Rusty Feathers Design

08/26/2026

⛰️

The Great Smoky Mountains were more than home to Dolly Parton, they were part of her story. The mountains shaped the songs she wrote, the stories she told, and the way she saw the world. And throughout her life, Dolly never stopped sharing her love for these places, inviting generations of people to discover their beauty and find a little bit of that mountain spirit for themselves.

Thank you, Dolly. 🦋

NPS Photo

08/12/2026

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The fixes, in order.

Windows: markers go on the outside of the glass, spaced about two inches apart, since anything narrower than that a bird will still try to fly through.

Feeders: scrub every couple of weeks and take them down entirely if you see a sick bird, because a feeder is a shared surface and disease moves through it fast.

Cats: indoors, or a catio.

Rodenticide: a poisoned rat takes days to die and is easy prey the whole time, so the hawk that eats it gets the dose too. Snap traps don't move up the food chain.

08/12/2026

😍

It didn't stop eating sunlight. It just outsourced the job.

Ghost pipe taps into fungi in the soil, mostly Russula and Lactarius, that are already trading nutrients with tree roots. The sugar still comes from photosynthesis, it just comes secondhand, through the fungus, from a tree that may be 50 feet away.

That's why you only find it under mature forest: it needs the tree and the fungus and the underground connection between them, all intact. It's a flowering plant in the blueberry family, not a fungus.

And it can't be transplanted or grown. Dig one up and you've just killed it.

08/11/2026

🦉😭

The necropsy, done by Bronx Zoo pathologists, found four different anticoagulant rodenticides in his system alongside a severe pigeon herpesvirus picked up from eating feral pigeons. The zoo's conclusion was that those two conditions would have been fatal on their own, even without the collision, and likely contributed to him flying into the building.

Second-generation anticoagulants don't kill quickly. The rodent stays alive for days, sluggish and out in the open, which is precisely the animal a hungry owl selects for. One dose rarely kills a bird that size. It accumulates. The chemicals stay in a bird's system for at least 100 days, and the Wild Bird Fund attributes roughly 84% of the poisoning deaths it sees to rodenticide.

Flaco wasn't the first. Barry, the barred owl who lived in Central Park, also had high rodenticide levels when she was hit by a truck in 2021, and the levels may have affected her flying.

For a homeowner, the swap is snap traps in enclosed boxes. Same rodent removed, nothing left circulating for the next animal that eats it.

08/10/2026

Don’t put pet fur “out for grabs” during nesting season… if your pets get flea and tick meds, you’re putting those chemicals in with baby birds. Honestly - birds are pros at finding nesting materials on their own.

University of Sussex researchers screened 103 blue tit and great tit nests for 20 insecticides and found 17 of them. Fipronil was in every single nest. Imidacloprid and permethrin were each in 89%. Individual nests carried anywhere from two to eleven different compounds.

The mechanism is contact, not eating. Spot-on treatments spread through the coat and sit on the fur for weeks, so the fur a bird carries into a nest is a treated surface pressed against eggs and naked chicks for two weeks straight. A follow-up paper found insecticides in unhatched eggs and in dead chicks, averaging around three compounds per dead chick.

08/04/2026

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Wild Birds Unlimited is proud to partner with Birdability, an organization working to ensure birding is accessible and welcoming to people of all abilities. ♿💚 Whether it’s exploring accessible nature trails 🌿 or simply listening to birdsong 🎶 from a patio, birds can provide a meaningful connection with nature.

Simple changes, like seating near feeders, clear pathways, or feeders placed near windows, can help create welcoming spaces where more people can enjoy the birds. 🐦🏡 Backyard bird feeding can also make birds more accessible by bringing them closer to home.

Visit the Birdability website (www.birdability.org) to learn how you can get involved.

08/03/2026

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08/03/2026

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These little birds had dropped to just 13 nesting pairs in 1990.

08/02/2026

🙌

The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Michigan Public Service Commission erred when it granted a key permit for the Line 5 petroleum pipeline tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac.

Among other findings, the majority found the commission’s permit review was overly narrow and failed to consider whether the tunnel will harm public trust resources.

The 6-1 decision sends the matter back to the commission for further proceedings — further clouding the fate of the proposed pipeline project that has been in limbo for eight years.

The ruling stems from the Michigan Public Service Commission’s December 2023 approval of a key permit for the proposed tunnel, which would reroute a 4-mile segment of the 645-mile pipeline that currently sits exposed on the lakebottom as it transports petroleum products from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario.

A coalition of four Michigan tribal nations and a Traverse City-based environmental group challenged the approval, arguing the commission’s analysis was flawed and the 72-year-old pipeline should be shut down rather than merely rerouted.

Read the full story here: https://bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/michigan-supreme-court-vacates-key-line-5-permit/

07/27/2026

It really breaks my heart that feeding the songbirds became so viral that they had to officially make us stop, after how many decades - but I saw it coming from a mile away. The public was incapable of following basic rules - like feeding proper wild bird food, only doing it during winter months, and NOT feeding the cranes, turkeys, and mammals - which is a problem when larger birds get possessive and act out. I’m glad I was able to enjoy it while it lasted.