Albatross defies conventional wisdom

    “She’s expecting!” reports the website for the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
    Wisdom is already setting records as the oldest breeding bird in the wild. She was banded for the first time in 1956 by biologist Chandler Robbins, now 98. More than four decades later, he saw her near the same spot and put another, sturdier band on her, according to the wildlife refuge.
    The bird was already breeding when first spotted 60 years ago. Given that an albatross delays sexual maturity until age 5, scientists conclude the bird is at least 66 years old.

“Tiny” reindeer, for real: In “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” the narrator describes the reindeer this way:  
        “When what to my wondering eyes did appear, 
         But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer…”
    In the poem, Santa is a “jolly old elf.”  The reindeer are “tiny.” And as it turns out, life is following art. A recent study shows that reindeer are shrinking as the result of climate change’s impact on food supplies.
    As Arctic summers and winters have warmed during the past two decades, reindeer on the Svalbard archipelago have become smaller and lighter, according to the James Hutton Institute, a Scotland based research group.
    Reindeer in the Arctic have been weighed since 1994 by ecologists from the Hutton Institute, along with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. “Each winter they catch, mark and measure 10-month-old calves, returning each year to recapture them and track their size and weight as adults,” a news release explained.
    They found that the weight of adult reindeer has declined by 12 percent--from 55 kilograms (121 pounds) for those born in 1994 to approximately 48 kilograms (105 pounds) for those born in 2010.
    While warmer summers mean that female reindeer gain more weight and can conceive more calves, the weather change also has a negative impact.
      “Warmer winters, however, mean more rain,” the Hutton Institute news release explained. “The rain falls on snow, where it freezes, thus locking out the reindeer from the food beneath the snow. As a result, the reindeer starve, aborting their calves or giving birth to much lighter young.” 

    Related:

    Global warming is already changing life

    Climate change could be fast, irreversible 

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