to move up and down
Herding the swans — Swans are accompanied to the river Alster in Hamburg, northern Germany on April 9, 2013. The swans are brought to their summer residence after having spent the winter season at a smaller lake. (SVEN HOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)
Birds perch on snow covered trees in a city park after heavy snowfall in Beijing on March 20, 2013. Beijing and the northern China have been experiencing its coldest winter in more than 30 years and have seen tens of thousands of the country’s livestock dying and transport chaos as flights and highways are shut down. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
Photos: Swan song in Belarus’s frozen utopia
Two swans swim on the Usiazha River near the Belarus village of Usiazha, some 55 km north of Minsk on February 26, 2013. (VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images)
![‘Vulture spying for Israel’ captured in Sudan is latest claim of feathered spookSudan has captured an alleged avian spook it believes is spying for Israel and broadcasting satellite images back to the Jewish state, several Middle Eastern media have reported.Officials in the North African nation have concluded that Israel fitted a vulture with a GPS chip and solar-powered equipment that can take reconnaissance pictures from a bird’s eye view, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, which cited Egypt’s El Balad website.“[The Egyptian site reported that] the vulture was captured in the town of Kereinek in the Darfur region in Sudan’s west and that the finding prompted Sudanese authorities to announce Israel was using vultures to spy on their country,” Haaretz said. “The report in El Balad does not say who made these claims.” (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/533f9f639a33a969303445ab67ece5ab/tumblr_mevjfixYq61qze0z6o1_1280.jpg)
‘Vulture spying for Israel’ captured in Sudan is latest claim of feathered spook
Sudan has captured an alleged avian spook it believes is spying for Israel and broadcasting satellite images back to the Jewish state, several Middle Eastern media have reported.
Officials in the North African nation have concluded that Israel fitted a vulture with a GPS chip and solar-powered equipment that can take reconnaissance pictures from a bird’s eye view, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, which cited Egypt’s El Balad website.
“[The Egyptian site reported that] the vulture was captured in the town of Kereinek in the Darfur region in Sudan’s west and that the finding prompted Sudanese authorities to announce Israel was using vultures to spy on their country,” Haaretz said. “The report in El Balad does not say who made these claims.” (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)
Penguins aplenty in Antarctica, new satellite map shows
Antarctica boasts almost twice as many emperor penguins as previously thought, researchers have discovered using satellite mapping technology to count to the iceberg-huddling birds from above.
Using satellite mapping with resolution high enough to distinguish ice shadows from penguin poo, an international team has carried out what they say is an unprecedented penguin census from the heavens over the past three years. (Photo: Martin Passingham/Reuters)
‘Unbelievable’ migration as snowy owls pop up in continental U.S.
Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called “unbelievable.” Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts. (Photo: Jochen Luebke/AFP Photo)
Photos of the day
A tame golden eagle approaches a hunter during an annual hunting competition outside Almaty December 9, 2011. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)
Atwood knits up extinct bird for U.K. exhibit She’s arguably Canada’s greatest writer, but novelist Margaret Atwood has taken an unexpected public foray into a new artistic genre — knitting — as her woollen representation of an extinct great auk is set to be one of the showcase works at a unique, multimedia art exhibition opening next week in Britain.
Photos of the day
Starlings sit on power lines on October 6, 2011 in Lebus, eastern Germany. The small passerine birds actually prepare their migration to the South, where they spend the winter season. Patrick Pleuel/AFP/Getty Images
Machi the shorebird shot in Guadeloupe after surviving 6,000km hurricane odyssey
Machi the shorebird survived Hurricane Irene by clinging to seaweed in a Virginia marsh. She dodged Tropical Storm Maria by hunkering down on for the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Then, with only a few hundred kilometres left on her 6,000 kilometre journey from the Canadian Arctic to wintering grounds in Brazil, the resilient pigeon-sized bird was shot by sport hunters.
“We have unfortunately discovered that Machi, after flying through Tropical Storm Maria, has been shot by hunters in Guadalupe,” read a recent update by the Center for Conservation Biology at Virginia’s College of William and Mary. (Photo: Postmedia News Files)
Photos of the day
An Emperor penguin, a juvenile male, on a beach on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand, some 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) from his Antarctic home. Department of Conservation officers are monitoring the penguin and expected it would eventually depart for the long swim home. (Richard Gill/AFP/Getty Images)
Photos of the day
Swan walkin’ here! A swan holds up traffic on the M4 motorway, west of London, June 15, 2011. (Photo: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images)
Meet Ralph, a brown pelican just trying to get home.
His first name is Ralph. He does not have a last name, although he does have a scientific name: Pelecanus occidentalis.
Ralph isn’t like you and me. Ralph has feathers. Ralph is a brown pelican, and Ralph has a problem: He has spent the past four months stuck in avian-emigration purgatory, waiting for his exit papers to go through, after an untimely collision with the window of a Dollarama store in Dartmouth, N.S.
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