Odds and Ends--some things worth a look

this horned lark patiently waiting for climate change was photographed by Val Thomas who watches over things in the Weyburn area

I was interviewed recently by David Regan of the "Animals in Canada" blog. Here is a link to his posting on our discussion.

Here are a few things about birds or about grassland that caught my eye recently:

The 2010 State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change, released by the American Secretary of the Interior. Click here to go to the news release which has links to the full report. The report, put together by a consortium of bird conservation organizations, concludes that while forest birds show low level of vulnerability to climate change, grassland birds show an intermediate level of vulnerability. Here is the page with scores of vulnerability for grassland birds.

From my good friend Chris Reed, who right now is at Grassland National Park working with Greater Sage Grouse, I heard about this BBC report: "Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause."

And an item from the "Leave it Wild" folks in PEW Environment Group about the move afoot to designate 50,000 acres of public land within South Dakota's Buffalo Gap National Grassland as a wilderness area.

And, finally, here is an online version of a survey of grassland birds in Montana's Bureau of Landa Management lands. People who read my book or the wonderful "Prairie Ice" blog will perhaps recognize one of the authors--biologist and bird photographer, John Carlson. If you haven't peeked at Prairie Ice, now's a good time. John has posted some terrific photos of Sharp-tailed grouse on the lek this spring--not to mention some lovely images of sage grouse on the lek and snow geese slip-sliding in the sky in earlier posts.