10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2021

There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. Bird communication is a complex and evolving science.

North America 279

North America Research Birds Groups 279

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

Dissection 229

Dissection Birds Research Europe 229

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2021

Pough “with illustrations in color of every species” by Don Eckelberry, Doubleday, 1946. The New York Times obituary cited the series (and Steiner’s other books, but it was the series that made money) as reshaping the publishing industry in the United States.**. This is a fairly large book: 907 pages; 7.38

North America 279

North America America Birds California Condor 279

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2018

It’s not often that we have the opportunity to glimpse the home life of albatrosses, nor of any seabird species. Where does the female Emperor Penguin go after she has produced that one egg and handed it over to the male for incubation? Technology to the rescue! What about incubation shifts?

Albatross 114

Albatross Penguins Research Breeding 114

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Given the complexity of the research, the result feels like a bit of a letdown – “northern populations start migration earlier than southern populations, especially in autumn” The species name of the Chestnut-eared Bunting is fucata , from the Latin “fucare”, to paint red. Better safe than sorry.

Birds 216

Birds Eggs Bangladesh China 216

10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2012

Life Along the Delaware Bay: Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds , by Lawrence Niles, Joanna Burger, and Amanda Dey, is a book with a mission. The numbers, as detailed in this book, are alarming: the horseshoe crab harvest grew from less than 100,000 in 1992 to over 2.5 million in the late 1990’s. Should the gulls be controlled?

Delaware 182

Delaware New Jersey Research Eggs 182

10,000 Birds

MARCH 25, 2020

The new hot novelist Jenny Offill was quoted in the Times magazine recently about her first book: “If someone had described this novel to me, I would never have read it.”. In the marshes of the estancia , he discovers what he comes to believe is a new species of rail – one of the “accidentals” of the title. Gabe agrees to come along.

Uruguay 155

Uruguay 2001 Bald Eagle Science 155

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

trying to grasp the enormity of what had just happened, and reading this book, The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds by Daniel Lewis. Reading this book is, in addition to everything else, an exercise in getting to know the originals of many of our apostrophized birds.

Collecting 151

Collecting Illinois United States Science 151

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

It is the 100th Anniversary of the extinction of the species known as the Passenger Pigeon and writers are paying attention. What is amazing is that each of these three books is very different in content and tone. This is not that kind of book, as Fuller makes clear from the beginning. We have a lot of source material.

2014 161

2014 Killing Michigan Kentucky 161

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

My knowledge of dinosaurs started and stopped with Jurassic Park (the movie, not the theme park), Patrick’s Dinosaurs, a charming book my daughter read in grade school, and, most recently, visits to the American Museum of Natural History with my nephews. These fossils are seen as proof that some dinosaurs brooded over its eggs.

Mongolia 187

Mongolia Science Reptiles Indiana 187

10,000 Birds

JULY 25, 2022

Gisela Kaplan has written a book about the species, and how they seem unperturbed by humans: “It’s one of their most successful defense strategies. When these birds breed, this can lead to highly cringeworthy announcements, for example from Adelaide Zoo : “We have egg-citing news!” This is what killed James Dean.

Birds 237

Birds Australia Ducks Mountain Goats 237

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 6, 2012

Or, Pygmy leaf-folding frogs, Afrixalus brachycnemis, from Tanzania, tiny climbing frogs who lay their eggs in leaves and then fold the leaves over them for protection, sealing the nest with secretions. This is what happens when you read a book like Frogs and Toads of the World , by Chris Mattison.

Reptiles 188

Reptiles Madagascar Family New York City 188

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Manker’s thesis is that ornithology is an excellent gateway to students becoming science majors in college and, more broadly and longer-term, conservation-minded citizens. Of course, there was conventional classroom time spent on topics such as mechanics of flight, metabolism, digestion, nest building, egg production, and so forth.

2018 264

2018 Agenda Science Eggs 264

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Even the Latin species name soror (“sister”) indicates the similarity to another pitta species (blue-naped). The eBird description of the Small Niltava starts with the surprisingly dull statement that “size distinguishes this species from other niltavas” Who would have thought.

China 237

China Birds Pythons Eagles 237

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 14, 2015

The species was in the news because some scientists had finally managed (or bothered – it’s much the same thing) to locate the population high in the mountains of the Solomon Islands, and catch and photograph one. If you want to know why most scientists support collecting this piece in Science explains it better than I can.

Collecting 227

Collecting Solomon Islands New Zealand Fiji 227

10,000 Birds

MAY 15, 2023

For example, a researcher and presumed ornithologist set out with two hypotheses related to the Ashy Drongo (and another drongo species) and wrote a paper about it. For them, God probably was the one instructing the drongos to mob one species but not the other. Why show photos of species as boring as this Ashy-throated Warbler ?

China 189

China 2017 Birds Indonesia 189

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2022

Side note: Indeed, if you follow the titles of newly published books, you will see that there is a constant flow of “Reverse harem” publications. According to the HBW, when breeding, male birds do most of the incubation and parenting while females often leave the nest up to one week before the eggs hatch.

Birds 162

Birds South Korea Japan Abandon 162

10,000 Birds

JUNE 26, 2018

Basically, this species is so dimwitted, it doesn’t know how to survive. Because, Pink Pigeons are not capable of doing the tasks required to create and bring up children of the species. These endangered birds have trouble producing a fertilized egg and, even worse, they don’t even know how to build a nest so the egg survives?

Mauritius 102

Mauritius Stud Zoos Eggs 102

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 5, 2014

Another book, maybe a bird finding guide. Written by David Callahan and edited by Dominic Mitchell, the book originated as a series conceived by and written for Birdwatch magazine, a monthly magazine out of Great Britain. In birding, we like to think that we don’t need much ‘stuff’. Maybe a spotting scope. And a long lens camera.

Collecting 173

Collecting Mauritius Egypt Cyprus 173