Watervogels

The Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) is a dabbling duck. Diet is mostly plant material, including seeds of grasses, sedges, pondweeds, and waste grain in fields. In summer its diet includes more animal matter, such as insects, crustaceans, mollusks, and sometimes tadpoles and small fish. It forages in shallow water by upending or by submerging its head and neck while swimming, looking for food in the underwater mud. It also forages by walking on land.The North American Breeding Bird Survey noted a cumulative decline of the Northern Pintail population of 72% between 1966 and 2012.

Chilika lake is a brackish water lagoon, spread over the Puri, Khurda and Ganjam districts of Odisha state on the east coast of India, at the mouth of the Daya River, flowing into the Bay of Bengal, covering an area of over 1,100 km2. It is the largest coastal lagoon in India. The number of migratory birds has declined by 53,729 in Odisha’s Chilika and Nalabana Bird Sanctuary this winter as compared to previous year, the annual bird census revealed.

The once-abundant black tern (Chlidonias niger) is far less abundant in Great Lakes wetlands. And there’s a high risk that more colonies will be abandoned, according to a new study. Since 1991, the number of active black tern colonies has plummeted nearly 90 percent, the study found.

The black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor) has the most restricted distribution of all spoonbills, and it is the only one regarded as endangered. There remain only about 3,300 spoonbills, and the species spends the mating season on small islands along the west coast of the Korean Peninsula and in China’s Liaoning province, the WWF says. “With such a small global population, the black-faced spoonbill is inherently vulnerable to extinction,” it says.

The Numeniini — a tribe of large waders including curlews and godwits — is one of the most threatened bird groups on the planet. The once-abundant Eskimo Curlew Numenius borealis of the Americas is now considered Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct), having last been spotted with certainty in the 1960s. Like the Eskimo Curlew, the possibility of the extinction of the Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) cannot be confirmed for sure until we have scoured the entirety of its known breeding grounds in the Siberian wilderness for a remnant population.

Argentina is the birthplace of tango, an iconic dance style dating back to the 1880s. Long before the first tango steps were taken, however, another dance was already in full swing across parts of Patagonia: the hypnotic grooves of the hooded grebe (Podiceps gallardoi). That dance is still going on today, as you can see in "Tango in the Wind," a new documentary about hooded grebes. Yet despite their impressive moves, the hooded grebes' dance is increasingly in danger of disappearing.

Results from long-term monitoring efforts show that Black Tern (Chlidonias niger) population declines in the Klamath Basin are higher than declines previously documented for continental and regional populations. Results from a 10 year study conducted by Klamath Bird Observatory show a steady, sharp decline in numbers of Black Terns in the wetlands and open waters of Agency Lake and Upper Klamath Lake. According to a Black Tern conservation plan created in 2006, the desired population objective within the Great Basin — which includes the Klamath Basin — is 10,000 individuals.

Die Fischbestände im Neckar und am Max-Eyth-See sind nach wie vor rückläufig. Wissenschaftler, die im Auftrag der Landesregierung darüber geforscht haben, sehen als einen wichtigen Grund den fischfressenden Kormoran. Die Fischereiforschungsstelle in Langenargen hat vor einigen Jahren im Auftrag der Landesregierung die Untersuchungen zur Wasserrahmenrichtlinie des Fischbestandes erstellt. Diese Forschungsstelle ist dem entsprechenden Landesministerium unterstellt. Zudem wurden bundesweit Fließgewässer von Biologen auf den Fischbestand untersucht.

The white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) probably had a global population of over 100,000 in the early 20th century; in the 1930s an estimated 50,000 wintered on the Caspian Sea. However, by 1991 the population was estimated at a mere 19,000 ducks. Over the last 100 years the white-headed duck has become extinct as a breeding bird in Albania, Azerbaijan, Corsica, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, and former Yugoslavia. Despite the historical declines, however, there was some optimism in 1991, since the population was thought to be relatively stable. Since 1991 that optimism has faded.

New research has found a dramatic decline in water birds in the Murray-Darling Basin, with numbers down about 70 per cent in the past three decades. A University of New South Wales team found the alarming drop after crunching 32 years of data. The study has been published today in the Global Change Biology journal. Director of the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science, Richard Kingsford, who surveys up to 2,000 wetlands around Australia annually, headed up the research.