Two bald eagles locked together by their talons in a midair battle survived a crash landing onto a runway at a northeastern Minnesota airport.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Randy Hanzal says the adult eagles couldn't separate Sunday before slamming into the tarmac at the Duluth International Airport. Hanzal tried to take the birds to a Duluth wildlife rehabilitation center. He covered them with blankets and jackets on the back of his pickup and held them down with webbing straps. En route, Hanzal says, he heard a ruckus and saw one bird jump out and fly away.

The Duluth News Tribune says the other eagle made it to the rehab center and is now being cared for by the University of Minnesota in St. Paul's Raptor Center.

Remains of endangered Hawaiian petrels -- both ancient and modern -- show how drastically today's open seas fish menu has changed.

A research team, led by Michigan State University and Smithsonian Institution scientists, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels -- birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels' eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.

The birds' dramatic shift in diet, shown in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leaves scientists pondering the fate of petrels as well as wondering how many other species face similar challenges.

"Our bone record is alarming because it suggests that open-ocean food webs are changing on a large scale due to human influence," said Peggy Ostrom, co-author and MSU zoologist. "Our study is among the first to address one of the great mysteries of biological oceanography -- whether fishing has gone beyond an influence on targeted species to affect nontarget species and potentially, entire food webs in the open ocean."

Hawaiian petrels' diet is recorded in the chemistry of their bones. By studying the bones' ratio of nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 isotopes, researchers can tell at what level in the food chain the birds are feasting; generally, the larger the isotope ratio, the bigger the prey (fish, squid and crustaceans).

Between 4,000 and 100 years ago, petrels had high isotope ratios, indicating they ate bigger prey. After the onset of industrial fishing, which began extending past the continental shelves around 1950, the isotope ratios declined, indicating a species-wide shift to a diet of smaller fish and other prey.

Much research has focused on the impact of fishing near the coasts. In contrast, the open ocean covers nearly half of Earth's surface. But due to a lack of historical records, fishing's impact on most open-ocean animal populations is completely unknown, said lead author Anne Wiley, formerly an MSU doctoral student and now a Smithsonian postdoctoral researcher.

State wildlife officers killed three mountain lions that had confronted dogs, strolled through yards and killed deer on city streets in the southwestern South Dakota community of Keystone.

Game, Fish and Parks officers killed an adult female lion and two 40-pound kittens on May 5 and May 6.

Regional wildlife manager John Kanta says Keystone is in the middle of lion habitat, and officials gave the lion a chance to move its kittens out of the city. But he says the mother lion didn't cooperate.

Officers also killed a male lion at Angostura State Recreation Area near Hot Springs on May 6 because it was hanging out near a recreational trail, watching hikers and bikers.

Two dead dolphins were washed ashore by the sea in Batumi on May 8. The one meter-long sea pig dolphins were later found to have died as a result of the morbillivirus epidemi, Rustavi 2 channel reports. Head of the Flora and Fauna Association Archil Guchmanidze said ten cases of the sea washing dead dolphins ashore had been recorded this year on shores in Georgia.

Health officials have confirmed that the fox that attacked a Scotland County woman earlier this week had rabies.

The fox tried to bite the woman early Wednesday morning as she walked to her car. The incident occurred in the Leisure Living subdivision off Havelock Drive in Laurinburg.

County health officials did not name the victim, but said that state officials confirmed that the fox had been rabid. It is the first case of rabies in the county this year.

Ashley Cayton said she was headed out to work when she saw what she thought was a dog at the end of her driveway.

"I didn't pay any attention to it," said the 26-year-old Cayton, who works as a newspaper carrier for The Laurinburg Exchange. "The next thing I knew, the animal had grabbed me by the leg and ripped a hole in my jeans trying to bite me."

Cayton said she tried to shake the fox off her leg and finally got away by slamming her leg against the side of her vehicle.

"Once I got it off me, I jumped in my car and called my boyfriend and told him that I had been bitten," Cayton said. "I told him not to come outside, but he didn't listen. He thought it was a dog, but I was pretty sure that it wasn't."

Cayton said her boyfriend, who was armed with a baseball bat, whistled for the animal.

"Nothing happened the first time, but after a second whistle, the fox came out from in front of the car and went after him," Cayton said. "When the fox got close enough, my boyfriend hit it hard and killed him."

Cayton said that the fox "had only grazed her skin", but she immediately went to the hospital to begin rabies treatments. The couple also brought the body of the fox to the hospital so the animal could be tested by the state.

State health officials alerted Cayton and county health officials on Thursday that the fox was suffering from rabies.

The phone rang. Again.

I didn't want to answer it. The two previous calls were from people who had found dying bluebirds in their yards. They wanted to help, but they needed someone to help them help the birds.

Yesterday, the call was from someone who had found a dead bluebird. Three emails about bluebirds also came. One person had found a dozen dead or dying bluebirds in her yard. Another person recognized me at the coffee shop and wanted to relate yet another woeful bluebird tale.

The loss of a bluebird counts as nothing more than just one of those life and death things that happen in nature. But so much loss at once is stunning.

People everywhere love bluebirds, but Coloradans have special reason to esteem them.

The bluebirds are members of the thrush family. Considering we also have some blue warblers, blue buntings and blue jays the reality becomes obvious: all blue birds are not bluebirds. Just three species can claim the name "bluebird" and they are relatives of the robins, solitaires and thrushes.

Government agency gets license to kill...owls

Usually we have to prioritize, and keep track of the big issues... which in politics means we don't deal with anything less than a trillion dollars. Bank bailouts, the various new and old undeclared wars, the Federal Reserve printing money to buy our own Treasury bonds; that sort of thing.

But today I'm going to look at the US government's approach to a small thing: an owl. Namely, the Barred Owl, which has through hard work, saving and investment (in-nestment?), managed to extend its range even in this recession. The owl is a great neighbor to humankind and a boon to our parks and forests, spending most of its time hunting and destroying rodents that carry bubonic plague fleas. It is a beautiful predator with a haunting, tourist-attracting call. So naturally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (a bureau of the DOI) has started a million-dollar program to... terminate the owls and their owlets without mercy.

Yes, your taxes are even now paying for empty-eyed Department of the Interior owlinators to go from nest to nest with 12-gauge shotguns and copies of Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds, with the Barred Owl picture highlighted like Sarah Connor's name in an LA phone book. Night vision scopes, thermal imaging, and Predator drones (well, in this case, anti-predator drones) give the owls little chance. The first stage of the plan is to blast about 9,000 owls and their families into small bloody pieces of fluffy down, but the program is open-ended. Listen, and understand: The Department of the Interior is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until those owls are dead!

A locust plague of epic size is devastating the island nation of Madagascar, threatening the lives of 13 million people already on the brink of famine.

Billions of locusts are destroying crops and grazing lands across half the country. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects the plague to get worse, with two-thirds of the country likely to be affected by September.

The FAO says $22 million is needed by the end of this month to control the plague. And with each female locust laying up to 180 eggs, another $19 million will be needed to stop the plague recurring.

"We know from experience that this plague will require three years of anti-locust campaigns," says Annie Monard, who coordinates the FAO's locust response.

For the second year running, a spring die-off of hundreds of spawning-age red drum has occurred in Mobile Bay.

Alabama Marine Resources Department personnel, who surveyed the situation on the water Thursday, estimate finding nearly 400 floating in the bay with about 100 dead hardhead catfish mixed in.

Red drum are commonly called redfish, with the larger specimens known as bull redfish because of their hard-charging fighting ability when hooked by fishermen.

A die-off involving the same size and number of redfish and catfish happened during the last couple of days in April 2012.

It's a rite of spring, birds flying back to the Northland after a long winter.

But an especially long winter this year has caused big problems for the loon population.


"He needs a much larger area to achieve lift," said Erica LeMoine, Program Coordinator for LoonWatch, of a lone loon in a pond near Ashland.

The loons are turning up grounded because many Northland lakes, the bird's springtime landing pads, are still frozen.

"This late spring definitely has a detrimental effect. Especially when we have this type of weather," said LeMoine, "They found a loon in a wet, paved parking lot, in farm fields down by Rhinelander."

The loons are grounded, unable to move on land due to the mechanics of their body.

Raptor Education Group, Inc. has rescued 57 loons so far this spring.