Where in Northern Nevada do the Red-necked Phalaropes roam?

And at what lake can residents creep up on Brown Creepers?

Find the answers to that plus the best spots to spot Sooty Grouse, Ruddy Ducks, Calliope hummingbirds, bald eagles and a flock of other fowl in the new edition of “A Birding Guide to Reno and Beyond.”

Issued by the Lahontan Audubon Society, this second edition costs $10 for a 59-page booklet that provides detailed directions and maps to sites where bird-lovers can find their favorite feathered friends at different times of the year.

Karen Kish, president of the Lahontan Audubon Society, describes it as a “roadmap of places to go and birds to see” at the best birding spots within an 80-mile radius of Reno.

The book lists 20 areas, including several in and around Reno as well as in Carson City, the Lake Tahoe Basin and California’s Sierra Valley.

A how-to-get-there section provides the mileage and time required to reach each area, what species will be there, suggestions for possible side trips and precautions drivers might need to take to survive summer heat and wet or snowy driving conditions.

The book does not include photos of birds to help people identify them because that would require a much lengthier publication, Kish said.

The booklet’s introduction does recommend several popular bird identification guides available at most book stores or online. They include “Kenn Kaufman’s “Birds of North America,” and David Allen Sibley’s “The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America.”

Updated since the publication of the first “A Birding Guide to Reno and Beyond” in 2000, the new edition mentions the acquisition of wetlands in Carson Valley by the Nature Conservancy; a floating boardwalk and other features at Swan Lake in Lemmon Valley; and a viewing platform with interpretive panels at Stillwater Point at the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge near Fallon.

The purpose of the guide is to help the public enjoy the beauty of birds and learn about their behaviors, said Kish, who co-edited the book with Alan Gubanich, the Lahontan Audubon Society’s vice president.

“There are a lot of reasons why people bird,” Kish said. “And part of it is the pure aesthetics because when you see a bird through binoculars, you see a lot more detail.”

Looking for a certain species becomes almost like a treasure hunt, she said.

“When you know a bird migrates to a certain area, if you find it, it’s very exciting.”

There also is another reason for encouraging people to enjoy the beauty of birds and their vital place in the ecosystem, Kish said.

“Often an appreciation for birds leads to improving their habitat,” she said. “On a more serious note, birds are pretty sensitive to the environment and to habitat changes.”

Kish said birds are considered an ‘indicator’ set of species, the canaries in the global coal mine sensitive to toxins and other environmental shifts that eventually can threaten humankind.

“So if they get out of balance and suddenly your neighborhood changes to having nothing but pigeons, you know something has happened. And the human species is part of the web of life.”

Your dog may be a lot smarter than you think, according to a new study conducted by European scientists.

Like many animals, dogs have long been known to copy human actions by imitation — for example, for a dog to pick up a ball with its mouth after it sees a human pick up a ball by hand.

But the new research, reported by the Washington Post, shows that canines might also think about how to imitate another dog’s behavior by considering the circumstances of the original action — a form of reasoning until now seen only in humans.

“The fact that the dogs imitate selectively, depending on the situation — that has not been shown before,” study leader Friederike Range of the University of Vienna told the Post.

Range and her Austrian and Hungarian colleagues trained a border collie, Guinness, to release a tasty snack by pushing down on a hanging wooden bar with her paw — an action somewhat contrary to normal dog behavior, because dogs generally prefer to move objects with their mouths.

They then made Guinness do so repeatedly while two groups of other dogs watched.

The first group of dogs watched Guinness push the bar with her paw — while her mouth was preoccupied with holding a ball.

When it was their turn to push the bar, about 80 percent of them did not copy Guinness exactly, and used their mouths instead of their paws. So did a control group of dogs that did not watch Guinness at all.

A second group watched Guinness push the bar with her paw again — but without anything in her mouth, leaving it unclear as to why she used her paw instead.

Of this group, about 80 percent used their paws rather than their mouths, copying her exactly and going against their natural doggie instincts.

The scientists figure that most of the dogs in the third group may have thought Guinness knew something they didn’t, and that they had better copy her exactly.

“What’s surprising and shocking about this is that we thought this sort of imitation was very sophisticated, something seen only in humans,” Brian Hare, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, told the Post. “Once again, it ends up dogs are smarter than scientists thought.”

A family’s pet dog which was recently stolen out of his own yard by two young men has been found and is back home.

Tino, a Giant Malamute who belongs to the Tom Morris family of East Lake Drive, was found by Morris on Friday after he received an anonymous tip about where the dog was, he said.

The dog had been stolen by two young men who drove up to the Morris home when no one was there and put the dog into their pickup truck.

A witness later described the truck after Morris called the Putnam Sheriff’s Dept. to report his dog had been stolen.

Heartbroken over losing their beloved pet, the family put out posters with the dog’s picture, hoping someone would call and report finding the dog.

A man phoned Morris on Thursday night saying he had the dog, which he claimed had been dropped off in his neighborhood, and he said he would bring him home, but he did not do so, Morris said. And the search went on.

On Friday, a clerk at a business phoned Morris and said someone who had seen the poster claimed to know where the dog was, and from that information, Morris went to the area of Phifer Mountain.

After a time, Morris found the Blufftop Road, which had been mentioned in the information.

“I drove up there, found the road, and saw Tino chained at a house there,” Morris said.

The resident of that house told Morris the dog had been dropped off somewhere in the area, and also admitted he had phoned the night before and had meant to bring the dog home, but “something had come up,” Morris said.

While at the location where he found his dog, Morris phoned the Putnam Sheriff’s Dept., and they sent Deputy Sam Lee. Now, the case is under investigation by Detective Gary Roach.

“We brought Tino home, and everybody was happy to see him,” Morris said.

The dog is so gentle and friendly that he is loved by all the neighbors, Morris said.

“While he was gone, the neighbors did everything they could to help us find him and even wanted to up the reward,” he said.

“We’re so glad to have him back, and we want the case investigated thoroughly,” he said.

Dog owners who walk their dogs are more active and have less body fat than non-owners and non-walkers, according to a study presented today at the 54th American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Dog ownership was associated with higher levels of self-reported leisure-time physical activity in the study, which examined differences in physical activity, weight, status, and neighborhood, environment, walkability, and income between dog owners and non-dog owners.

Owners who walked their pets had lower Body Mass Index (BMI) scores and accelerometer (step-counting) scores 11 percent higher than those who did not walk their dogs.

The study involved nearly 2,200 participants recruited from 32 neighborhoods in the Seattle and Baltimore area.

The study showed dog walkers spent an average of 25 minutes/week walking the dog, and 27 percent of participants met physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes per week because of their dog walking.

It took more than five hours to rescue two kittens from a sewer pipe, but in the end, the Fontaine family saved the day.

For Michael Fontaine, 13, the effort was worth it.

“How would you feel if you were down in a sewage drain, trapped and starving?” asked Michael, who will be a seventh-grader at Memorial Middle next year.

He and his mother were outside chatting with neighbors near Lowry Park Zoo about 8 p.m. Sunday when he heard a kitten crying.

Michael feared the kitten was injured and told his mother they had to track the noise and find its source. When they walked half a block closer to the sound, Cynthia Fontaine realized there was trouble.

“This kitten was very much in distress,” she said. “Something was wrong. But we didn’t know if it was hurt. It could have been up in a tree or something.”

They soon realized that not one but two kittens were stuck in a sewer pipe at the intersection of Sligh and Orleans avenues.

Soon after realizing the kittens were underground, Michael and his mother tried to rescue them but couldn’t. She called 911, which referred her to Hillsborough County Animal Services.

Fontaine said an animal services employee came out to help but wasn’t able to rescue the kittens.

A city water department staff member came out as well but wasn’t able to rescue the kittens either, she said.

Eventually her other son, Christopher, 17, went down a manhole to rescue the kittens, working with Michael to get them to safety.

Christopher, who has arachnophobia, said he was about 5 feet underground and surrounded by large spiders.

“I risked my life – kind of,” he said. “I was scared I was going to get stuck.”

By 1:30 a.m., they finally were able to rescue the kittens and bring them to their house.

The kittens weren’t injured but were malnourished. One is black; the other is peach with a black tail and black ears.

When the family showed off the kittens Monday night, the tiny felines were curled into balls, finding comfort in their new owners’ arms.

The family has been too concerned with the kittens’ health to come up with names for them, Fontaine said.

She originally suggested to her children that they put the kittens up for adoption. Her children hated that idea.

“They both got very upset,” she said. “They went through all that – rescued them and saved them. They’re bonding with them already.”

Which came first, the designer or the jewelry?

In Dania De Bortoli’s case, the jewelry beat her by about 80 years.

The Fairfield jewelry and purse designer creates opulent adornments using beads and intricate cast metal pieces taken from vintage art nouveau and art deco jewelry.

A businesswoman with a background in project management, De Bortoli’s passion for jewelry began with antique pieces. She immersed herself in eBay, buying and selling vintage jewelry.

“I really love art nouveau designs and Czech jewelry from the ’30s and ’40s,” she said. “So, I thought, why not try my hand at creating vintage-inspired jewelry.”

The move wasn’t so far of a stretch as it seems.

De Bortoli had always had a crafty side, dabbling in ceramics, painting, jewelry and even Elizabethan costume-making.

Having a child changed her career and her crafting. She got out of the corporate world, and she adjusted her hobbies, too.

“I have a 5-year-old son, so I haven’t been able to lock myself into a sewing room and do that,” De Bortoli said, “but I always want to try something new and experiment and go on that journey of seeing where an idea will take you.”

The idea to make jewelry came, fittingly enough, from jewelry.

Visiting auctions, De Bortoli was buying boxes of it. Some of the pieces were stunning examples of vintage work. And some of the stuff was just old.

Often, when she bought a quantity of jewelry, the set would include necklace remains and extra beads.

“I was playing with them and finding different components from other antique dealers and creating things,” she said. “It appealed to me, the idea of re-creating vintage items.”

Her creations are often dramatic, planting glamorous, swirly art nouveau beads into unexpected new arrangements. Her pieces frequently use pearls and aged brass, which De Bortoli said has a warmth that works well with many skin types.

At once modern and retro, De Bortoli gives vintage lovers something new to get excited about. Her work caught on quickly, since launching the business three years ago, and she’s been picked up in galleries across, and outside, the state, and is sold online.

However, she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as retro. Some of her recent work has been more modern.

And recently, she’s embarked on a new venture: Pet jewelry, inspired by her 3-month-old toy poodle, Cocoa Butter.

“A friend of mine got the other litter mate and she went nuts and bought all these little outfits and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is nuts,’ but once you start dressing them up, they look pretty cute,” she said.

De Bortoli caved in the cold weather, watching her dog shiver and started outfitting her in sweaters. Once she was making sweaters for the dog, she thought, why not jewelry?

“It’s for pure adornment purposes,” she said. “I’m just having fun looking into this, doing the research, coming up with prototypes and (researching) the market.

“I think it’s a hoot.”

In addition to jewelry for dogs and people, De Bortoli teaches knitting and makes whimsical, brightly colored felted purses that also incorporate vintage jewels. One of her bags was recently featured on the HGTV show “That’s Clever.”

“You can turn the bags into real objects of art with texture and color and shape and form,” she said.

Turning her creative whims into businesses allows De Bortoli time at home with her son. If she needs to drop something earlier in the day to take him somewhere, she can pick the project up later and work until 1 a.m. She’s also set up a jewelry table for him, outfitted with his own tools, next to her work space.

Recently, he asked his mom what her favorite colors were, then put her answer to work.

“He made me a pair of beaded earrings,” she said.