will be plenty of rain but the heavy snow will be fully cleaned.

Experts advise people to refrain from traveling unless really necessary.

Pretoria - A heavy hailstorm hit parts of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand on Thursday afternoon, shattering windscreens, windows and roofs and causing damage estimated at millions of rand.

The heavy downpour and hail damaged houses in some parts of the city extensively, leaving gaping holes where there were windows, breaking roofs and leaving ceilings caved causing the flooding of interiors.

In Pretoria, the worst-hit areas were Soshanguve, Hammanskraal, Ga-Rankuwa, Karen Park, Nellmapius, Orchards and some suburbs in the east of the city. On Thursday night, Mamelodi residents were bracing themselves to spend a difficult night.

The men in the Baloyi family of Mamelodi East's Extension 4 climbed on to the roof to cover the damaged tiles with blankets and towels, while inside the house containers had to catch rain and water dripping from the ceiling.

Concerns raised over number of dead birds on Coast beaches

Lindsay Dines has been watching dead mutton birds wash in at Teewah for more than a month.

He knows death is part of their migratory fate.

Their long, figure eight of the Pacific that starts in Tasmania, touches the northern hemisphere Aleutian Islands and then California before the long journey home.

But Lindsay fears something more is at play.

The avid fisherman and environmentalist has deep concerns about the numbers dying.

"I'm told that a month ago a count was done by someone - 25,000 between Noosa North Shore and Caloundra,'' he said.

"And there are media reports of dead birds extending from Bundaberg to southern coast of Victoria, plus Tasmania and the New Zealand's west coast - in abnormally large numbers and along all beaches creating great concern in communities all along the coast.

"All birds tested by vets were found to be emaciated and starving.''

Given the range of the death and numbers being reported, Mr Dines fears as many as five million birds may have died.

Age UK describes 30,000 excess winter deaths as shameful and urges government action on energy bills

Datablog: excess deaths up 29%

There were an estimated 31,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales last year - up by almost a third on the previous winter, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The figure represents the highest excess winter mortality (EWM) since 2008-09, when 36,450 deaths were recorded.

Campaigners and charities blamed high energy prices and poor housing insulation for triggering what they argued were preventable deaths.

But However, ONS statisticians said that while there was a correlation between colder temperatures and winter deaths, it was not strong enough to explain the volatility in the figures. Death rates have fluctuated from more than 100,000 in 1950-51 to just over 20,000 in the late 1980s, according to the ONS.

Cause of death unknown for all three whales found this week, the latest of which was found stranded at Sea Palling, Norfolk

Three minke whales have washed up dead on UK shores in just a week due to unknown causes, prompting scientists to carry out a postmortem investigation on the third body.

A small common female minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) was discovered at Sea Palling, Norfolk, on Monday morning, just four days after another larger, 7.6 metre-long female minke was found nearby on Cromer East beach. A 9 metre-long minke was also found dead on a County Londonderry beach last Friday, the third time in the past three months that a whale has become stranded on a beach in Northern Ireland.

Including these three, there have been 14 minkes reported as stranded in the UK this year, the Natural History Museum said.

The 5-6 metre-long whale was found by the coastguard on a relatively remote area of Sea Palling beach, and is thought to have been dead when it was washed up. North Norfolk council, which has organised the removal of the body, said the whale had a hole in its jaw and abrasions on its flipper and body. It is not uncommon for the species to be found and stranded in UK waters.

Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) are one of the most magnificent and well-recognized species on the entire planet. This would be part of the reason why we chose them to be our new logo, and the Snowy pictured within it is adapted from Roger Tory Peterson's "Arctic Glow". As a raptor lover in general they are one of my favorites, and living on the Connecticut coast for nearly my entire life I had the chance to enjoy them during fall and winter seasons as Roger did throughout his as he often lived and worked in the same areas.

After seeing a sudden burst of eBird entries and list serv reports of Snowy Owls across southern Canada and the upper United States in the last week I could not resist commenting on them on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. When I did I got a tremendous reaction from excited people contacting me telling me they would be looking for them or sharing photos of birds they had seen in the last few days. Here's a screen capture of the eBird map of Snowy Owls for November 2013 as of today.

A powerful earthquake has hit Iran, killing seven and injuring a further 45, IRNA state news agency reported. The disaster's epicenter was in an area 62km north east of Bushehr, according to the USGS, where Iran has its only nuclear power plant.

The head of Iran's Crisis Management organization, Hassan Qadami, confirmed the initial 30 casualties to IRNA. However, Bushehr's Governor, Fereydoon Hasanvand, updated the figure to 45 on Thursday night. He added that 'total calm' had settled in the area.

Fars news agency placed the death toll higher, at eight, adding that helicopters would be posted to the area on Friday to assess the extent of the damage.

"There were some houses and electricity poles damaged. Rescue teams have been dispatched," local governor Alireza Khorani told Fars before full news of the wounded emerged.

Tremors were registered at a depth of 16.4 kilometers and some 14 kilometers from the nearest city of Borazjan in Bushehr Province.

While USGS measured the quake at 5.6, the local Seismological Center of Tehran University's Geophysics Institute has said that the earthquake measured 5.7 on the Richter scale.