Usually their nests are found in remote areas, often around the coast, resting on cliff edges and rocky outcrops. To see them would require specialist climbing gear and a long lens. But in Worcester, a pair have nested bang in the city centre - it is possible to clearly see the adults coming and going during the day and now the chicks have begun to hatch, one is often seen standing guard over the nest.
They have built their nest on St Andrew's spire, known locally as The Glover's Needle.
With Sunday night's full moon, coral polyps let forth a huge swathe of sperm and egg, to seed the next generation. The event was short-lived - only about 30 minutes - but so vast in its scale that it turned the sea water pink.
Scientists from Palau, Australia and the UK are studying the practicality of collecting coral larvae to help restore damaged reefs elsewhere.
This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science. Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.
The findings were presented at a major science conference in Vienna. The research group is not the first to suggest that the IPCC's forecast of an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43cm by 2100 is too conservative.
The IPCC was unable to include the contribution from "accelerated" melting of polar ice sheets as water temperatures warm because the processes involved were not yet understood.
A South American river dolphin uses branches, weeds and lumps of clay to woo the opposite sex and frighten off rivals, scientists have discovered.
Researchers observed adult male botos carrying these objects while surrounded by females, and thrashing them on the water surface aggressively. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, they say such behaviour has never before been seen in any marine mammal.
The boto lives in only two rivers, and numbers are thought to be declining. A group of British and Brazilian researchers studied the dolphin's unique courtship behaviour over three years in the Mamiraua Reserve, a flooded rainforest area on the Amazon.
The beauty of the nature!
Each year, on 23 March, the World Meteorological Organization, its 188 Members and the worldwide meteorological community celebrate World Meteorological Day. This Day commemorates the entry into force, on that date in 1950, of the WMO Convention creating the Organization. Subsequently, in 1951, WMO was designated a specialized agency of the United Nations System.This year, celebrations at the Secretariat will take place on 25 March.
Researchers say they have shown for the first time that humpback whale calves make sounds. The nonprofit Cetos Research Organization, which studied humpbacks off the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Kauai, say the grunts and squeals emitted by the young whales are messages for their mothers.
The sounds are not as complex as the continuous, repetitive, and highly structured phrases and themes of older males, the researchers found. The calves instead produced a limited number of sounds that were short and simple in structure, according to the study. The noises included repetitive grunts that increased in strength and were sometimes accompanied by bubble streams and seemed to function as an alarm call to the mother, the researchers found.
They say the sounds were produced more frequently during calmer periods when the mother was resting or during slow travel. "This tells us that calves do in fact communicate, and it tells us they are communicating to their mothers," Zoidis said.
Calling mother!
Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand's Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish. A 2,000-mile journey through the Ross Sea that ended Thursday has also potentially turned up several new species, including as many as eight new mollusks.
It's "exciting when you come across a new species," said Chris Jones, a fisheries scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "All the fish people go nuts about that -- but you have to take it with a grain of salt."
The miracle of the unexplored earth! How many more things are undiscovered on our little earth and the most depressing thing is that we are going to destroy them before we even find them with all the pollution, global warming, and nuclear waste!
