A small, green warbler similar in size to a goldcrest. The yellow ‘eyebrow’ is distinctive, as is the coal tit-like call. Yellow-browed warblers breed in Siberia and occur in the UK every year as they migrate south-westwards.
Way back in April 2008 we received details of a ‘Willow Warbler‘ found dead outside Richard Lander School in Truro, Cornwall. This is perhaps a slightly early date for a returning migrant, but the interesting bit was that it was wearing a ring from the Dutch Ringing Scheme.
Following issues tracing the ring in The Netherlands, we have only just received the ringing details and these were rather surprising. Ring Y11467 was actually just the second foreign-ringed Yellow-browed Warbler to be found in the UK! It had been originally ringed on 3rd October 2007 on Schiermonnikoog (in red on the map here), an island off the north coast of the country, and had possibly spent the winter at one of Cornwall’s many sewage works.
These works regularly attract wintering Yellow-broweds, especially so in recent years, with no fewer than five seen on one day at Carnon Downs Sewage Works in February 2012. Below is one of two birds present at Gwennap Sewage Works, Cornwall, in January 2013.
The only previous record of a foreign-ringed Yellow-browed was a Norwegian bird ringed in September 1990 and recaught on Fair Isle five days later (blue on the map). The only British-ringed bird to be found abroad was one ringed at Portland Bird Observatory in October 1988 and recaught the next day on Guernsey (green on the map).
Spoon-billed Sandpipers lay 4 eggs in a simple tundra nest comprised of a shallow depression, most often in mosses, lined with a few dwarf willow leaves. The nest is incubated by both adults on half-day shifts — the male most often during the day and the female at night.
After 21 days of incubation the eggs begin to hatch in a process that takes a day or more to complete. When the young finally emerge from the nest they stumble about on well-developed legs and feet and begin to feed themselves. After the last chick emerges, the male begins his job of leading the chicks as they grow towards independence about 20 days later; the female soon departs and begins moving south. This piece captures the first moments of life at a wind swept Spoon-billed Sandpiper nest.
Video includes commentary by The Cornell Lab’s Gerrit Vyn.
Filmed July 7, 2011 near Meinypilgyno, Chukotka, Russia.
December 2012. On November 27, three young tigers appeared near a military unit located 8 km away from Yakovlevka village, Primorsky Krai, in the Russian Far East. The cubs tried to kill a domestic dog on a leash, but a guard scared the animals back into the woods.
A group of tiger specialists went to the scene immediately and tried to find out why the cubs were alone in the woods. Unfortunately, no tracks of any mother tiger were found. The specialists decided to catch the cubs and take them to the Amur Tiger Rehabilitation Centre in Alekseevka village where the animals will be provided with food and medical treatment.
November 2012. A Russian man convicted of killing an endangered Amur tiger has been sentenced to 14 months disciplinary labour and required to pay a fine of US$ 18,500. The perpetrator’s hunting rights have also revoked and his firearm confiscated.
During the course of the trial investigators were able to prove that the killing was intentional, not self-defence as the man purported. Forensic evidence demonstrated that the man was a long distance from the tiger when the initial shots were fired and that the animal tried to flee and hide from the hunter.
Pursued wounded tiger
The man pursued the wounded tiger, which made a final feeble attempt to defend itself before the fatal shot was fired at close range. The hunter sustained a scratch on his face and a broken finger. If not weakened, such a blow would have caused much more severe injuries.
WWF staff-members are greatly saddened by the death of the tiger, which they were familiar with from years of conservation work in the area. “We have met this male when doing annual winter tiger monitoring. It was never regarded as a conflict tiger,” said Pavel Fomenko, biodiversity conservation program coordinator at WWF-Russia’s Amur branch. “Examination of its dead body proved that the tiger was satiated and well-nourished. And a healthy and well-fed tiger never attacks a human if it is not wounded or threatened.”
Third guilty verdict in last 3 years
Dr Sergei Aramilev, species program coordinator says: “I’m glad that a guilty verdict for tiger killers in Russia is becoming the norm. The principle of unavoidability of punishment works. This is the third guilty verdict in the past three years. For comparison, in the period since the collapse of the USSR to 2009 only one guilty verdict was imposed. All the rest of the poachers managed to evade responsibility that time.”
There are only an estimated 3.200 tigers remaining in the wild. They are being hunted for their pelts, bones and other parts that are prized as ornaments and used in traditional medicine. WWF and partner TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, are campaigning for greater protection for tigers and stronger penalties for poachers and traffickers. We are also calling on consumer countries of tiger products, such as China, to undertake widespread demand reduction campaigns to discourage the use of endangered species products.
Russia may soon ban both amateur and professional hunting, only allowing indigenous peoples in remote regions and certified rangers to hunt: here.
First time camera traps are used to catch illegal activity
November 2012. Conservationists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) will be the first to use camera traps specifically for catching trespassers. Camera traps are typically used to capture images of endangered species for conservation purposes. But in a bid to increase anti-poaching efforts, special camera traps will be camouflaged and hidden in Russian forests to record illegal entry by would-be poachers.
Lazovsky Nature Reserve and Zov Tigra National Park
As part of ZSL’s ‘Forest Eyes’ project, a total of 30 camera traps will be set up in Lazovsky Nature Reserve and Zov Tigra National Park in the Russian Far East, equivalent to a total area a little larger than London. The two protected areas are 15 to 20 kilometres apart and separated by public land used mostly for hunting and logging. This results in people taking advantage of the area between the nature reserve and the national park to trespass onto nearby protected areas.
ZSL tiger conservationist Linda Kerley says: “The images from camera traps set up for humans will better inform us of any illegal activity in protected areas, so inspectors can be notified and patrols changed accordingly. We will be able to monitor the area more effectively and ensure we are doing all we can to try and change people’s attitudes and behaviours towards poaching,” Linda added.
7 tigers disappeared
Around five years ago, seven tigers disappeared from the protected areas and conservationists believe it was very likely they were poached. In the past year alone there were three seizures in the area, so it is critical that anti-poaching projects are effective. There are now 14 to 20 tigers that roam the national park and the nature reserve, and numbers remain stable.
ZSL’s conservation manager Sarah Christie added: “We hope the awareness of extra camera traps targeting people who encroach on protected areas will deter poachers from trying to kill tigers and their prey animals.”
ZSL has been involved in Amur tiger conservation in the Russian Far East for nearly 20 years. With the launch of ‘Forest Eyes’ conservationists will work with the support of the local Government to raise awareness of conservation efforts to protect the remaining Amur tiger population.
October 2012. Trade, transportation and possession of endangered species will all be considered crimes under new legislation proposed by the Kremlin, following discussions with WWF.
Tiger hunting is probably the biggest factor in the decline of tigers this century which has seen the world has lost 97 per cent of its wild tigers, including four sub-species to extinction. There may be as few as 3,200 of the endangered animals remaining. But until now, law in the Russian Federation, home to many of the world’s remaining tigers, only considered the actual killing of an animal to be a crime. Poachers who are stopped carrying the animals or their parts claim they found them dead.
“It is a significant step towards protection of tigers and other endangered species threatened by trade and poaching,” said Igor Chestin, CEO of WWF Russia who was heavily involved in discussions with the government. Russia has agreed for its Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to prepare the draft law in cooperation with WWF.
Tiger skins
Recently one man was found in possession of the remains of six tigers, another one with eight tiger skins. Under the current law they only might be eligible for an insignificant fine.
WWF and its partner TRAFFIC, the wildlife monitoring network, are campaigning for greater protection of threatened species such as rhinos, tigers and elephants. Demand for ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts from consumer markets in Asia is driving wild populations dangerously close to extinction. WWF is calling on governments to combat illegal wildlife trade and reduce demand for illicit endangered species products.
“Trade, transportation and possession of endangered species becoming a crime is a long-awaited measure that we believe will dramatically reduce poaching,” Chestin said.
Tiger habitat protection
WWF is also happy to see steps being made towards more protection for tiger habitats. The Primorsky region, where 90% of the Russian tigers live, was requested to ensure no commercial timber harvest takes place in the regional protected areas and nut harvesting zones. Regional administration was also ordered to prevent any commercial logging in upper and middle stream of the Bikin River.
Amur tigers
By the 1940s, hunting had driven the Amur tiger to the brink of extinction-with no more than 40 individuals remaining in the wild. The subspecies was saved when Russia became the first country in the world to grant the tiger full protection.
By the 1980s, the Amur tiger population had increased to around 500. Continued conservation and antipoaching efforts by many partners-including WWF-have helped keep the population stable at around 400 individuals. In 2010, the Russian Government adopted the Strategy for Tiger Conservation, making commitments to double the number of wild tigers by 2022 and to stiffen punishment for those caught smuggling tiger products.
Camera traps are typically used to capture images of endangered species for conservation purposes. But in a bid to increase anti-poaching efforts, special camera traps will be camouflaged and hidden in Russian forests to record illegal entry by would-be poachers: here.
After 32,000 Years, an Ice Age Flower Blooms Again
Permafrost is like nature’s freezer.
by Eric A. Powell
Deep in the frozen tundra of northeastern Siberia, a squirrel buried fruits some 32,000 years ago from a plant that bore white flowers. This winter a team of Russian scientists announced that they had unearthed the fruit and brought tissue from it back to life. The fruits are about 30,000 years older than the Israeli date palm seed that previously held the record as the oldest tissue to give life to healthy plants.
The researchers were studying ancient soil composition in an exposed Siberian riverbank in 1995 when they discovered the first of 70 fossilized Ice Age squirrel burrows, some of which stored up to 800,000 seeds and fruits. Permafrost had preserved tissue from one species—a narrow-leafed campion plant—exceptionally well, so researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences recently decided to culture the cells to see if they would grow. Team leader Svetlana Yashina re-created Siberian conditions in the lab and watched as the refrigerated tissue sprouted buds that developed into 36 flowering plants within weeks.
This summer Yashina’s team plans to revisit the tundra to search for even older burrows and seeds.
Recent camera trap images from the rocky terrain of Afghanistan’s central highlands have revealed a surprise: a Persian leopard, an apex predator long thought to have disappeared from the region. Read the full story here.
ON THE western fringes of Siberia, the Stone Age Denisova cave has surrendered precious treasure: a toe bone that could shed light on early humans’ promiscuous relations with their hominin cousins.
New Scientist has learned that the bone is now in the care of Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who revealed the first genetic evidence of interbreeding between ancient humans and other hominins (New Scientist, 30 July, p 34).
The Denisova cave had already yielded a fossil tooth and finger bone, in 2000 and 2008. Last year, Pääbo’s DNA analysis suggested both belonged to a previously unknown group of hominins, the Denisovans. The new bone, an extremely rare find, looks likely to belong to the same group.
It is a very exciting discovery, says Isabelle De Groote at London’s Natural History Museum. “Hominin material from southern Siberia is rare and usually extremely fragmentary.”
The primitive morphology of the 30,000 to 50,000-year-old Denisovan finger bone and tooth indicates that Denisovans separated from the Neanderthals roughly 300,000 years ago. At the time of the analysis, Pääbo speculated that they came to occupy large parts of east Asia at a time when Europe and western Asia were dominated by Neanderthals. By 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens was also moving around much of the region. But the Denisovans remain known only from the finger and tooth fossils – not enough information to formally assign them to their own species.
That may change with analysis of the newly discovered toe bone. It was found in the same layer of the cave floor as the finger bone, by Maria Mednikova at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow (Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, vol 39, p 129).
Mednikova says this suggests it belonged to a contemporary individual, alive roughly 40,000 years ago. But her studies show the finger and toe bones belonged to distinct people. In addition, the toe bone is stocky and its shape is somewhere between that of a modern human and a typical Neanderthal.
Others are less convinced. Erik Trinkaus at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, who has written extensively on hominin foot bone morphology, says the bone’s sturdy appearance is interesting but inconclusive from a taxonomic perspective.
What’s needed is DNA evidence. For now, though, Pääbo’s team remain very tight-lipped about what, if anything, they have found. “We have no results we are ready to talk about yet,” Pääbo told New Scientist.
Neanderthal Use of Fish, Mammals, Birds, Starchy Plants and Wood 125-250,000 Years Ago: here.
Neanderthal man lived on a diet of seafood in the caves of southern Spain much longer ago than previously thought, new archaeological findings show: here.
Humans and Neandertals may not have interbred, after all: here.
Not just a Neanderthal crush: modern humans interbred with more archaic hominin forms while in Africa: here. And here.
IT LOOKS like Neanderthals may have beaten modern humans to the seas. Growing evidence suggests our extinct cousins criss-crossed the Mediterranean in boats from 100,000 years ago – though not everyone is convinced they weren’t just good swimmers: here.
Humans reached Asia in two waves: Some early migrants interbred with mysterious Neandertal sister group: here.
European neanderthals were on the verge of extinction even before the arrival of modern humans: here.
A jawbone and its teeth discovered in a South England cave, Kent’s Cavern, in 1927 is more than 41,000 years old, suggests new dates linked to animal remains in the same cave. Meanwhile, two teeth excavated from a southern Italian site, Grotta del Cavallo, in the 1960s and attributed to Neanderthals may instead belong to modern humans. At 43,000 to 45,000 years old, they are the oldest anatomically modern human remains identified in Europe: here.
The discovery of stone axes in the same sediment layer as cruder tools indicates that hominins with differing tool-making technologies may have coexisted: here.
People love to get their hands on the latest and greatest technology, and scientists had long believed that early humans were no exception. Paleontologists theorized that our ancestors didn’t start leaving Africa until they had developed advanced hand axes. But a new study finds that early humans began to migrate out of the continent with more primitive tools even though better technology had been invented: here.
For years, evolutionary biologists have predicted that new human species would start popping up in Asia as we begin to look closely at fossilised bones found there. A new analysis of bones from south-west China suggests there’s truth to the forecast: here.
You could call it the original baptism of fire: the moment hominins first began controlling flames. There is now evidence that moment came at least 1 million years ago, a finding that will reignite the debate over whether human anatomy was changed forever by cooking: here.
Previous studies had hinted that the last mammoths left in Siberia were not natives – but immigrants from North America.
However, more evidence was required to strengthen the case for this “out of America” theory.
A team of researchers led by Professor Hendrik Poinar from McMaster University in Canada collected 160 mammoth samples from across Holarctica – a region encompassing present day North America, Europe and Asia.
Well-preserved DNA material – between 4,000 and 40,000 years old – was obtained from “almost every part of the animal – even from preserved hind, skin and hair”, Professor Poinar told BBC News.
They analysed DNA from mitochondria – genetic material which is passed from mother to offspring via the egg – and can be used to track the ancestry of a species back many hundreds of generations.
The genetic information confirmed that a North American mammoth population overturned those endemic to Asia.
Mammoth migration
It is hard to speculate why the North American woolly mammoths returned to Siberia.
a vast tundra plain that connected Asia and North America
about 1,000 miles from north to south at its greatest extent
was exposed and submerged as global sea levels changed during the Pleistocene
flooded and became the Bering Strait about 11,000 years ago
may have enabled migration of humans from Asia to the Americas
“Presumably, conditions were favourable on the Bering land bridge which was more of a large filter than an open highway,” suggested Professor Poinar.
The expansion of North American forests may have “pushed the mammoths along”, he added.
At the same time, the native Siberian mammoths, which may have been around for much of the Middle Pleistocene, completely disappeared.
It is unclear if the Siberian mammoths experienced a “natural decline” or if they were outcompeted by the North American immigrants.
The endemic Siberian population had different molar features and a “very unique DNA signature” – that was dated to be almost 900,000 years old.
It is possible that it may not have been a true woolly mammoth – but a more primitive species.
“Many people thought that this (primitive) species had become extinct way before 38,000 years ago,” said Professor Poinar.
“Palaeontologists were not so happy because these are the intricacies of DNA that are very difficult to discern based on mammoth tusks and teeth,” he added.
Further evidence of the African antiquity of hyaenodontid (‘Creodonta’, Mammalia) evolution: here.
Habitat tracking, stasis and survival in Neogene large mammals: here.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2012) — When it comes to adapting to climate change, diversity is the mammal’s best defense. That is one of the conclusions of the first study of how mammals in North America adapted to climate change in “deep time” — a period of 56 million years beginning with the Eocene and ending 12,000 years ago with the terminal Pleistocene extinction when mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths and most of the other “megafauna” on the continent disappeared: here.
Jan. 18, 2013 — Longer, warmer growing seasons associated with a changing climate are altering growing conditions in temperate rain forests, but not all plant species will be negatively affected, according to research conducted by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station: here.
