Though on Failblog it is presented as “Whale Win” this is a birding blog so we have to present things from the bird point of view…

Over at Aimophila Adventures, Rick has a four-step post on How to See American Dippers.  It seems so simple I’m not sure why I haven’t seen one yet.  Maybe I need to get a dog?

The Amazon jungle “is very close to a tipping point,” and if destruction continues it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 years. Climate change, deforestation and fire are the drivers of this potential Amazonian apocalypse. The loss of biodiversity would be staggering: a single hectare of Amazon rainforest contains more than 750 types of trees and 1,500 other plants, and a single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe’s rivers. The Andes mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world’s species of flora and fauna. Before the end of this century many, and perhaps most, of those species will become extinct.

Bird Studies Canada and Nature Canada have launched a new website for the Canadian Important Bird Areas (IBA) Programme. The main goals of the IBA Canada website (www.ibacanada.ca) are to raise awareness of the IBA Programme, to share information about Canada’s IBAs, and to empower more Canadians to reconnect with nature as volunteers for the IBA Caretaker Network. Check it out.