Are you hooked on penguins? Would you like to see more of them from the comfort of your home?

Check out the new online citizen science project, Penguin Watch, where you can view more than 175,000 photos of Antarctic penguins, chicks and eggs.

Because penguins are declining, scientists are monitoring them using remote cameras.  The cameras have taken a lot of pictures — so many that the task of counting the penguins and their breeding success is impossible for the few scientists involved.  That’s where citizen science comes in.

Zooniverse put the photos online and made an easy tool for counting the penguins.  Look at the photo.  Click on every penguin. Done!  The clicks become a crowd-sourced map of Antarctica’s penguins.

It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes because crowd-sourcing smooths out the errors. You can even chat about the images with other volunteers and the researchers at Penguin Watch Talk.

Help scientists understand why penguin populations are declining and how to protect them by visiting www.penguinwatch.org or these links on Facebook and Twitter.

Look at the photos.  Click on every penguin.  That’s all you have to do.

(remote camera photo of penguins in Antarctica from Zooniverse Penguin Watch.  How many do you see?)

Have you ever seen this bird?

It resembles a purple gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) but it’s the size of a chicken with darker plumage and scary-looking feet.  It looks like a gallinule on steroids.

This is, in fact, a purple swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio), native to Africa, tropical Asia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, but you don’t have to travel that far to see one.

I learned in an ABA article by Bill Pranty that purple swamphens mysteriously appeared at the Silverlakes development in Pembroke Pines, Florida in 1996.  Some speculated that the birds had escaped from Miami MetroZoo during Hurricane Andrew four years earlier, but the zoo hadn’t lost any swamphens.  Closer inspection revealed that two breeders a quarter mile from Silverlakes had allowed their purple swamphens to roam free.  Naturally some of the swamphens didn’t come home.

By October 2006 purple swamphens were so prolific that Florida’s wildlife managers decided to eradicate them, but more than two years of shooting had no effect.  The swamphens continued to expand their range.  The failed eradication program ended in December 2008.

The first time I ever saw a purple swamphen was last December at Green Cay Wetlands in Boynton Beach, Florida, about 40 air-miles from their original release point.  I’ve birded in Palm Beach County numerous times since the swamphen’s release — especially at Wakodahatchee Wetlands where they appeared in 2000 — but it took 20 years for me to see one.

Though the bird was added to the official ABA Checklist in February 2013, their reputation is tarnished.  When I pointed out my new Life Bird to another birder standing nearby she said, “They aren’t a good thing to see.”

Read about the purple swamphen’s history, the unsuccessful attempt to eradicate them, and their expansion in Florida in this article by Bill Pranty.

(photo from Australia via from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

Pittsburgh birders always hope that a trip to Lake Erie’s shore will uncover a rarity.  Will there be something awesome at the end of that 2.5 hour drive?

This rare bird showed up at Conneaut, Ohio nine days ago.  The August 15 rare bird alert reported an immature red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus) on the sand spit.  Birders flocked to see him so far from his species’ normal migration routes west of the Mississippi and offshore in the Atlantic.

Steve Gosser photographed him less than 24 hours later.   Isn’t he gorgeous!

That was Saturday.  I drove to Conneaut on Sunday and the bird was gone.

I should be more nimble if I want to see these One Day Wonders.

(photos by Steve Gosser)

This shell is so beautiful that it threatens the existence of the animal that wears it.

The candy cane snail (Liguus virgineus) is a land-based snail found on the island of Hispaniola, home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Because of its beauty it has been over-collected for the shell trade, making it hard to find and endangering the snail.

This particular shell is in the collection of the photographer, H. Zell, whose photo is one of the finalists for Wikimedia Common’s 2013 Picture of the Year.

Voting ended yesterday but you can still view Picture Of The Year finalists here.

(photo by H. Zell, Creative Commons license at Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)