Welcome to a special birding edition of the Science Times newsletter, which will land in your inbox every Friday through September.
This summer's weather records — a summer of climate reckoning, in the words of the Times Opinion columnist David Wallace-Wells — have brought a number of challenges for birds. Unprecedented wildfires have burned all summer in Canada, posing a threat to the respiratory systems that power the flights of migratory species. Emperor penguins lost breeding grounds to record-low Antarctic sea ice. Now it's hurricane season. Just like wildfires, hurricanes can divert birds from their migratory paths; in the parlance of ornithologists, birds are entrained and displaced by the storms. Essentially, birds that are entrained are pulled into the hurricane, sometimes all the way to its eye; birds that are displaced are pushed away by it. For birders, this presents an opportunity — birds entrained or pushed off course can make for a rare sighting far inland from normal habitat or migration routes. Hurricane Idalia has been the most significant hurricane of the season so far, briefly reaching Category 4 status before making landfall in rural Florida with a powerful storm surge. And it sent birds in all directions from its path, in a manner that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been tracking: American flamingoes on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, black terns in the Atlanta area. Hurricane Hilary, which resulted in the first tropical storm warning for Los Angeles, scattered birds across the desert. Storm petrels were sighted from Las Vegas to Tucson, Ariz., and another was spotted in the high desert of Nevada toward Reno, near the California border. A red-billed tropic bird, typically found off the coasts of Southern California and Baja California, was seen near Lake Havasu City in Arizona, and frigatebirds clustered near Yuma. Hurricanes are tough on birds. The Gulf of Mexico, where Idalia pushed through, is one of the hemisphere's most important migration routes. Entraining and displacing is extra work for birds, and not all survive what is sometimes called a "wreck." The course and aftermath of a hurricane can be risky for birders, too. But along with the personal reward of spotting an unusual bird, such post-hurricane counts help monitor the health of ecosystems at their extremes.
Watch the Times climate event and chat with us beforehand in Slack
On Sept. 21, The New York Times will bring together newsmakers, including Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group; Robin Wall Kimmerer, author and scientist; Marie Kondo, tidying expert and founder of KonMari Media; and others, for an all-day event examining the actions needed to confront climate change. Times subscribers can sign up to watch the livestream of this event. Registering will also give you an opportunity to connect with other online attendees on the messaging platform Slack, launching a week before the event. Each day will feature a different topic and guests, including birding and biodiversity.
Before you go, some birding adventures in words
As our thanks for contributing to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's important work, we are inviting readers to spot the many feathered friends that have appeared in the New York Times Crossword. The good news is that these birds can be found without binoculars: All you need is a pencil if you want to print the puzzles out, or a device on which to solve them. And if you'd like a guide, the Wordplay crossword column provides hints and tips. (Fair warning: The columns contain spoilers for the puzzles.)
Birding Adventure No. 1 (Puzzle, Wordplay column) Those chevron-shaped black squares in this puzzle make spotting the birds easy: They are supposed to resemble a flock of birds in flight. All you have to do is decipher the message that runs through the long Across entries. Birding Adventure No. 2 (Puzzle, Wordplay column) You may need to really search for the birds in this crossword. We'd point them out to you, but the fun is in the finding. Birding Adventure No. 3 (Puzzle, Wordplay column) Interesting looking grid, isn't it? It's definitely a bird, but what kind? See if you can find the game within the game. Birding Adventure No. 4 (Puzzle, Wordplay column) Sunday puzzles come with titles, and this one is called "Chick Lit."
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Friday, September 8, 2023
Science Times: How hurricanes send birds off course
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