This 18 February 2017 video is about great tits looking for insect food among fallen leaves in the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen in the Netherlands.
Great tits look for food
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Daily Archives: February 23, 2017
United States water protectors not giving up
This video from the USA says about itself:
23 February 2017
In North Dakota, the main resistance camp set up by Lakota water protectors fighting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline has been largely vacated after protesters were ordered to leave the camp on Wednesday. Police arrested around 10 people. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the North Dakota governor had imposed a noon eviction deadline for the hundreds of water protectors still living at the resistance camp.
Prayers ceremonies were held on Wednesday, and part of the camp was set on fire before the eviction began. Water protectors say the resistance camp sits on unceded Sioux territory under the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie and that they have a right to remain on their ancestral land. A couple dozen people remain at the camp. The ongoing encampments in North Dakota were the largest gathering of Native Americans in decades. At its peak, more than 10,000 people were at the resistance camp.
Earlier this month, construction crews resumed work on the final section of the pipeline, after the Trump administration granted an easement to allow Energy Transfer Partners to drill beneath the Missouri River. We go to Standing Rock to speak with LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and Linda Black Elk.
Related articles
Pine siskins at Canadian feeders
This video from Canada says about itself:
Pine Siskins Make an Uncommon Visit to Ontario FeederWatch Cam – Feb. 22, 2017
Two or Three Pine Siskins spent some time on the feeder tray of the Ontario FeederWatch Cam this afternoon. These small, brown, streaky finches have subtle yellow edgings on wings and tails. Pine Siskins can be easily confused with the Common Redpolls on cam, but they have a slender, more sharply pointed bill and are much streakier on the breast. They also lack the red forehead spot of the Common Redpolls.
Thanks to our eagle-eyed cam host for the spot!
Thanks to Perky-Pet for helping to make the Ontario FeederWatch Cam possible!
The FeederWatch cam is located in a residential neighborhood in Manitouwadge, Ontario.
Featuring pine grosbeaks as well.
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Argentine President Macri’s scandals
This video says about itself:
Argentina‘s President Macri Faces Increasing Scandals and Resistance to His Return to Neoliberalism
22 February 2017
The political panorama for Argentina’s conservative government looks increasingly difficult according to Prof. Atilio Boron.
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British barn owls still in trouble
This video from England says about itself:
20 March 2015
Barn Owls, Tyto alba. In slow motion.
Near Hundred End Lancashire, March 2015.
With a Panasonic Lumix GH4
From BirdLife:
22 Feb 2017
British Barn Owls still struggling to adapt to modern life
The most recent nest site survey indicates that the factors that wiped out 70% of Barn Owls in the 20th century still impact the beloved species today
By Alex Dale
One of the most widespread birds of prey in the world, the Common Barn Owl Tyto alba has proven so successful at adapting to life alongside humans that even its very name reflects the symbiotic relationship that has been shared by farmers and this charismatic bird over the course of thousands of years.
Common Barn Owls prefer to roost and nest in sheltered areas that protect them from the elements, and when settlers first began building on Britain’s countryside, crafty barn owls quickly swooped on the opportunity, swapping rock crevices and holes in trees for comfy crevices in the attics of barns and churches. In return, Barn Owls would repay their unwitting landlords by preying on the mice and voles that ventured onto their land.
However by the mid-20th Century, changes to the dynamic of this human-bird relationship rapidly sent British Barn Owl numbers into a tailspin. According to the Barn Owl Trust – a UK-based charity who works to protect the species – Barn Owls in the country declined by as much as 70% between 1932 and 1985.
The Barn Owl declined by 70% during the 20th Century, as intensive farming practices took their toll on the much-loved countryside bird
These declines are largely the result of improvements in the way farmers cultivate their land. The rise of the combine harvester, which is extremely efficient at harvesting grain, and the development of sealed grain silos, means grain is no longer stored in enclosures on farmland, meaning less food for rodents during the long, cold winters, and subsequently less prey for owls.
Today’s farmers are also able to cultivate land that was previously beyond their tools’ means, allowing them to plough right to the edges, resulting in the loss of the Barn Owl’s favoured hunting habitat: rough grassland verges.
The 20th Century has also brought with it other dangers that have taken their toll: road fatalities, potent rat poisons and the loss of nesting spots as traditional barns are pulled down and replaced with less inviting buildings.
There is evidence that numbers of barn owls in the UK have stabilised since the mid-1990s, but clearly these factors are still impacting the species today. While numbers of the UK population of this reclusive, nocturnal species are poorly understood, we can determine the health of the country’s Barn Owl population through the Barn Owl Trust’s annual nest site survey, in which 32 independent local groups from across the country – from Cornwall to Norfolk to Northern Island – pool together to visit nest sites and record the brood size of successful breeding pairs.
The results tell the story of another poor year overall for the Barn Owl – the number of nesting pairs in 2016 was down 6% on the all-year average, and the number of young in the nest was down 7%. While disappointing, the numbers are at least an improvement on 2013 and 2015, two exceptionally poor years where cold weather saw nesting occupancies down 70% and 25% against the all-year average.
Low productivity is clearly becoming a trend, which the Barn Owl Trust attributes to a lack of available prey, and an overall low population density exacerbated by a lack of juvenile barn owls to replace the adults.
The report, which can be read here, recommends several measures to help sustain Barn Owl numbers, including habitat improvement, the installation of low-flight prevention screens around trunk roads to avoid collisions, and replacing existing nest boxes to reduce chick mortality by ensuring the replacements are no less than 460mm deep.
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Trump’s anti-education DeVos and United States teachers
This satiric video from the USA says about itself:
10 February 2017
Jimmy [Fallon] speaks with new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about her plans for America’s public schools, including getting rid of textbooks.
By Nancy Hanover in the USA:
“If you don’t have an education, you don’t have a life”
Teachers speak out on the schools crisis and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
23 February 2017
New US Education Secretary billionaire Betsy DeVos has lost no time in making known her ideological opposition to public education, contempt for educators and hostility to democratic rights.
Her installation has evoked strong opposition to teachers, who rightly see DeVos as the spearhead of a ramped up attack at all levels on public education.
Following her narrow Cabinet confirmation, DeVos’ first appearance was a brief visit to a public school, Washington DC’s Jefferson Middle School Academy, on February 10. Her arrival was greeted with protests by parents and teachers, temporarily preventing her from entering into the school.
Speaking to the press after the visit, DeVos insulted the teachers, haughtily characterized them as in “receive mode” … “waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child.” She has routinely referred to public schools as a “dead end”.
In a subsequent interview with the right-wing news site Townhall, DeVos alleged the protests were “not genuine”. “We’ve seen enough written that they want to make my life a living hell”, she added. …
DeVos has now made the highly unusual and expensive demand that she be accompanied by US federal marshals for the foreseeable future. No Cabinet-level secretary has requested a similar level of protection since at least 2009.
The secretary is not just fearful of protesting teachers, she also issued a not-so-veiled threat that any Education Department employees who try to “subvert the mission” (her pro-privatization agenda) would be attended to “swiftly and surely”, according to Townhall.
For his part, President Trump reiterated his support for privatization at a White House “listening session” with a handpicked group of parents on February 14. Trump, with DeVos at his side, described charter schools as “fantastic”, “amazing” and “unbelievable”. He has pledged $20 billion of federal dollars for school vouchers through block grants to the states or a federally funded scholarship tax credit program written into the tax code.
In an interview with Axios published February 17, DeVos stated that she would “be fine” with the abolition of the Department of Education and predicted the flowering of all types of schools except public ones. “I expect there will be more public charter schools. I expect there will be more private schools. I expect there will be more virtual schools. I expect there will be more schools of any kind that haven’t even been invented yet.”
Teachers spoke to the WSWS describing their reactions to the Trump administration’s privatization policies, DeVos, the threat to close nearly half of Detroit’s public schools, the failure of the teachers’ unions to stand up for educators and the broader political issues involved in defending democratic rights and public education. …
In the city of Detroit, the DeVos family’s policies have resulted in a wide battery of pro-privatization legislation and the control of 80 percent of charters by for-profit businesses. The growth of charter schools and edubusinesses in DeVos’ home state of Michigan, as elsewhere, proliferated under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top.
A young first-year teacher in a Detroit public schools said, “I am not originally from Michigan so I didn’t know much about Betsy DeVos before now. Working in Detroit schools and talking with other educators, I see the effects of her policies already.
“They are trying to shut between 8-10 of the Education Achievement Authority schools and dozens of Detroit Public School Community District schools, some this year and some next.
“From what I heard, the charter districts are already looking to buy these schools. That’s how underhanded things are already. Charters have had a terrible effect on Detroit. With DeVos in office, what I’ve seen will happen all around the nation.
“In my district, the neighborhood is the worst of the worst. The homes are abandoned; there are fires everywhere. These are ‘forgotten’ neighborhoods, those in poverty.
“We’re got seven-year-olds at pre-K reading levels. Seeing children two years behind is common. Our school is severely underfunded with computers. My children get no time with computers, but they need to because the tests are all online. The computer testing starts in kindergarten.
“Then bonuses are paid to the teachers based on the test scores and if there has been ‘student growth’. Attendance is a big problem. Often kids are gone for six or seven days, then in school for two. It’s really hard to make gains like that.”
The elementary teacher added her strong opposition to the administration’s attacks on immigrants. “As an undergraduate, I studied Spanish and my parents suggested I become an ICE officer. I wouldn’t because I didn’t want to send anyone back. It’s so deplorable. No one is a native here, unless you are Native American, and we see how they are treated.
“The claims that immigrants are taking jobs are just used to fuel the fire. They want to use this hot button issue to change what people are focusing on, like cutting the EPA, women’s rights or the national parks. Deporting people goes against basic fundamental human rights and even how our country was founded. I can’t even believe this is happening in 2017.”
Beverly, a Detroit Community Public Schools District teacher, said: “I am in one of the priority schools but it’s not on the list for closure. I try to speak out and be positive.
“What a lot of people fail to understand about the school closures is that it is not just academics which can put a school on the list, but also attendance. If the children don’t come to school for whatever reason—their transportation breaks down, their parent has to go to work—the school can be put on the list and the school be closed.
“A school can have most of the children improving, say 90 percent, but if that other 10 percent falls, this will pull the scores down. That can be another reason the school is judged not to meet Annual Yearly Progress.
“If there is no education and people don’t have financial means, a sociological change takes place. They can turn to stealing to find food. I try to be positive, but the powers-that-be, the political people in charge, are more concerned with their riches.
Related articles
How endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatchers survive in California, USA
This video from the USA says about itself:
25 April 2016
We need your help to defeat an effort by developers and others to remove protected status for the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. Please visit audubon.org/takeaction to speak up for this great bird.
From The Condor, magazine of the American Ornithological Society, in February 2017:
Female-biased sex ratio, polygyny, and persistence in the endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus)
Barbara E. Kus*, Scarlett L. Howell, and Dustin A. Wood
ABSTRACT
Demographic changes in populations, such as skewed sex ratios, are of concern to conservationists, especially in small populations in which stochastic and other events can produce declines leading to extirpation. We documented a decline in one of the few remaining populations of Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) in southern California, USA, which dropped from 40 to 5 adults between 2000 and 2015. Declines were unequal between sexes (94% for males, 82% for females). Adult sex ratios were female-biased in 10 of 16 yr.
The proportion of paired males that were polygynous ranged from 0% to 100%, depending on the ratio of females to males in the adult population. Some males paired with up to 5 females simultaneously.
We investigated the role of nestling sex ratio in the female-biased adult sex ratio by using genetic techniques to determine sex from blood samples collected from 162 nestlings in 72 nests from 2002 to 2009. Both population-level and within-brood nestling sex ratios were female-biased, and were not influenced by nest order (first or subsequent), parental mating type (monogamous or polygynous), or year. Disproportionately more females than males were recruited into the breeding population, mirroring nestling and fledgling sex ratios. It thus appears that a skewed nestling sex ratio has contributed to a female-biased adult population, which in turn has influenced mating behavior.
We propose that the capacity for polygyny, which generally occurs at low levels in Southwestern Willow Flycatchers, has allowed this population to persist through a decline that might otherwise have resulted in extinction.
Related articles
United States Muslim solidarity with vandalized Jewish cemetery
This video from the USA says about itself:
Muslims Organize Fundraiser For Vandalized Jewish Cemetery
22 February 2017
An anti-semitic act of vandalism is being fought with love and solidarity. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, discuss.
“There has been an outpouring of support around the vandalism at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery.
“There is a concept in Jewish teaching and thought known as tikkun olam — It translates literally into ‘repairing the world,’ but what it means more broadly is that we all have an obligation to one another and to be of service,” wrote Greitens. “It is in moments like this that the world is in most need of repair, and we must do our part.”
A fundraising campaign organized by Muslim Americans — Linda Sarsour of MPower Change and Tarek El-Messidi of CelebrateMercy — has raised more than $64,000 in support of the rebuilding efforts, more than triple the initial goal of $20,000. The funds remaining after the cemetery is restored will be contributed to repair other vandalized Jewish centers, the campaign said.
“Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America,” the campaign wrote on its fundraising landing page. “We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who has undoubtedly been shaken by this event.”
On Wednesday, Missouri’s governor and community members will gather at the cemetery to help clean and repair the damage. As of Tuesday afternoon, the cemetery was able to reset about 50 headstones.”
Read more here.
Two Muslim activists, Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi, launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $20,000 for repairs, which ultimately raised over $162,000. In addition to paying for repairs and improvements at the St. Louis cemetery, the funds went to help pay to repair damage to a Philadelphia-area Jewish cemetery vandalized days after the St, Louis attack, to help the downtown Chicago Loop Synagogue repair anti-Semitic vandalism. and to restore a neglected and vandalized Jewish cemetery in Colorado: here.
Related articles
Sea snails and hermit crabs video
This video says about itself:
Giant Horse Conch & Burglar Hermit Crabs – Blue Planet – BBC Earth
20 February 2017
An amazing Giant Sea Snail makes a meal of a smaller Tulip Snail and it is not long before a group of eager Hermit Crabs seize the opportunity to grab a new home.
Memories can be transferred between organisms by extracting ribonucleic acid (RNA) from a trained animal and injecting it into an untrained animal, as demonstrated in a study of sea snails: here.
Baby sea snails ride waves into shallower waters. Effects of turbulence and waves on snail larvae: here.
Related articles
Anti-water protectors police violence in North Dakota, USA
This video from the USA says about itself:
BREAKING: Water Protectors‘ Camp Surrounded, Cops Moving In
…
Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, the hosts of The Young Turks, show you video of the standoff. …
Hundreds of police in riot gear and carrying night sticks are clearing the final Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, who remained on federal land in violation of orders by the governor to vacate the area by 4:00pm local time. Protesters consider the land to be indigenous property, Standing Rock, under treaty.
Enforcements included units from the Wisconsin State Troopers and Morton County officers, according to Unicorn Riot, an independent media collective. The collective also reported seeing a National Lawyers Guild observer being arrested.
Police regrouped following several arrests, returning to formation opposite protesters on the road. Remaining protesters anticipated them rushing at any moment.
Read more here.
By Zaida Green in the USA:
Violent arrests as police begin evacuating Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp
23 February 2017
Riot police began violently arresting the remaining Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in the Oceti Sakowin Camp, following yesterday’s eviction deadline set by North Dakota Governor Doug Burgrum.
The first arrests occurred a few hours after the 2:00 pm deadline. Police rushed and tackled unarmed protesters and independent journalists, then retreated down the road, only to rush at protesters again. Eric Poemz, one of those attacked, was slammed onto the ground by the police, injuring his left hip and rendering him unable to walk.
The police presence was ramped up in the week leading to the February 22 deadline. Planes and helicopters owned by the pipeline company, carrying police, have been constantly surveilling the camp from only a few hundred feet in the sky. Supplies and sanitation services to the camp have been cut off by roadblocks and checkpoints set up by the police February 15.
The Oceti Sakowin Camp lies in the path of the nearly completed $3.78 billion oil pipeline, on land afforded to the Sioux tribe in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is expected to be completed by March 6 and will transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil across four states, crossing both the nearby Ogallala Aquifer and the Missouri River.
Protesters from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and outside the tribe fear that a leak would threaten the drinking supplies of 17 million people. The company that owns the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, has been responsible for at least 200 recorded pipeline leaks since 2010.
Governor Bargum and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which oversees the construction of the pipeline, ordered the evacuation on the pretext of public safety concerns relating to springtime flooding and rubbish left behind by protesters following hasty evacuations ordered by the previous governor last December.
National Guard troops, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents and riot police from Wisconsin and other states were deployed ahead of the deadline to assist the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. The remaining few hundred protesters in the camp risk fines of up to $5,000 and prison sentences of up to six months.
The Senate of North Dakota recently passed bills to criminalize the anti-DAPL protests, making it a crime to gather on “public safety zones” determined by the governor. The bills also grant police more freedom to designate a protest as a riot, the incitement of which carries up to 20 years in prison.
The Trump administration has escalated the persecution of the anti-DAPL protesters, with the Department of Justice drawing up arrest warrants against protesters and their attorneys. The administration has also fast-tracked construction of the pipeline by scuttling any further environmental reviews by the USACE and rejecting injunctions against the continued construction.
Trump has packed his cabinet with CEOs and other individuals with close ties to the energy industry. Yesterday, more than 7,500 emails were released revealing that Trump’s recently-confirmed head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, collaborated intimately with energy industry executives to challenge environmental regulations during his tenure as the attorney general of Oklahoma.
Though the Trump administration has deployed an additional 60 BIA agents to the camp, North Dakota’s governor and local police are pushing for a further escalation in federal intervention. “We’re getting nothing again,” said Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney.
The protests in North Dakota won wide popular support last year, with tens of thousands of participating in demonstrations in the US and internationally, and thousands of others gathering at protest camps throughout North Dakota. The protests spread almost entirely through social media amidst a rising wave of police violence and attacks on the living conditions of the working class.
Since protests began last summer, there have been nearly 700 arrests. Almost two hundred protesters were injured in police raids on the camp last winter, with police firing lead-filled beanbags, water cannons and concussion grenades.
The actions taken now by the Trump administration are the culmination of the strategy of the political establishment as a whole. In the spring and fall of last year, the Obama administration stood by as police attacked protesters. Then in September the administration and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a temporary stay on construction. In December, after the US elections, the administration halted the project pending an additional environmental review.
This was a maneuver aimed at passing off final action on construction to the incoming Trump administration, which had already made clear that it would act quickly to remove any constraints. Earlier this month, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would grant easement to ETP to finish construction, which was followed rapidly by the moves of the state government to shut down the protests.
…
Since the beginning of December, shares in ETP have risen more than 16 percent in anticipation of the payout to come from completion of the pipeline.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 