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The Dracula Bird

10,000 Birds

But when raised, they seem to have a sort of weird cape. In other words, they never raise their own young. Instead, they lay their eggs in other species’ nests, and let those nest-making birds (often significantly smaller than the cowbirds) raise their young. So that is a negative mark on both their records.

Birds 156
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Birding Tiaozini again – sponsored by the local government …

10,000 Birds

One Oriental Pratincole of them was courageously raising its wings when I unknowingly drove towards its eggs – I reversed, but I am not so sure about the next person using that road … Being yelled at by the chick of an Oriental Pratincole. The birding life.

Birds 225
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Into the Nest: A Book Review in the Time of Nesting

10,000 Birds

And of eggs and nests and birds on nests. Into the Nest , as the title says, is about the courting, mating, egg-laying, nesting, and parenting behavior of “familiar birds”. Cedar Waxwings exchange berries, carry nesting material, eggs. Egg biology, from Part I. Oops, the curmudgeon in me slipped.) Peregrine Falcon nests.

Eggs 263
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Polyandry and Polygynandry on the Tundra

10,000 Birds

Many of the most peculiar aspects of birds are involved with mating, whether it’s for attracting mates, defending nests against predators, or raising chicks. In polygyny, females will often nest on territories held by a male, with multiple females nesting on a single male’s territory, as in Red-winged Blackbirds (Yasukawa and Searcy 1995).

2002 169
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The Oriolest Oriole

10,000 Birds

Icterus is a wide-ranging neotropical genus consisting of the technicolor blackbirds we call orioles. Troupials raise their own chicks, generally 3 to 4 per clutch, they just steal the nest in which they raise them. The two dozen species are, nearly to an individual, long bodied and bicolored.

Baltimore 180
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Bird Love Week: How They Get It Done

10,000 Birds

This week at 10,000 Birds, it’s all about how birds get around to bumping uglies (I’m talking about cloacas here), who they do it with, and how this actually leads to raising chicks…the birds and the bees of birds, you might say. Believe it or not, this is what “fidelity” looks like.

Albatross 199