Dear Kitty. Some blog

From British daily The Guardian:

Dinosaur with feathers and fangs prowled forests like a predatory turkey

Poison from the bird-like dinosaur’s fangs may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of escaping

* Ian Sample, science correspondent
*Monday 21 December 2009 20.00 GMT

The remains of a venomous, feathered beast that terrorised prehistoric forests like a predatory turkey have been unearthed by fossil hunters in northern China.

Palaeontologists uncovered a well-preserved skull and partial skeleton of the bird-like dinosaur, Sinornithosaurus, that lived in the region 128 million years ago.

The creature, a close relative of the velociraptor, had fangs similar to those seen in modern poisonous snakes and venomous lizards, such as the Mexican gila monster.

Analysis of the dinosaur’s fang-like teeth revealed grooves that could channel poison from glands set into each side of the creature’s jawbone, researchers said.

“This is an animal about the size of a turkey,” said Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of Kansas. “It’s a specialised predator of small dinosaurs and birds.”

The discovery, reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first evidence of a venomous relative in the velociraptor lineage.

The venom was probably not potent enough to be lethal, but may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of fighting back or escaping.

“You wouldn’t have seen it coming,” said co-author David Burnham. “It would have swooped down behind you from a low-hanging tree branch and attacked.”

“Once the teeth were embedded in your skin the venom could seep into the wound. The prey would rapidly go into shock, but it would still be living, and it might have seen itself being slowly devoured by this raptor,” Burnham added.

One of the beast’s close relatives was the four-winged glider, the microraptor, which some scientists believe may also have been poisonous. Sinornithosaurus’ fangs were long enough to penetrate thick feathers and pierce the skin beneath to a depth of half a centimetre, enough to get venom into the prey’s bloodstream.

This video shows “A single Redwing, feeding on apples in the snow” (and a blackbird at the end).

More snow expected for this afternoon.

Still much open water, in the Rhine and the big canals.

On the river bank, six great cormorants on a landing, and one on small boat.

My apple peels attract scores of black-headed gulls, mallards, a few coots, and one juvenile herring gull.

Galeirão, Fulica atra, Coot from Jose Viana on Vimeo

This is a Dutch TV video about a wounded swift, nursed with a special harness by veterinarians in Israel.

More about that is here.

Swifts in Leiden, the Netherlands: here.

After a night of freezing, today there was still more open water than I expected. Maybe because there is quite some wind as well.

There were lots of snow during the night and much of the day.

In the botanical garden, great tits and blue tits. Also a long-tailed tit.

A robin. A bunch of greenfinches in a coniferous tree.

This video is about Maui forest birds, including the Maui parrotbill.

By Chris Hamilton in The Maui News in Hawaii:

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Survey shows endangered Maui parrotbill population doing well

WAILUKU, Maui - The critically endangered Maui parrotbill is apparently doing quite well, perhaps even thriving, in the The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii’s Waikamoi Preserve, according a report issued this week.

Nature Conservancy scientists estimated there are about 20 of the chunky yellowish, insect-eating birds per square kilometer in the windward preserve near the summit of Haleakala. That means the estimated population of about 500 is holding steady or possibly even increasing, said Nature Conservancy of Hawaii spokesman Grady Timmons on Friday.

“It was very encouraging because they only have a natural habitat of about 19 square miles, all located in East Maui,” Timmons said.

How much the parrotbill population increased is difficult to say, the scientists said, since the last survey was not as extensive. But they said they are certain that the numbers are as good or getting better.

The bird, which is a member of the Native Hawaiian honeycreeper species, has been relegated to the higher elevations since its natural habitat has been damaged over the years by agriculture and development, he said. Avian flu, malaria and rats that eat the birds’ eggs also have taken a toll, Timmons said.

Ornithologist Dusti Becker, who is project coordinator for the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, said she was surprised by the results of the population survey, which she led.

“I didn’t expect that there would be that many birds there,” she said.

A previous study had placed the density of the bird population at about half of what the most recent survey found. However, scientists cautioned that the findings were limited to a two-week survey done in September.

Still, the survey area is 400 acres between the Waikamoi Stream and Koolau Gap, and the two-person teams reported hearing or seeing dozens of parrotbills, including juvenile birds.

“We can say with confidence that Waikamoi hosts a breeding population,” said Nature Conservancy Maui Director Mark White.

The scientists hypothesized that Nature Conservancy efforts in recent years to fence off the preserve from wild pigs and goats and remove invasive plants and replace them with native species likely contributed to the parrotbill population hike. For instance, native shrub cover in Waikamoi has tripled in the past 15 years.

And the parrotbills mostly eat grubs found in the shrubs’ fruit, according to the report.

The Waikamoi Preserve is 5,230 acres. The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii has been managing the property, which is owned by Haleakala Ranch, since the nonprofit received a permanent conservation easement from the ranch in 1983.

About 25 percent of the parrotbill population is found in Waikamoi and most of the rest is in the Hanawi Natural Area Reserve in East Maui, also on the slopes of Haleakala.

The birds were once found throughout Maui and Molokai. The parrotbill is only 5 to 6 inches long and gets its name from the parrot shape of its bill. The birds are olive green on top and have a yellowish belly and distinctive yellow stripe over their eyes.

The bills, which Timmons compared to can openers, are incredibly strong and able to pry open bark to reach insects and grubs.

“The typical story line with endangered forest birds is one of decline,” said Sam Gon, The Nature Conservancy’s senior scientist and cultural adviser. “To have an endangered bird maintain its population and perhaps even show signs of increasing is very encouraging and cause for celebration.”

Nature Conservancy scientists noted that the po’ouli bird, which lived in the same preserve, may be extinct. The last pair of po’ouli birds was last seen in 2004.

For more information, go online to mauiforestbirds.org.

This video is called THE WATER BIRDS: WINTER PHOTOGRAPHS.

Temperature today stayed below zero all time.

Though ice flows are already growing, also in big canals, the river Rhine is still ice free.

I went to a point where a canal comes into the river, and where some waterbirds had gathered. I started throwing potatoe peels, apple peels, and pear peels into the water. The black-headed gulls and mallards immediately came to eat. Soon, a few coots arrived on the scene as well. However, the great crested grebes and great cormorants, being fish-eaters, did not bother.

A ring-necked parakeet, flying high overhead.

A few hundred meters further, in the canal near the anthropological museum, the same bird species came for the rest of the food. Also three semi-domestic geese, a semi-domestic duck, and juvenile and adult herring gulls this time.

This is a video of greenfinches at a bird feeder.

This video is called Copenhagen Climate Demonstration - Combo of Street Interviews.

The UN-sponsored global climate summit in Copenhagen staggered toward a finish Friday night, with representatives of the major world powers hoping to salvage a brief statement of principles, without a single binding commitment, before bringing the two-week conference to an end: here.

Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure: here.

Copenhagen: `Imperial’ climate deal rejected by poor-country delegates: here.

Greenpeace: Copenhagen a cop-out.

ALBA and G77 Denounce Copenhagen Sham: here.

New Scientist on this: here.

See also here.

Evo Morales: Trillions for war, peanuts to save the planet: here.

Artists and the Copenhagen conference: here.

Greenpeace: Copenhagen, Denmark — Four of our activists face the prospect of Christmas in jail this year over charges relating to our crashing of the Head of State dinner at the Copenhagen climate summit, while the leaders who did practically nothing about the greatest threat to our planet got away scott free: here. And here.

Environmentalists have denounced the results of the two-week climate conference in Copenhagen as “toothless” and “half-baked”: here.

Hugo Chávez writes on `The battle of Copenhagen’: here.

Godfather of global warming deniers US Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Copenhagen: here.

Conservatives Continue Their Assault on Climate Science — And Reason: here.

Despite the urgency of finding a solution to global warming, the representatives of 193 states at the world climate conference in Copenhagen last week were utterly incapable of agreeing on any effective steps to reduce global levels of greenhouse gases: here.

U.S.-Led Copenhagen Accord Decried as Flawed, Undemocratic: here.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SINOPHOBIA: here.

BirdLife comments on Copenhagen: here.

Developing countries and unions globally have branded the Copenhagen climate summit as a “farce” and insisted that the threat posed by global warming required rich states to commit to binding emissions reductions: here.

Today, to the southern jetty of Scheveningen harbour. As it is one of the few rocky places on the mainly sandy Dutch coast, often birds who like rocks congegrate here.

Purple sandpipers are here often. Others saw them today on the jetty, but we didn’t.

Many oystercatchers and turnstones.

This is a video of a rock pipit in Denmark.

A call of a rock pipit. It flies to the left.

Later, the inner harbour quay. Often, scores of turnstones here in winter. But not so today, probably because the snow hinders them in finding food. Near a pole, three sleeping, one awake. Later, others join them, increasing the group’s size to ten turnstones and one juvenile herring gull. Then, a woman passes, walking her dog. All birds fly away.