This is what a male white-necked Jacobin hummingbird looks like, but some of the adult females also wear the same feathery look.Brian Sullivan/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Hummingbirds are famous for fast flights, bright colors and constantly needing food to support their high-energy activities.
White-necked jacobin hummingbird males sport eye-catching blue, green and white feathers, while most adult females have a more muted green look. But some of the females actually look like the males, and it turns out there are distinct advantages to that fashion statement.
A team led by Cornell University researchers studied white-necked jacobin hummingbirds in Panama and found that almost 30% of the adult females look like the males. The hummingbirds are a bit unusual in that the juveniles all sport male-like plumage. The adult…
1of12Jessie the scent detection dog and her team are searching forDe Winton’s golden mole, a tiny mammal lost to science for 84 years. The mole is part of conservation group Re:wild’s top 25 ‘Most Wanted Lost Species’list. South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust partnered with Re:wild to use new detection techniques to hunt for the creature, including DNA analysis and dogs like Jessie.Click through to learn more about De Winton’s mole and other rediscovered species.Nicky Souness
Steam blows from the RWE Niederaussem lignite-fired power station in Bergheim, Germany, in January 2020. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the concentration of greenhouse gases in 2020 was the highest on record.Martin Meissner/AP
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that contribute to climate change are the highest ever recorded — and that’s going back 800,000 years.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationreportedthat the concentration of carbon dioxide, one of the primary greenhouse gases, hit 412.5 parts per million in 2020. That’s 2.5 parts per million higher than in 2019, and it’s now the highest ever observed, the scientists said.
Researchers say the tiny island in Greenland – roughly 30 metres across – was exposed by shifting pack ice
The tiny island off the coast of Greenland is the world’s northernmost point of land, according to the scientific expedition that discovered it. Photograph: Julian Charriere/Reuters
ReutersFri 27 Aug 2021 22.29 EDT
Scientists have discovered a new island off the coast of Greenland, which they say is the world’s northernmost point of land and was revealed by shifting pack ice.
“It was not our intention to discover a new island,” polar explorer and head of the Arctic station research facility in Greenland, Morten Rasch, said of the find last month. “We just went there to collect samples.”
The scientists initially thought they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978. Only later, when checking the exact location, they realised they had visited another island 780 metres to the north-west.
“Everybody was happy that we found what we thought was Oodaaq island,” said Swiss entrepreneur Christiane Leister, creator of the Leister Foundation that financed the expedition.
“It’s a bit like explorers in the past, who thought they’d landed in a certain place but actually found a totally different place.”
The small island, measuring roughly 30 metres (100ft) across and a peak of about 3 metres, consists of seabed mud as well as moraine – soil and rock left behind by moving glaciers. The team said they would recommend it is named “Qeqertaq Avannarleq”, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic.
Several US expeditions in the area have in recent decades searched for the world’s northernmost island. In 2007, Arctic veteran Dennis Schmitt discovered a similar island close by.
The scientists said that although the new island was exposed by shifting pack ice, its appearance now was not a direct consequence of global warming, which has been shrinking Greenland’s ice sheet.
Rene Forsberg, professor and head of geodynamics at Denmark’s National Space Institute, said the area north of Greenland has some of the thickest polar sea ice, though he added it was now 2-3 metres thick in summer, compared with 4 metres when he first visited as part of the expedition that discovered Oodaaq in 1978.
Any hope of extending territorial claims in the Arctic depends on whether it is in fact an island or a bank that may disappear again. An island needs to remain above sea level at high tide.
“It meets the criteria of an island,” Forsberg said. “This is currently the world’s northernmost land.” Although he did warn: “These small island come and go.”
A tragic accident can leave a person feeling hopeless, angry and depressed. It changes a person’s life, and for some, it can bring a whole new sense of purpose.
This happened for Carson Nyenhuis of Grandville. A motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
“During my recovery and going through that, I got home and I had broken wrists so I couldn’t wheel around,” says Nyenhuis. “I had a chest brace on up to my neck. I couldn’t do a whole lot of moving.”
Nyenhuis says he became depressed and left him with a sense…
The Georgia dove hunting season opens Sat. Sept. 4, 2021, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division (WRD).
“For wing shooters, dove season kicks off the fall hunting season,” says Alan Isler, Chief of the WRD Game Management Section. “Two big changes this year includes expanding the first dove season into October and changing opening day shooting hours – make sure you take note of the right shooting hours for the field you plan to hunt.”
The official 2021-2022 dove seasons are Sept. 4-Oct. 10, Nov. 20-28 and Dec. 19 – Jan. 31. Statewide shooting hours – for all of the dove season – are one-half hour before sunrise to sunset. However, on managed Wildlife Management Area (WMA) dove hunts, opening day shooting hours are one-half hour before sunrise to 12 noon.
Environmental activists from Extinction Rebellion march from Trafalgar Square during the first day of Impossible Rebellion protests on August, 23, 2021 in London, United Kingdom.
ByMckenna King, WFTSFriday, August 27, 2021 8:55AMabout:blankEMBED <>MORE VIDEOS
Have you seen home prices lately in the Antelope Valley? The surging market is fueling a whole host of problems – including pushing more people into homelessness.WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — A Florida woman, who battled and beat COVID-19 in the hospital for eight days, returned home to discover her husband had died in their home due to the virus.
“It was just like walking into a horror scene. It’s just been horrible,” Winter Haven resident Lisa Steadman toldWFTS, ABC Action News.
The 58-year-old thought she was through the worst of it.
She and her husband Ron both got diagnosed with COVID-19 in early August.
“I was in the hospital for eight days. Every day I talked to him,” she said.
Ron never ended up in the hospital. Instead, he was home taking care of the dogs…
Destroyed houses are seen in Schuld, Germany, on July 15 after devastating floods hit the region.Michael Probst/AP
Heavy rainfall and catastrophic flooding events like those that hit Western Europe last month will be more frequent and intense due to climate change,a new scientific study says.
The World Weather Attribution initiative, an international group of climate scientists behind the report, said July’s historic rainfall was 1.2 to 9 times more likely to happen due to global warming.
The researchers used peer-reviewed scientific methods to examine how human-induced climate change affected rainfall events in Europe this summer.
Smoke rises from a deadly explosion outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday. A suicide bomber targeted crowds massing near the airport in the waning days of a massive airlift that has drawn thousands of people seeking to flee the Taliban takeover.Wali Sabawoon/AP
If the intention of the attack at the Kabul airport was to throw into disarray an already chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, the effects of Thursday’s violence are only beginning to take shape. Flights have been taking off from the airport since the explosions occurred, and President Biden said the American withdrawal will continue.
It was a combative stance from a U.S. president who was already facing criticism for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and who will now face the fallout from…
