We are delighted to announce the results of our latest photo competition. Juan Carlos Vindas wins First Place for his brilliant composition entitled “Two Violet-tailed Sylphs”. Rick Lieder wins Second Place for his outstanding flight shot “No Boundaries”. Third Place goes to Cat Xuan Nguyen for “Springtime Love is in the Air”. See detailed results […]
Category: Wildlife
Tiny Brazilian opossum could be farmers’ friend
André Mendonça pops open the spring-loaded door on the shoebox-sized trap and peeks inside. Two bulging, black eyes glare back at him. He pulls the trap off the tree limb and shakes the stunned, sopping wet creature into a clear plastic bag. “One more!” he says excitedly. The animal, a gracile mouse opossum (Gracilinanus agilis), […]
Is the end of ‘house of horror’ bear bile factories in sight?
If we grant bears any modicum of intelligence or emotional experience, if we grant them the capacity to suffer pain or mental anguish, then bear bile farming – which houses bears in tiny cages for the breadth of their life in order to repeatedly extract their bile – poses a whole slew of ethical questions. […]
Being more colorful found to be disadvantage for female plover
A team of researchers working in Australia has found that bright coloring on female birds appears to be a reproductive disadvantage. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes how they tested predation of red-capped plover eggs and discovered that enhanced coloring by the parent tending the nest, made […]
Colorful New ‘Dwarf Dragons’ Found in South America
Attention Game of Thrones: Three new species of “dwarf dragon” have been discovered in Peru and Ecuador, a new study says. Due to political unrest in Ecuador, it took nearly a decade for scientists to identify the reptiles, which are commonly called wood lizards. They are the Alto Tambo wood lizard (Enyalioides altotambo), rough-scaled wood […]
Barullero (Tawny-crowned Pygmy-Tyrant) Euscarthmus meloryphus
Hace un tiempo atrás cuando publiqué la última entrada para el barullero en el blog mencioné el hecho de que era notable que en cuatro años nunca antes hayamos publicado fotografías de este tiránido, ocurre que con el tiempo el oído se entrena y con la práctica estamos mucho mas avezados a la hora de […]
Texas man who won hunting auction to be allowed to import black rhino trophy
The US government will allow a Texas man to import the trophy of an endangered black rhinoceros if he kills one in Africa as part of a conservation fundraiser. The US Fish and Wildlife Service said on Thursday that importing a carcass from Namibia meets criteria under the Endangered Species Act of benefiting conservation. Corey […]
Halloween in the Amazon: baby bird dresses up like killer caterpillar
“Mama, I wanna be a toxic caterpillar,” says the little bird. “Okay,” mamma answers, “but first you gotta study your Batesian mimicry.” Meet the cinereous mourner (Laniocera hypopyrra), an ash-colored, Amazonian bird that looks rather hum-drum compared to many other birds found in the region (hence it’s name ‘cinereous’ which comes from the Latin meaning […]