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Lifeform of the week: The mystery of the monk parakeets By Alex Reshanov EarthSky Feral green parrots are living all over the United States. Where did they come from? How did they get here? And don’t they get cold in the winter? A friend in Brooklyn, New York, where I was living at the time, first drew my attention to the exotic, bright green birds that occasionally turned up in the neighborhood trees. Various legends fluttered around the misplaced parrots – they’d escaped from the zoo, from a pet store, from a crate bound for a pet store, and had managed to establish themselves in some nook of the Big Apple. The tales portrayed the birds as a single anomalous colony unique to a city itself renowned for uniqueness. Only in New York… But after moving to Austin, I began to notice suspiciously similar birds, slightly better camouflaged against the greener scenery, but still a bit too tropical looking to blend in with the grackles and mourning doves that dominate the local bird-o-sphere. I...

Updated 4/23 -------------------------------------------------------- Invasive Species Workshop at ALLEGANY STATE PARK - Thursday May 7th From New York Outdoors Blog Forests, streams, lakes and fields are being degraded or irreparably damaged by alien invasive species. The cost to eliminate or mitigate the effects from these species will be vastly higher the longer we wait. The economic damage suffered by other parts of the country will happen here unless we are vigilant now. Emerald Ash Borer is confirmed just south of Cattaraugus County; Asian Long-Horned beetles have been found in the Long Island Region; Mile-a-Minute Vine and Giant Hogweed are in Cattaraugus County. Learn how to properly identify the invasive species and then what to do in response to help eradicate the problem. This workshop will be covering everything from Rock Snot to Emerald Ash Borer; Mile-a-Minute to Hogweed. The three main topics at the workshop are aquatics, plants and insects. We are unable to provide lunc...

Updated 2/24 TNC's Global Invasive Species Team closing shop due to budget cuts From: Barry Rice, TNC [Reprinted from the GIST listserv] As a result of budget cutbacks announced last week, The Nature Conservancy's Global Invasive Species Team (GIST) is being disbanded and will close down much of its work over the next few weeks and months. Ramifications of this closure are the following: A)The GIST ilistserve will be closing in early March. B)The GIST web site ( http://tncinvasives.org/ ) will no longer be supported as of March 6: after that date it will merely coast without updates. It may disappear entirely after August. C)We hope that portions of the site can be relocated to other web sites--see messages 3-5 below if you can support the content. D)Our new wiki ( http://invasipedia.org/ ) will no longer be monitored or supported, and so will be removed unless another organization offers to house and manage it (see message 5, below). If you are interested in supporting some of...

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! -------------------------------------------------------- Mussel sightings have raised concerns By Molly Murray, The News Journal A decade ago, scientists in Delaware and Maryland were on high alert for zebra mussels, a creature that reproduces so quickly that thousands could quickly reduce the stream of water through intake pipes to a trickle. But over the years, as zebra mussels stayed to the north, south and west, people here pretty much stopped thinking about them -- until last month, when they started showing up in the Maryland portion of the Susquehanna River. The mussels aren't the only species concerning state regulators. Invasive plants such as rock snot, a problem in the upper Delaware River, can also be a major concern, Miller said. He said some states are looking at banning felt bottoms on fishermen's wading boots. The felt, used to help prevent slips and falls, can pick up potentially invasive plants. Zebra mussels get their name ...