Thirty-nine of the most gorgeous, outlandish animals in the world—the birds-of-paradise—live only in New Guinea, associated islands, and adjacent tropical Australia. Though they’ve been known for centuries from paintings and specimens, it’s only now that all 39 can be admired in glorious photographic detail, thanks to ground-breaking work by Cornell Lab biologist Ed Scholes and [...]
One of the birds I didn’t get to see during my travels in Belize was the endangered Yellow-headed Parrot. Today Katie Blake describes a close encounter with two of these delightful birds—orphans from an encounter with poachers. Katie was in Belize last summer as a research assistant studying Mangrove Swallows on the Golondrinas de las [...]
How hard can it be to lose a flamingo? Well, the above species, James’s Flamingo, went missing for fully half the twentieth century, before an expedition rediscovered them in the volcanic lakes of Bolivia’s Altiplano, 14,000 feet above sea level. These days, two Cornell graduate students, Marita Davison and Jennifer Moslemi, focus their research on [...]
Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland are wrapping up their research at Grand Saline Bai, in Gabon—but Peter has sent us a recording of elephants cavorting in the dark, and Liz has just seen her first daytime elephants in the bai (clearing). Enjoy her photographs, and then close your eyes and listen in on Peter’s recording: [...]
Biologists Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland, of our Elephant Listening Project, are spending night after night on a tree platform in the rainforest of Gabon. They’re learning about forest elephants, and their night-vision binoculars are a key piece of equipment. Here’s Liz with a first-hand description: A change of plan As so often happens with [...]
This month we’re taking occasional time-outs to hear about elephant research that Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland, of our Elephant Listening Project, are conducting in Gabon (previous posts here). Peter is a veteran of many trips to Gabon, but this is Liz’s first time seeing forest elephants. Last week, she saw her first four. A [...]
One glossy python and eight automated recorders: those were the highlights we heard about this weekend from Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland. They’re spending the next six weeks recording elephants in Gabon—here’s post #2 from them: Everything is in place: eight autonomous recording units (ARUs) now surround the bai (clearing) at distances ranging from 150 [...]
Not everything we study at the Cornell Lab has feathers. Some have thick wrinkly skin, enormous ears, and an oversized nose they can grab things with. That’s what the scientists in our Elephant Listening Project study. Two of them—Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland—have just headed into the rainforest of Gabon for a stint of recording [...]
