Animals
S


Wolf

The urban hyenas that attack rough sleepers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Martin Fletcher
BBC
Sun, 23 Feb 2014 09:19 UTC
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Urban hyenas are becoming a dangerous problem in the Ethiopian capital, where they attack rough sleepers.

It is late evening in Addis Ababa. Stephen Brend, a zoologist with the Born Free Foundation, is driving me to the airport to catch a flight back to London.

"Have you got time for a ten-minute detour?" he asks, as we passed the British embassy. "Of course," I reply.

So he turns off the road and up a dirt track between some rough shacks and a collection of battered old jalopies that passes for a taxi rank in Ethiopia's capital.

"There! Look there!" Stephen exclaims. In the beams of his headlights I see several pairs of eyes glinting in the darkness like tiny mirrors. As we drive closer I begin to make out the shapes of the animals behind those eyes. They are hideous beasts, as large as the largest dogs, with coarse spotted brown fur, elongated necks and front legs much longer than their back ones so their backs taper away from their powerful shoulders.
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Bizarro Earth

Tide of dead seabirds keeps rolling in on Southern England beach

Joanna Davis
Dorset Echo, UK
Sun, 23 Feb 2014 14:42 UTC
Dead Seabird
© Dorset EchoOne of the dead seabirds.
Dead seabirds are continuing to be washed up on Chesil Beach.

A combination of storms and pollution are thought to be to blame because some of the birds are covered in oil.

The weekend saw an overnight tide wash up more dead seabirds on Portland including razorbills, guillemots and gannets and lumps of what is thought to be palm or vegetable oil.

Concerned Wyke Regis resident Peter Minter said: "On Saturday morning people visiting Chesil Cove discovered that a lot of dead seabirds had been washed up.

"There were huge amounts of an oily, sticky white substance which after tests may be confirmed as palm oil also washed ashore early this month.

"The substance emits a pungent, overpowering odour."

The Echo reported last week that Dorset Wildlife Trust officers rescued distressed sea birds that washed up on Chesil Beach following a spell of storms and wild weather. Most birds washed up dead.
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Attention

Officials probe death of 30-foot whale in Chesapeake Bay

Ted Shockley
The Daily Times
Sun, 23 Feb 2014 12:23 UTC
Officials are investigating the death of a 30-foot-long whale found in shallow water near a Chesapeake Bay island at the Maryland-Virginia line.

Joan Barnes, a spokeswoman with the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response team, said Sunday morning that experts conducted a rare on-boat necropsy, or animal autopsy, of the animal as its body rested in shallow water.

The whale was unable to be towed to land or taken ashore.

Investigators got as close to the animal "to conduct a necropsy as best they could," Barnes said.

Officials with the Smithsonian Institution and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries also are involved in the investigation.

Part of the challenge, Barnes said, was the inaccessibility of the whale. It could only be approached by a shallow-draft boat and is on a remote island.
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Attention

Remains of dead whale removed from Portsmouth beach, UK


The News, UK
Thu, 20 Feb 2014 08:38 UTC
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@DarkQueen_xxx Twitter
The removal of a decomposing whale from Eastney beach took 12 hours.


The dead animal was found on the shoreline by dog walkers on Monday afternoon.

Portsmouth City Council was assisted by Cosham Plant Hire, Veolia Environmental Services, Colas and the University of Portsmouth to remove the whale yesterday.

Despite previous suggestions it was blubber, the council said marine biologists from the university took DNA samples during the move to confirm it was a whale.

Colas cordoned off the road by the Royal Marines Museum in order to begin the operation, which consisted of transferring the rotting corpse from the bottom of the shoreline up to a nearby skip.
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Info

Killer starfish threaten Great Barrier Reef

Julian Siddle
BBC
Sun, 16 Feb 2014 09:42 UTC
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The starfish have a voracious appetite
Waves of carnivorous starfish are eating their way through Australia's Great Barrier Reef - and sugar cane farming is being blamed.

Researchers at Australia's Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), just outside Townsville, Queensland, in north-east Australia, have mapped the pattern of destruction.

"Coral cover is half of what it was 27 years ago, coral cover is going down at an alarming rate." Dr Katharina Fabricius, coral reef ecologist and AIMS principal research scientist, told the BBC World Service programme Discovery.

She said the biggest culprit was the Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTs).

"There are three main sources for the coral decline, one is storms, however 42% is attributed to Crown of Thorns Starfish - and just 10% due to bleaching. This compares with 70% due to bleaching for reefs elsewhere in the world , such as in the Caribbean."

Bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by changes in conditions such as temperature, light, or nutrients. They expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing them to turn completely white.
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Arrow Down

800 pigeons used in Santeria rituals stolen in Florida County

Desiree Stennett
Orlando Sentinel
Wed, 19 Feb 2014 00:14 UTC
Pigeons
© Wikimedia Commons
Pigeons are much more than dirty park pests to Maria Morales. She's cashing in on them as part of her retirement plan.

But Morales and her husband, Alberto, suffered a financial setback over the weekend when thieves stole more than 800 valuable homing pigeons from their Marion County farm, and slaughtered 100 more.

Their loss - nearly $20,000.

The Moraleses have been breeding pigeons and selling them mostly to people who use the birds in Santeria religious rituals. Given the migration of people from the Caribbean who practice Santeria, Morales said, it's not surprising that thieves would see the value in her flock.

But neither she nor deputy sheriffs can understand why they would have killed 100 of the birds.

The Moraleses realized on Tuesday evening that nearly half of their inventory of pigeons was missing from a coop behind their home.

"There is a huge demand for them," Maria Morales said. "We have live-animal auctions (in Marion County). Every time you go to an auction, if you have pigeons you know for sure you will sell them out."

While the birds are often bought by people interested in breeding or racing them, Morales said, her top customers are people who practice Santeria, which blends Catholic and Yoruba religious beliefs and is practiced in parts of Mexico, the Caribbean and South America.

"(Alberto Morales) advised the unknown person(s) who stole his pigeons would have to have known their value and where to sell them," deputies wrote in an incident report.
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Arrow Down

Hundreds of dead fish appear on Mallorca shoreline


euroweeklynews.com
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:44 UTC
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Hundreds of dead fish have appeared in Mallorca on the shores of Son Baulo.

Investigations have been started by the local council and environmental employees to find out where the fish may have come from and why.

Passers-by were surprised to see dozens of metres of shoreline covered in dead fish, most of which were only three or four centimetres long, although there were a few larger sea bass, weighing in at around two or three kilos.

There have been at least three similar incidents in the area in the past; one investigation found that they had died through lack of oxygen, another tracked the problem down to a nearby hotel with toxic waste on the premises.

In the recent case, no other animals appeared to suffer; so toxic waste is less likely to be the cause.

There is a patch of still water just before the river mouth where, at certain times of the year the levels drop and the water becomes stagnant. Neighbours have suggested that there may be less danger to the fish if the water could run year round into the sea to allow more oxygen to circulate in the water.
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Bizarro Earth

Increase in giant squid discoveries off Japan's coast is 'some kind of omen,' says fisherman

Heather Saul
The Independent, UK
Thu, 20 Feb 2014 13:47 UTC
Giant Squid
© The Independent, UKThe two longest tentacles of one of the creatures caught in the town of Iwami were missing, meaning it could have spanned eight metres.
An increase in the number of giant squid being caught along the Sea of Japan coast is leading fisherman to fear it may be some kind of omen.

A giant squid was taken to the Himi fishing port in Toyama Prefecture on 4 January, and another was discovered in a net off Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture on 8 January, according to The Japan Times.

Three squid were taken to Sado and Himi that measured between three and four metres long, the newspaper has reported.

The two longest tentacles of one of the creatures caught in the town of Iwami in Tottori Prefechure were missing, meaning it could have spanned eight metres prior to its capture.

Several of the creatures have been ensnared in fishing nets. Earlier this month a local fisherman caught a four-metre giant squid off the coast of Sadogashima Island.
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Cloud Lightning

Record numbers of puffins have perished because of the recent storms in the Bay of Biscay


wildlifeextra.com
Thu, 20 Feb 2014 04:19 UTC
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Puffins come back to Britain in the spring in order to breed
Puffins have suffered in the recent storms in the Bay of Biscay. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has received a record number of reports of the birds, wearing uniquely numbered metal rings that identify them as puffins that would have been heading for breeding colonies in the UK, being found dead on the coasts of France and Spain.

In a normal winter, the BTO would expect two or three ringed puffins to be found in France and Spain, but during the past few weeks more than 35 have been reported.It is well known that British puffins fly out into the Atlantic for the winter months, riding out the worst of the weather there. As the winter progresses, our puffins make their way into the Bay of Biscay before heading back to their breeding colonies and the burrows that they used the previous summer. Birds found in this current wreck have come from colonies in west Wales, northern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland.Mark Grantham, Ringing Officer at the BTO, commented, "Up until the last couple of weeks it seemed that our puffins might have survived the worst of the winter. However, from the reports of ringed birds that are being washed-up on the Biscay beaches it would seem that the recent storms were just too much for many of the birds."He added, "It is still early days and the number of ringed birds found is likely to rise further, and we must remember that if more than 35 ringed birds have been found, many un-ringed birds must have been affected, too."Bird ringing in the UK is organised by the British Trust for Ornithology and is carried out by licensed volunteers, who ring over a million birds of a wide variety of different species every year. It is the information received from these rings, when found and reported to the BTO, that enables scientists at the Trust to chart events such as this.

For more information and to report a ring number to the BTO, please visit www.bto.org
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Binoculars

Rare Arctic songbird turns up at Panama City Beach, Florida


The News Herald
Mon, 17 Feb 2014 03:58 UTC
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© Ron Houser Our members of the Bay County Audubon Society saw a Snow Bunting at St. Andrews State Park on Saturday, Feb. 15. This is a very rare bird in Florida. Its winter range usually extends no further south than Ohio but it breeds in the Arctic, much further north. The last one reported locally was in 1986.
Clear eyes, full hearts and lots of sunshine can't lose.

This week is why you moved to Florida. It's the middle of February and the temperatures will be in the 70s all week. Also, that troublesome rain that you normally associate with great weather like this is nowhere to be seen. At least until Friday when there is a 40 percent chance of scattered showers.

How nice is it? A snow bunting, a rare artic bird is hanging out in Saint Andrews State Park, according to local resident Ron Houser of the Bay County Audubon Society.

Houser captured a shot of the bird Saturday. He said they breed in the arctic and usually don't travel any further south than Ohio.

Also, Spring Break has not started yet which means you have the beach to yourself. That's right, you heard me, you have the beach to yourself locals.

Get to it.

Comment: See also : Thousands of Arctic songbirds invade Ohio farmstead

Rare Arctic bird turns up in Darwin, Australia

UK storms bring in rare Arctic gulls to Pembrokeshire

Storm blows Canadian bird 3,000 miles on to Tyrone lough, Northern Ireland

Bird watchers flock to Portland, UK after a rare Arctic Brunnich's Guillemot spotted

Ice Age Cometh: Snowy Owl invasion coming in North America?

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Huge Snowy Owl invasion becomes official in Canada and U.S.

Thousands of Hawk Owls descend on Finland as food in northern Russia runs out

Ice Age Cometh: Unprecedented influx of Arctic Ivory Gulls into UK

Read More...