Petros Karadjias / AP

A bird is entangled in a net used by poachers to trap migrating songbirds in the Larnaca district of Cyprus. Small birds, called ambelopoulia in Greek, are considered a delicacy in Cyprus, and poachers supply a lucrative market. 

Petros Karadjias / AP

A man tries to free a bird caught on a branch covered with a sticky substance that poachers in Cyprus use to trap songbirds in his orchard in the Larnaca district.

Petros Karadjias / AP

Served whole, either boiled or pickled, the fatty birds are such an ugly sight on a plate that outsiders find it hard to fathom how there could be any profit to be made from them. For many Cypriots, however, the tangy-sweet taste of the birds is pure bliss.

By Menelaos Hadjicostis, The Associated Press — It's just before first light and the bird-catcher strings nets among the orange, pomegranate, fig and carob trees in his orchard. The sound of chirping emanates from inside a massive carob — a trick sent from speakers to attract tiny songbirds. By mid-morning, the man disentangles about a half-dozen blackcaps, snaps their necks with his teeth and drops them in a bucket.

For centuries, the migratory songbirds have been a prized delicacy among Cypriots. They are also an illegal one, as entry into the European Union forced Cyprus to ban the tradition of catching the creatures, some endangered, in nets or on sticks slathered with a glue-like substance.

Now economic crisis is luring many out-of-work Cypriots back into the centuries-old trade. They risk stiff fines and even jail time by supplying an underground market for the tiny songbirds illicitly served up in the country's tavernas — but they say it's their only way to make ends meet. Read the full story.

Editor's note: Images taken on Nov. 3, 2012 and made available to NBC News today.

Petros Karadjias / AP

A man, who didn't want to be identified because he is breaking the law by poaching, releases a bird that was trapped in a net in his orchard in the Larnaca district.

Related:

The sound of no birds singing: Jonathan Franzen discusses the killing of songbirds in a New Yorker podcast

Killer outdoor cats slay billions of birds, small mammals yearly

Mystery of how homing pigeons find home solved

Hector Guerrero / AFP - Getty Images

An employee sprays a farm under quarantine following a bird flu outbreak in Tepatitlan, Jalisco State, Mexico on Wednesday. Mexican government declared a national animal health emergency on Monday in the face of an aggressive bird flu epidemic that has infected nearly 1.7 million poultry. The emergency declaration included provisions for quarantine, slaughter, vaccination, and the destruction of infected products.

Hector Guerrero / AFP - Getty Images

Chickens remain in their cages in a farm under quarantine in Tepatitlan, Jalisco State, Mexico.

Hector Guerrero / AFP - Getty Images

Mexico's Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries, & Nutrition veterinarian Adolfo Ortiz works in a mobile laboratory in Guadalajara.

Hector Guerrero / AFP - Getty Images

View of a sanitary checkpoint (including cardboard cutout of a flag-waver) installed by the Mexican Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries, & Nutrition following a bird flu outbreak in Tepatitlan, Jalisco State.

Reuters reports that an outbreak of avian flu has killed at least 870,000 poultry birds in Mexico:

"The virus has never been out of control. It is localized in two places in Jalisco and up until now there is no evidence that it is anywhere else," the official said, asking not be named.

As a cautionary measure, authorities declared a national animal health emergency on Monday to help prevent the disease's spread to other parts of Mexico or farther. The ministry has ordered vaccinations from Asia and is also developing their own drugs domestically to combat the flu.

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Rich Pedroncelli / AP

A rare male black-backed woodpecker near its nest in a dead tree on the edge of where the Angora fire burned near South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

AP reports that conservationists are pressing the US Forest Service to postpone cutting until after nesting season in August:

“There are some other unlogged areas they could fly to as long as the nest core area was protected, but if that’s gone, the chicks would just starve to death,” said Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for the group who argued their case last May 14 before a three-judge panel at the federal appellate court in San Francisco.

Fazio said it is ironic that the Forest Service and the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science are co-hosting the third annual Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on Saturday at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center just a few miles from the woodpeckers’ nest.

Read more...

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Rich Pedroncelli / AP

A sign warns hikers they are entering an area that is being cleared of dead trees burned in the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Rare woodpecker chicks in burned forest stands at Lake Tahoe won't survive if the U.S. Forest Service proceeds with a contentious post-fire logging project, according to conservationists pressing the agency to postpone cutting around the trees until after the nesting season in August.

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

In this photo taken Monday, May 28, 2012, trees that have been cleared as part of a post-fire logging project are seen stacked for removal at the site of the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Chad Hanson, executive director of the John Muir Project, marks a tree, slated to be removed, that holds the nest and chicks of the rare black-backed woodpecker, at the site of the 2007 Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe.

EPA

An Indian woman rag picker searches for material as a group of Greater Adjutant Stork seen in the background at a rubbish dump near Deepor Beel Wildlife Sanctuary on the outskirts of Guwahati city, India, on May 10.

Fast vanishing wetlands in and around Guwahati city have now become a major threat for the survival of the Greater Adjutant Stork. Guwahati city has the largest concentration of the stork in the world but their numbers are gradually declining due to the loss of wetlands, habitat and declining availability of food.

In Nov. 2011, China Central Television wrote about India's efforts to save the endangered birds. Biologists helped educate the communities sharing land with the birds' habitats about the importance of the species to the environment.

EPA

An Indian rag picker girls search for material as a group of Greater Adjutant Stork seen in the background at a rubbish dump near Deepor Beel Wildlife Sanctuary on the outskirts of Guwahati city, India, on May 10.

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Tim Laman/National Geographic

A male club-winged manakin in the Milpe Bird Sanctuary, with his characteristic red thatch, has just attracted a female with his sound and now hopes to seal the deal.

National Geographic

It turns out that the late Michael Jackson wasn't the only one who can moonwalk: Photographer Tim Laman captured a manakin (it's a tropical bird, not a life-size doll) busting a remarkably similar move for the May edition of National Geographic magazine.

Like a beauty queen from a movie scene, a manakin in action is a spectacular song-and-dance number in the middle of a tropical forest. About half of the 40 known species make music by moving their body parts. And in the flush of courtship, males execute maneuvers with names like the dart, the about-face, the upright, and the backward slide (which looks just like the moonwalk Michael Jackson popularized with the hit "Billie Jean").

In 1871, naturalist Charles Darwin sized up the manakin like this: “The diversity of the sounds … and the diversity of the means for producing such sounds, are highly remarkable. We thus gain a high idea of their importance for sexual purposes.” Just remember, male manakins: "Be careful of what you do, and don't go around breaking young girl's hearts."

Tim Laman/National Geographic

The blue-crowned manakin doesn't produce any wing sounds.

More:
Nine baby great horned owls being treated by vets
Big bear takes mighty fall from campus tree
Kermit, is that you? Frog sits on bench like a human

Scott Heppell / AP

A flock of starlings is seen as the sun sets above Gretna, Scotland on Nov. 4, 2011.

Have you ever watched the way a flock of starlings move? It can be hypnotic.

Wired.com reports

To watch the uncanny synchronization of a starling flock in flight is to wonder if the birds aren’t actually a single entity, governed by something beyond the usual rules of biology. New research suggests that’s true.

Mathematical analysis of flock dynamics show how each starling’s movement is influenced by every other starling, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter how large a flock is, or if two birds are on opposite sides. It’s as if every individual is connected to the same network.

That phenomenon is known as scale-free correlation, and transcends biology. The closest fit to equations describing starling flock patterns come from the literature of “criticality,” of crystal formation and avalanches — systems poised on the brink, capable of near-instantaneous transformation. Read more...

Video: See Sophie Windsor Clive's video of starling murmuration.

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Matt Cardy / Getty Images

One of the several hundred Manx Shearwater birds, that have been rescued after being stranded by the recent storms and high winds, is cleaned at the RSPCA West Hatch wildlife centre on September 14, 2011 in Taunton, England.

Matt Cardy / Getty Images

One of the several hundred Manx Shearwater birds, that have been rescued after being stranded by the recent storms and high winds, is cleaned at the RSPCA West Hatch wildlife centre on September 14, 2011 in Taunton, England. The RSPCA have been dealing with hundreds of Manx Shearwater juveniles and other birds, which were bound for South America, but were blown inland as they attempted to begin their winter migration and had been recovered from beaches and gardens in Pembrokeshire. The centre claims this autumn has seen the biggest rescue of birds in Wales since the Sea Empress oil spill in 1996.

Matt Cardy / Getty Images

Trainee inspector Sarah Hetherington holds one of the several rescued birds, at the RSPCA West Hatch wildlife centre on September 14, 2011 in Taunton, England.

 According to the BBC:

Hundreds of seabirds were left stranded on the coast after being blown off course as high winds and heavy rain cause disruption in parts of Wales.

The RSPCA rescued the Manx shearwaters, which were migrating to Argentina from their burrows on Skomer island off Pembrokeshire.

More than 400 ended up on cliffs and in the surf at Newgale in Pembrokeshire.

More from the BBC.