• Bird stolen from Roseville, California Petco store. Skyler, a four-month-old Umbrella Cockatoo (Cacatua alba), was discovered missing around 2pm Thursday. Please contact them if you have any information.
• Female Peregrine Falcon stolen from the Canadian Peregrine Foundation Raptor Centre on July 23. If you have any information, please contact them.
• Bald Eagle escapes after a storm damages the eagle aviary at the Carolina Raptor Center near Huntersville, North Carolina. If you happen to spot the eagle, please contact them.
• Ecuador launches conservation strategy for the endangered Great Green Macaw (Ara ambigua). There's fewer than 2500 in Central and South America, and only 60-90 in the Ecuadorian race.
• Wisconsin Bald Eagle soars to freedom. The thriteen-year-old eagle has taken to the sky eight weeks after being struck by lightining.
• Healthy hawk released back into the wild. The Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) was taken to the Wild Animal Infirmary for Nevada in Carson City three weeks earlier when it found sick and underweight.
• Barney, a foul-mouthed Blue-and-Gold Macaw at the Warwickshire Animal Sanctuary in Nuneaton, UK, placed in solitary after swearing at passers-by, including the mayoress, a lady vicar, and two police officers.
• Cape Coral, Florida councilwoman wants to make the city's official bird the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia).
• Ohio’s Peregrine Falcons rear record number of chicks. Fifty seven chicks have fledged from 18 nests.
• Concord, New Hampshire prison inmates rescue escaped Parakeet. They made a make-shift cage out of fan covers to house the bird until caretakers arrived.
• New South Wales man pleads guilty to egg smuggling and gets one year prison term. He was arrested last year after arriving in Brisbane from Singapore with 52 parrot eggs hidden in a specially made vest.
• Osprey chicks make flight from their nests at Bassenthwaite, Cumbria, UK.

The second installment of "I and the Bird" is hot off the keyboard. Charlie at Charlie's Bird Blog has done an excellent job in tying together all the blog entries submitted from around the world detailing the experiences their authors had with the avian world. There's a lot of great entries, so make sure you check it out!

• Public and private groups funding the acquisition of 4462 acres of land to be added to the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. The preserve was designated as an International Biosphere Reserve in 1981 and as a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy in 2001.
• President of the United Arab Emirates donates one hundred falcons to the Abu Dhabi International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition. The UAE encourages using captive-bred falcons for hunting in a continuing effort to save the dwindling wild falcon population.
• After a week on the lam, Dewey returns home. The Bateleur Eagle (Terathopius ecaudatus) escaped from the Milwaukee County Zoo last Wednesday.
• Red foxes and coastal flooding blamed for New Jersey's population decline of the endangered Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus).
• New species of adenovirus identified in falcons.

• BirdLife International's "Chim Vietnam" ("Birds of Vietnam") goes into second printing. It's the first color Vietnamese-language field guide to birds of Vietnam. 3000 copies were printed for the first edition in 2000.
• Census shows population increase of New Zealand's Takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri). It was rediscovered in 1948 after being listed as extinct for fifty years. It's still endangered, but gaining ground.
• US Fish & Wildlife Service seeing success in recovery program to help the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis). They were declared endangered in 1970. The USFWS launched a program in the 1990s and since 1994, the population has grown 30% to over 6000 birds. Officials say at this growth rate, it will be another 70 years before the bird can be taken off the endangered list.
• Thousands of bird watchers in India participate in a census of the Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps). The IUCN said last year the bird could be extict within a decade.
• Blackpoll Warbler (Dendroica striata) added to the Pennsylvania endangered species list. Although fairly common as a migrant, it was added to acknowledge the nesting population.
• Department of Public Work employees in Hornell, New York rescue juvenile American Kestrel. Its parents left it to fend for itself, but it wasn't quite ready.

• Colorado state agency unveils plan to help protect the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). The State Land Board will spend $120,000 over five years to determine population, ways to protect them, and how to enhance sagebrush and other vegetation that's been reduced by drought and other factors.
• Southern Mississippi birds taking a beating from tropical storms. The Mississippi Coast Audubon Society estimates "we've probably lost half the birds we would normally have during a good season."
• Trucker finds Red-tailed Hawk hopping on one foot on the side of a road in Pennsylvania. He captured it and alerted authorities, who found the hawk was malnourished. They're trying to find out if it's caused by neurologic damage or the West Nile Virus.
• Angelina Jolie's African Grey Parrot throws fits when she's away. It stages hunger strikes and attacks customers in the pet store where she houses it.
• Wisconisn paper mill adopts family of Peregrine Falcons.
• Laramie, Wyoming residents rescue Swainson's Hawk chick after it's blown out of the nest.
• San Salvador parrot helps to foil a robbery.

In 1977, Dr. Irene Pepperberg bought Alex, an African Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus erithacus), from a pet store in Chicago. She bought Alex because he was an ordinary parrot, but Dr. Pepperberg was no ordinary person; she sought to find out how smart the ordinary African Grey Parrot really was. With no special breeding traits or formal training, Alex was the perfect subject.

Through the years, Dr. Pepperberg found that Alex understood a number of concepts and methods including counting, identifying and lableling objects, wanting something versus identifying something, and telling what's same and what's different. And now, Dr. Pepperberg has made another breakthrough. Recent studies have shown that Alex understands the concept of zero. It may not sound like much, but zero is thought to be an abstract concept that people don't grasp until age three or four. And some ancient cultures as recently as the Middle Ages didn't even have a term for it. It's thought that Alex may have known what zero was, but now knows how to convey it.

"It is doubtful that Alex's achievement, or those of some other animals such as chimps, can be completely trained," Pepperberg said. "Rather, it seems likely that these skills are based on simpler cognitive abilities they need for survival, such as recognition of more versus less."

Dr. Pepperberg's studies have been invaluable. Not only has she given great insight into animal behavior, knowledge, and communication, but her model-rival training techniques are being used for teaching dysfunctional children. For more information about her research and how you can help, please visit The Alex Foundation. Also be sure to check out The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots. It's a fascinating read.

• New island sanctuary being set up in Fiordland, New Zealand. The Te Puka-Hereka Charitable Trust is helping save the Kiwi and the Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus).
• Southern Giant Petrel (Macronectes giganteus) makes a rare visit to Northland, New Zealand. It was banded at the Falkland Islands, over 5600 miles away.
• California Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) under review by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to see if it needs to be declared an endangered or threatened species. A study done in 2003 concluded it didn't need protection, but new information is warranting another review.
• Department of Natural Resources releases a total of 32 Osprey chicks in Indiana as part of a recovery program.
• New bird zoo to begin construction at Scotland Neck, North Carolina.
• Oregon planning to remove the Aleutian Canada Goose (Branta canadensis leucopareia) from the state's endangered list. It has been listed as an endangered species in Oregon since January 1975. It was removed from the federal threatened list in 2001.
• Macbride Raptor Project to band two three-week old Osprey chicks at Lake Macbride in Iowa on July 7.
• Peregrine Falcon flourishing in Ontario, Canada. The Ministry of Natural Resources is planning on removing it from the endangered list.
• Merlin found shot by a BB gun at Traverse Heights Elementary School in Traverse City, Michigan. Wings of Wonder has been caring for the bird since it was rescued on June 8.
• Pennsylvania Game Commission taking steps to upgrade the state's status of the Bald Eagle from endangered to threatened. There's a total of 94 known bald eagle pairs nesting in 25 of the state's 67 counties.