Animals
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Attention

Dead dwarf sperm whale found at Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina

Ellen Bacca
wcti12.com
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:39 UTC
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A whale that washed up onshore in Pine Knoll Shores has been identified as a Dwarf Sperm Whale. This is the smallest species of whale in the world and rarely spotted at sea.

Scientist Keith Rittmaster of the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort says most everything scientists know about the Dwarf Sperm Whale has been found out by studying ones that have washed ashore, like the one from this past weekend.

Rittmaster says it is hard to even determine how many Dwarf Sperms there are in the world, since they are hard to spot and definitively identify at sea. Dwarf Sperm Whales look very similar to Pygmy Sperm Whales, which are more common.
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Ice Cube

Death toll of waterbirds on frozen Lake Erie likely to number tens of thousands

Carl Bachtel
wkyc.com
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:14 UTC
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© WKYCRed breasted mergansers and coot on Lake Erie.

The Great Lakes are the winter home to millions of sea birds and waterfowl that need open water to survive. The frigid weather of the past few months left 92 percent of the lakes covered in ice, and that left diver ducks out in the cold.

Jen Brumfield, a naturalist for the Cleveland Metroparks explains, "With the freeze-over, all of these birds are piling into very, very small, open-water outlets where they become stressed. There is limited food for them there, so they starve and die."

The death toll on Lake Erie could run in the tens of thousands.

As the frozen lake thaws, carcasses of the deceased ducks are washing up along the shore by the hundreds. The waterfowl are mostly diver ducks, like greater and lesser scaup, redheads, canvasbacks, and red-breasted mergansers.
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Ice Cube

10 Fold increase in the number of dying water birds rescued in Toronto due to extreme cold


Toronto Metro
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 10:23 UTC
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© Torstar News ServiceCalls about dead birds to Toronto Animal Services went up 66 per cent between Jan. 1 and Mar. 12, compared to the same period last year.
Toronto's ducks and geese are among the hardest-hit victims of this year's brutal winter weather.

Calls about dead birds - found stuck in the ice or floating lifeless in the water - shot up 66 per cent between Jan. 1 and Mar. 12 compared to the same period last year, according to Toronto Animal Services.

Meanwhile, the city's only wildlife rescue charity has been overwhelmed with dozens of fragile, injured and dying birds, making this the worst winter it has seen in 21 years of operation.

"They're weak and they're starving," said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre. "Some of the birds are having traumatic injuries as well because they're in a weakened state."

The centre has rescued about 10 times as many water birds as it does during a normal winter, more than 130 since December. Admissions of wildlife are up 50 per cent overall, said Karvonen.

Many water birds spend the winter on Georgian Bay, which has frozen solid for the first time in 20 years. The mass migration led to an intense food competition this year, as thousands of fish-eating birds compete for a few small pools of water.
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Ice Cube

Pod of over 30 dolphins die after being trapped by ice, Cape Ray, Newfoundland


vocm.com
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:09 UTC
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Dolphins stuck in ice
Most of a pod of white-beaked dolphins have already succumbed after becoming trapped by ice off the southwest coast. The pod of about 30 to 40 dophins became encircled by ice near Cape Ray on the weekend and were driven close to the shoreline. The animals' plight has caught the attention of local residents, but officials say there's little that can be done because of the dangerous weather and ice conditions.

As of this morning just three animals were left alive, and they were in bad shape. Wayne Ledwell of the Whale Release and Strandings Group says human safety is paramount when considering whether or not to save the animals. He says conditions in the area are so bad, people would be risking their lives to try to intervene.

Ledwell says white-beaked dolphins are one of a couple of species that stay in Newfoundland waters year-round, and ice strandings are not uncommon. He says in many cases the animals usually die, but he can remember saving some animals in an area where it was safe to do so, and transporting them to open water via snowmobile.
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Info

Man snaps photo of rare black flamingo

Matt Davenport
Monterey Herald
Sun, 02 Mar 2014 17:20 UTC
Black Flamingo
© Dan Presser/Contributed PhotoThis photograph, taken by Don Presser of Carmel, shows what could be the world's only "documented" black flamingo, in a salt pond in Eilat, Israel. Other photos have been taken in the Middle East of what is believed to be the same bird.
When he couldn't find any snakes on a desert plain, a Carmel man turned his camera lens to a salt pond and captured an even rarer sight - a black-feathered flamingo.

Don Presser, 70, photographed what he said could be the "one and only black flamingo in the world" on a trip to Eilat, Israel, in February. Presser sent the image to Monterey County bird experts who identified it as a rare melanistic Greater Flamingo.

Other photographs of a darkly-hued flamingo in Eilat first appeared on birding websites last spring, and some sites also claimed the bird is one of a kind. It's unclear if what Presser saw is the same bird.

"I think there's only one, but there might be more," he said. "Let's put it this way: it's very rare."

Bird experts at the San Diego Zoo have heard reports of the melanistic - or darkly colored - flamingo, although none was familiar enough with the case to comment on it further, said Christina Simmons, a public relations officer at the zoo.
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Cow

Unseasonal rain and hail kill 2,100 cattle in Nashik, India

Abhilash Botekar
The Times of India
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:47 UTC
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The hailstorms and unseasonal rain have so far claimed lives of more than 2,100 cattle in the Nashik division.

Officials said compensation is likely to be given to the owners of 581 cattle only.

The heavy rain that lashed Nashik division, including Nashik, Jalgaon, Dhule, Nandurbar and Jalgaon districts, claimed the lives of 2,139 cattle that included 117 big animals - cow or buffalo and 2,022 small animals- sheep, goat, calf, donkeys. The proposal to compensate for the lost cattle is being made.

"The damage is tremendous. The reports and panchanamas so far show 2,139 cattle have died because of lighting or hailstorms. The hails were very big in size and killed the animals almost instantly. There was hardly any chance for the farmers to take care of their animals," the officer from revenue division of Nashik said.
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Attention

Dead whale on Dickwella beach, Sri Lanka

Ravihari Nisha
youtube.com
Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:01 UTC
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Dead whale floated to the beach of Dickwella, Sri Lanka. Video shows you people trying to remove the animal from the beach to a grave yard.

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Question

Flock of dead starlings falls out of sky in Bolton, England after 'loud bang' heard overhead

Jeremy Culley
Bolton News
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 20:13 UTC
mass death birds
The dead starlings in Beaumont Road, Ladybridge
The mystery appearance of a flock of dead birds in the middle of a busy road has left Ladybridge residents baffled.

Between 20 and 30 dead starlings appeared in Beaumont Road, near the Britannia Hotel, on Sunday afternoon.

Eyewitnesses reported hearing a loud bang before finding the birds in an "X-Files-like" experience, as if they had "fallen from the sky".

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has said it is unlikely they flew into a poisonous air trail as their injuries would be less uniform.

A spokesman said the low-flying birds, which tend to travel in a tight flock, could have been hit by a vehicle or been confused or dazzled and flown into one.

Craig Clarkson, aged 39, who was in Beaumont Road shortly after the birds first appeared, said there were nearly 100 of them, with some lying still alive in the road.

The RSPB spokesman said: "I have heard of a previous discovery of a group of dead starlings, and it was never really established how they got there.

Comment: This was probably the result of another overhead meteor explosion, where the shockwave killed the birds through blunt force trauma. Incidentally, this was photographed in England on the same day:

'Photos of spectacular trail left by meteor fireball over Gloucester England, 9 March 2014'

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Info

Beached Sperm Whale found in February now buried, Ballycroy, Ireland

Áine Ryan
The Mayo News
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 06:50 UTC
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© Michael McLaughlinLocals organised to have this whale, which was beach at Dooriel in Ballycroy in February, buried last week.

A giant sperm whale beached in Ballycroy during January's storms has been buried because of the concerns of locals, it has emerged. The Mayo News reported last month that the county council, in consultation with the NPWS (National Parks and Wildlife), would not bury the mammoth mammal, which was almost 50-foot (14.6 metres) long, with a four-metre wide tail fluke.

Speaking on behalf of the council in mid-February, Mr Martin Keating said the local authority had no plans to bury this whale, as there was a significant logistical exercise involved in this instance.

"It is stranded on a very rocky beach which is over a kilometre from a public road and is also away from local houses," Mr Keating said.

The dead whale, which had a deep gash on its back possibly caused by a passing ship, was dead when it was washed ashore and discovered by a local boatman at Dooriel Beach on Sunday, February 9.

However, Erris Sinn Féin Cllr Rose Conway-Walsh told The Mayo News yesterday: "With the high tide last Sunday week, we were presented with an opportunity as the whale had moved from the stony part of the beach onto sandy ground, and we got a local contractor to dig a hole as it was easier to bury it."
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Snowflake Cold

Mass duck deaths in western New York state due to cold harsh winter


wgrz.com
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 05:22 UTC
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"This duck die-off has been unprecedented. Biologists who've been here for 35 years have never seen anything like this," says Wildlife Biologist Connie Adams of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

The Western New York region is bearing witness to a quiet but devastating ecological disaster. The harsh and seemingly endless winter has been the root cause of death for thousands of ducks, from Rochester to the Niagara River.

Adams says, "This has never been documented in the past. ... As cold as people believe the winter has been, it has in fact been that cold because it's verified by the fact that this abundant wildlife population cannot survive... this winter."
The massive die-off first was noticed by local birders in mid-January. Adams tells 2 The Outdoors that when the NYDEC went out to investigate the situation had already reached a serious stage.
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