10,000 Birds

JUNE 23, 2022

I saw two Pitta species at Hongbenghe, both among the slightly less glamourous among the pitta family: The Blue-naped Pitta … … and the closely related Rusty-naped Pitta. While it is listed as Least Concern, it is rare in China – the range map in the HBW barely touches Chinese territory.

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Birds Myanmar China Chicago 147

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2022

Wikipedia seems not too impressed with the species, stating that “the brown honeyeater is a medium-small, plain grey-brown honeyeater” The Latin species name indistincta (indistinct, obscure) sounds similarly underwhelming. The species was bred at the zoo of Memphis, Tennesee ( source ). ” ( source ).

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Birds Australia Parrots Memphis 147

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

In China, wherever there is one real tourist attraction (like the Great Wall), the local strategy seems to be to add some fake attractions – replicas of palaces or tombs, amusement parks, shopping centers – in order to maximize the income from tourists. Sir James McGrigor (1771-1858) Director Gen.

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China Birds Pythons Eagles 226

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 29, 2022

” Funny how the difficulty of breeding a species can be illustrated in simple monetary terms. But that may have helped me to see them – the species is quite nomadic and settles wherever there is rain. Ok, back to the (presumably non-sacred, certainly non-mummified) Australian species. In a paper published in 1938 (!),

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Birds Australia Sheep Zebras 147

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 4, 2021

I pointed at the bird shown below but he insisted it could not be that species – no long tail … For people of a certain age, gender and background, at some point The Smiths were the most important band in the world. Other species, such as this juvenile Light-vented Bulbul , seem to have more ambiguous feelings about molting.

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Birds LACS France Japan 227

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2022

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. According to Couzens, after laying the eggs, females sometimes immediately abandon their first mate and pair up with another male. But maybe that is actually a good thing.

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Birds South Korea Japan Abandon 162

10,000 Birds

MAY 28, 2020

Understandably, after all the trouble of incubating the eggs. A cuckoo species with a sense of honor, being a non-parasitic cuckoo. Meanwhile, Little Grebes are still in a slightly earlier phase. Little Ringed Plovers are fiercely protective of their cute chicks. A Grey Night Jar does what it does best – being almost invisible.

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Birds Tigers Farming Eggs 163

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 9, 2023

That comes at a price – the HBW describes the species as “stocky and fairly sluggish” and – with a critical undertone – continues to state that the species is “generally less agile in flight than are most flycatchers”. Why the Latin species name is cyaniventer (meaning having a dark blue belly) remains a mystery to me though.

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China Hunting Birds illegal 147

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 5, 2023

I also only managed to see rather common bird species at Shennongjia, a nature reserve in Hubei province, China. In the past, Great Spotted Woodpeckers mostly lived off renting out their old apartments to other species. However, with time it has gotten better at rejecting eggs that do not mimic its own eggs well.

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China Birds Eggs Woodpeckers 172

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 11, 2019

It was actually feared to be extinct until 2000, when four pairs of breeding pairs were discovered.

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2000 Eggs Collecting Breeding 126

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

It is listed as Vulnerable, as its range is rather restricted, though it has been found outside of China as well, e.g., in Vietnam, though the HBW does not seem to have read that paper yet. Some ornithologists are so desperate to add papers to their resumes that they write about new records of Black-crested Bulbul subspecies within China.

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China Vietnam Birds Monkeys 147

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2014

Did I dare dip my toe into this catalog of tantalizing species? Phillipps’ Field Guide (I’ll be using this shortened form of the title) covers 673 avian species, including 59 endemics, and 53 species that have not been documented yet for the area but which may show up in the next few years. Now, I’m not so sure.

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Brunei Birds Asia China 174

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 ?

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China 2017 Birds Indonesia 181

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2019

beats have still managed to share 82 checklists and accounted for 737 species. Our two newest contributors have shared from Mexico and China, bringing the countries birded this month (also including; Costa Rica, Greece, Serbia, USA, UK, India, UAE and New Zealand) to 10. Jamaica Bay, Big Egg Marsh. Jamaica Bay, Big Egg Marsh.

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2019 Jamaica Eggs Woodpeckers 119

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2023

The last time I birded Longcanggou, a national forest park in China’s Sichuan province, was in November 2021. Today, the national forest park is open to tourists – which in China means large groups of people in similarly large buses. Some individuals even rejected their own eggs when they were in the minority.

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Eggs China Birds Mammals 167

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

For this reason, the species is evaluated as Vulnerable.” The Rufous-tailed Robin used to be called Swinhoe’s Robin but apparently, somebody decided that there were already too many bird species (6, according to the HBW) named after him. The Eurasian Hobby was another notable raptor of the month. They were missed.

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Birds China Eggs Owls 196

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 19, 2011

It is my best bird because it is just such an incredible species, and looking at it made me realize that I had temporarily stopped to fully appreciate birds during the stressful last few years. This year I watched them from the day they arrived , until two chicks successfully hatched, the northernmost breeding record for the species.

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2011 Birds South Korea North Dakota 181

10,000 Birds

APRIL 4, 2022

Once the egg has been laid, the female is chased away and the males hatch it.” ” This should make the bird somewhat unpopular with the socially rather conservative Chinese government – maybe the birds in China do not show this behavior in order to adapt to local customs? I thought I needed to mention this.

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Birds China Pythons Breeding 205

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 18, 2022

The Latin species name of the Marsh Sandpiper is stagnatilis , which somehow I thought might hint at the thin, needle-sharp bill of the bird (I do not know how I got this idea, maybe the word stagnatilis sounds kind of sharp) but in reality, stagnatilis means “of or belonging to pools or ponds” (HBW).

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Cattle Portugal Buffalo Breeding 147

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?

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Mauritius Stud Zoos Eggs 101

10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2021

The fields near the Tiaozini mudflats look very much like a lunar landscape, but this does not seem to keep a number of species from breeding there, sometimes directly on dirt roads. The fourth species apparently breeding on these fields is Grey-headed Lapwing. The birding life. A somewhat older chick. Not this one.

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Birds Uganda Breeding Rats 213

10,000 Birds

MARCH 25, 2024

Interestingly, these juveniles look more similar to another species, the Pale-billed Parrotbill, than the adult babblers – and they sometimes are part of the same flock. If you want to see how this species builds its nest, see here.) These roads are much less of a hindrance for the Pin-striped Tit-babbler , a mid-story bird.

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Burma Birds Vietnam Laos 189

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2023

For birders, the Wolongshan area is like a poorer cousin of Balangshan – due to the lower elevation, the bird species here are more common and thus less interesting. Some Chinese Babax waste part of their lives feeding chicks of Large Hawk Cuckoos, which parasitize the babax species.

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Hamburgers Birds Science China 207

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2023

The family has about 37 species, but that includes several fulvettas – only 21 of the species have “parrotbill” in their names (and frankly, the bills of fulvettas do not look like those of parrots at all). A paper on breeding of the species was actually researched right here at Wawushan.

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Pandas Birds Eggs China 202

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

I guessed that his mate was close by, incubating her eggs. In England clutches of 15 or 16 eggs are usual, but clutches of as many as 28 eggs, all laid by a single hen, have been recorded. Such big clutches are essential for survival, as there’s hardly a predator around that won’t eat an egg or chick given half a chance.

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Hungary Eggs Fox India 157

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These fossils are seen as proof that some dinosaurs brooded over its eggs. “Feathery forearms would have allowed these emu-sized dinosaurs to shade their eggs from the head of the midday sun 80 million years ago” (right, Dinoguy2/Wikimedia). Like birds. The book begins with the discovery of Archaeopteryx in Germany in 1861.

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Mongolia Science Reptiles Indiana 182

10,000 Birds

MARCH 20, 2023

In Kangding, there is a rather opulent bird hide – two stories, solid construction, spacious, lots of glass, a separate paved parking lot, though mysteriously (and as far as I can tell from my experience of living in China for almost 20 years, not indicative of fundamentally different physical needs of Chinese people) missing a bathroom.

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Birds Mammals St. Louis Monkeys 147

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 29, 2024

The species name athertoni is derived from Lt. Unfortunately, there is not much literature on the species except for the inevitable analysis of the mitochondrial genome. As usual in China, there are some anonymous Leaf Warbler species – but who cares, apart from Bella of Alpinebirding ?

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Squirrels Birds China Bears 137

10,000 Birds

MAY 1, 2023

To be honest, both the robin and the flycatchers shown above remind me of the easter eggs I hunted for as a child – the same strong colors in front of a green background, same time of the year (feel free to insert your own Proust Madeleine reference here) … Bluethroats apparently are good at imitating other birds.

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Monkeys Birds South Korea Owls 147

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 4, 2021

Colombia is one of those countries that Dragan’s dreams are made of: it has 1,965 bird species – more than any other country in the world. Among them are 94 endemics and 101 near-endemics, four introduced species and only 42 vagrants. No matter how big your avian-related library is, this would be a terrific addition to it.

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Birds Colombia Collecting Bald Eagle 242

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 30, 2023

The Ashy Tailorbird is a good example of the different perspectives of describing a bird – while the English name focuses on the body of the bird, the Latin species name ruficeps refers to the rufous head. The split makes the bird one of the six species endemic to Sabah, Borneo ( source ), four of which I saw during my week at Sepilok.

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Woodpeckers Birds Eggs India 207

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2022

The ongoing destruction of Nanhui, where the species can frequently be seen on migration, certainly will not help. Judging from the facial expression of this White-shouldered Starling , I would rather not have an annoyed bird of this species as a roommate. The species has reversed sex roles, with the males doing the incubating.

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China Birds Ukraine Killing 176

10,000 Birds

JUNE 8, 2023

The Fairy Pitta is listed as Vulnerable, with the HBW that the species is “rare; global population probably no more than a few thousand individuals” While the sexes are alike, my guess is that the Fairy Pitta in the photo is a male given its early arrival date in Shanghai.

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Birds China Research Tenant 130

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.

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Birds Eggs Bangladesh China 205

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 1, 2022

Shanghai parks are rather crowded and noisy places, but the goshawks – who unlike me have lived in China all their lives – apparently do not mind. Apparently, after a male first mates with a female, he throws out the first one or two eggs she lays in their nest. But it is all for science, I hear them say.

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