News tidbits from around the natural world

Published 12:01 am Saturday, February 5, 2011

There’s firewood to stack, indoor projects to finish and letters to write, but here I am, flitting around the Web looking for nature news.

I rationalize that it’s research but it is really simple curiosity that leads to enjoying photographs and findings.

Here are a few of tho

se finds:

Sports and birds: Winter sports may not mix well with birds. The stress levels of shy and endangered wood grouse, commonly found in Germany and Switzerland alpine regions, go up during the winter, markedly more if they live close to ski areas.

Researchers at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, in the journal IBIS, theorized that since winter is the hardest season on grouse, disruption by humans costs them energy and makes them less likely to survive. Those factors may be linked to the population decline of the species, particularly in ski areas.

Penguin condos: A University of Washington researcher’s team built 120 nests for Galapagos penguins with the hope of increasing that endangered species’ chances of survival. Penguin challenges include declining habitat and introduced species such as pigs, dogs, cats and rats.

We’ve got issues: Tiny sea creatures (foraminifera) are being used as a diagnostic tool by University of Washington researchers to assess the health of Puget Sound. The one-cell organism’s response to pollution varies, allowing researchers to assess pollution problems in specific areas. The evidence is often in the shells. The more foraminifera in an area, the cleaner the water.

Tundra swans: Hundreds of migrating tundra swans have found a winter home. The swans like the native wapato tuber that grows in the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and Franz Lake in southwest Washington. They also eat slugs, snails, insects, crayfish and plants.

They should hang around through March. Having eaten their way through as many calories as possible, they’ll take off for the 3,700-mile trip to their Arctic tundra nesting grounds.

Ground control to birds: Human development influences where some birds fly, according to researchers at the University of Missouri.

Nonmigrating birds prefer flying over forest corridors because they can more easily escape from predators. Breaking up those corridors may restrict where they live and who they meet for mating. Isolation can lead to inbreeding and more disease-prone birds.

Does size matter? Female red-eyed tree frogs in Belize know what they want in a mate, according to a report in Herpetological journal. A study of male calls concluded that larger frogs more quickly found mates, although usually at the females’ discretion.

The auditory information in a call tells all. There is greater mass in a larger frog’s internal “voice” mechanism, thus longer, more frequent calls at a lower frequency than smaller frogs’ efforts. The call equates to size and size equates to quality and the ability to survive.

If you like poking about with a specific science-related topic in mind, try www.sciencedaily.com. Another website of interest is www.wdfwwa.gov for the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Cousteau delivers. Jean-Michel Cousteau spoke last week before two sold-out audiences at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

Forty years ago, his father, Jacques, predicted doom for our oceans. Thanks to some changes of perception, often created by the Cousteaus, his son now speaks of hope, a new generation that can affect change, and fascinating potential solutions on the horizon.

Some of his film clips were stunning, such as a diver so surrounded by squid that he was nearly hidden, and some were discouraging, such as the 72 tons of abandoned nets collected on a Hawaiian shore.

One went right to the heart. As part of the section on orcas absorbing human chemicals, a mother’s breath catches when she learns that her 4-year-old son’s level of the flame retardant PBDE was radically higher than hers.

“We are using our children as experiments,” Cousteau said.

As we are life in the ocean.

Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.