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Flock to Marion

10,000 Birds

South Africa is their steward and have been declared Special Nature Reserves under the South African Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act in 2003, which restricts activities on the islands to research and conservation management. It is still volcanically active with researchers periodically discovering new flows.

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How The Bird Got Its Beak

10,000 Birds

Similar comparisons can be made with other bird features such as how their hips work. So this new research is very interesting, and we applaud the scientists for their work. These researchers carried out two different major efforts that in combination advance our understanding of the evolution of the bird beak.

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A Climate Change Crash

10,000 Birds

Here are a few other things regular readers of this site may be familiar with: The bird science journal “The Condor,” the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley, the concept of “niche,” and the system for making field observations of species known as the “Grinnell System.” Not in the Mohave Desert.

2018 101
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Birding By Impression: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Birding by Impression is a conscious, deliberate method of identifying and recognizing birds based on the study and evaluation of “distinctive structural features and behavioral movements” and comparison with nearby and similar species. So say Kevin T. Gladwell is a good read, but not credible scientific support.

Birds 169
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Will parrots and falcons soon be moved around in your field guide?

10,000 Birds

So comparisons of bill shapes, foot shapes, and the like can certainly stimulate the imagination, but we need rigorous science to explore and synthesize more molecular work, morphological analysis, and biogeographical hypotheses in order to close more gaps in our understanding.

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Birding for the Curious: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The birding process is stripped to the essentials without losing the significance of important, sometimes complex ideas—migration, habitat, research, documentation, community. The focus is on learning by doing, with 12 Activity sections integrated within the eleven (ten plus a “bonus”) chapters.

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Better Birding: A Book Review (& a New Year’s goal)

10,000 Birds

These are extremely detailed, covering distribution, behavior, and plumage by age and gender (when relevant) and comparisons with other species in and external to the group. Sullivan are birders as well as writers, researchers, and organizational administrators, and this makes a big difference. Authors George L. Armistead and Brian L.

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