Meet the oldest banded, wild bird - a 64 year-old Albatross! https://www.doi.gov/blog/wisdo...

wow!

Wow, that is beyond amazing.

Another wow from me. I'm just sitting here with mouth agape. Wow.
Beautiful birds too!

Still stunned. She is older than I am. She was banded in the year of my birth. She looks GREAT!!!!!

WOW! I had no idea that ANY bird species lived to be THAT old. Oh yeah ... parrots might be one that does. But 64 is pretty old for any creature!

Not exactly groundbreaking news that we need to protect all pollinators, but it's interesting to see the percentage of crops being pollinated by things other than bees.

http://www.upi.com/Science_New...

WE know that, but there are more people who don't than do.
People less obsessed than we are will learn from it.

A Painted Bunting in Brooklyn? It's true! http://nypost.com/2015/12/02/p...

very cool!
Unless it's a bad omen that their usual range is tarnished....

Well, their population numbers in some areas have decreased over time, I've heard. I've thought they might become endangered someday, and thinking about that makes me very sad, because I love seeing them. Just watching them gives me so much happiness...I don't know if it's just their beauty or if there's other reasons they affect me like this. BTW, those in Brooklyn who feel "ecstatic"...I understand that well!

Well, their population numbers in some areas have decreased over time, I've heard. I've thought they might become endangered someday, and thinking about that makes me very sad, because I love seeing them. Just watching them gives me so much happiness...I don't know if it's just their beauty or if there's other reasons they affect me like this. BTW, those in Brooklyn who feel "ecstatic"...I understand that well!

I've never seen one in person.

My brother in Angleton, Texas has never seen one either! Of course, he just recently started feeding birds, but has been on bird-watching expeditions many times.

The "Eastern" Painted Buntings ARE decreasing in numbers and no one knows absolutely sure as to why. Possibly habitat loss, birds captured and sold/kept as pet birds, some other unknown cause, or a combination of many things .....

The PBOT research has pretty much run out of money even though the research is still operating on a shoe-string. It has only been the last 2 1/2 years that a bander in Florida has been capturing and banding them to aid in this research. Before that, there were mainly banders in NC and SC involved in this research project.
More information about the research can be found on the website:
http://paintedbuntings.org/

I have read that the "Western" Painted Bunting population is not at risk, only the Eastern birds.

This page on the PBOT website gives more information about the concern of the decrease in Eastern Painted Bunting population:
http://paintedbuntings.org/faq...

There was one other earlier study about the decline in Eastern Painted Buntings that concluded in 2010:
http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/point...

Thanks for all the research, Becky!

Love it! A fascinating mystery about a butterfly caterpillar in the Amazonian rain forest:
http://news.nationalgeographic...

Monarchs! As I may never see this many:
https://www.facebook.com/13120...

I love the article about the ants, caterpillar, and parasitic plant. Nature is so interconnected and we really don't understand it all that well. Like the article points out, conservation efforts in England failed when they accidentally got rid of the ants that tended the caterpillars.