Comments on: Alaskan birds in jeopardy

By: Northern Waterways » 2007 Watchlist from Audubon Identifies Birds at Risk in North America and Hawaii

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:14:37 +0000

[...] eskimo curlew, rock sandpiper, buff-breasted sandpiper, ivory gull, and kittlitz’s murrelet (Far North Science). Each year, there are numerous submissions to the Christmas Bird Count from citizen birders around [...]

By: Northern Waterways

Northern Waterways — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:00:30 +0000

By: S2

S2 — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:25:00 +0000

One of the advantages of living in Scotland (at least for me) is the opportunity to watch seabirds, such as Kittiwakes, Arctic Terns, Shag, Guillemots and Eider. Apparently 45% of the European Union's seabird population breed on Scotland's shores. In recent years, breeding seasons have not been good - apparently also due to climate change. Many of the seabirds feed their young on sand eels, which in turn feed on plankton, but as our waters warm the plankton (and the sand eels) are migrating north - out of reach of the breeding grounds. It's not nice finding starving guillemots on the beach, without enough energy to fly away as you approach. A couple of BBC articles on this are here and here. I also found an article about the Norwegian Puffin population Aftenposten (though, to be fair, they're not sure if it's warming or just unusual wind patterns this year). I feel sorry for the murrelets and the other species on the WatchList 2007, and I fear that the impact is a lot wider in scope.