Conservation efforts on UK coasts help rare marine life make comeback

Conservation efforts on coasts around the UK have helped rare marine life including seahorses and basking sharks make an unexpected comeback.

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“One in eight birds is threatened with extinction, global study finds”

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One in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction, and once widespread creatures such as the puffin, snowy owl and turtle dove are plummeting towards oblivion, according to the definitive study of global bird populations.

“‘Catastrophe’ as France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides”

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Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said.

“Farmland bird decline prompts renewed calls for agriculture overhaul”

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Birds living and breeding on the UK’s farmland have seen numbers decline by almost a tenth in five years, official figures show.

“Bird species vanish from UK due to climate change and habitat loss”

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Climate change has already led to the vanishing of some bird species in parts of England, where intensively farmed land gives them no room to adapt to warming temperatures. The revelation, in a new scientific study, contradicts previous suggestions that birds are tracking global warming by shifting their ranges.

“Suburban birds angrier, more agressive than their rural peers”

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/07/15/Suburban-birds-angrier,-more-agressive-than-their-rural-peers/3611468589469/?nll=1

City life demands a more aggressive disposition — for humans and for bids. The same goes for suburban life.

A new study found birds living among suburban environs exhibit higher levels of territorial aggression than their peers from the country. The closer to the city, the angrier the birds.

“A third of Europe’s birds under threat, says most comprehensive study yet”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/14/a-third-of-europes-birds-under-threat-says-most-comprehensive-study-yet?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

One in three European birds is endangered, according to a leaked version of the most comprehensive study of Europe’s wildlife and natural habitats ever produced.

“Dinosaurs shrank for 50 million years before becoming birds”

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/08/01/Dinosaurs-shrank-for-50-million-years-before-becoming-birds/1471406901906/

“Birds evolved through a unique phase of sustained miniaturization in dinosaurs,” explained Professor Michael Lee, researcher at both the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the South Australian Museum.

Lee is the lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.

“Being smaller and lighter in the land of giants, with rapidly evolving anatomical adaptations, provided these bird ancestors with new ecological opportunities, such as the ability to climb trees, glide and fly,” Lee added. “Ultimately, this evolutionary flexibility helped birds survive the deadly meteorite impact which killed off all their dinosaurian cousins.”