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How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity: A Book Review by a Non-Science Person

10,000 Birds

Doug Futuyma believes in science and in the scientific basis of evolution. How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity by Douglas J. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a very different kind of book than popular books about bird behavior, which rely on story as much as science.

Science 223
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A review of the birdcentric novel “Accidentals” (the title of which is in the plural for a reason)

10,000 Birds

She lives part-time in Uruguay and is co-director of the Fiction Meets Science program at the University of Bremen, Germany, which seeks to bridge the “two cultures” of science and literature. Things get complicated – and then, completely out of hand — when Gabe’s new inamorata is introduced to his family.

Uruguay 155
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A Strategic Arms Race Among Birds

10,000 Birds

There are two patterns that are fairly extreme that fall into this category: brood parasitism and helper-at-the-nest strategy. In the former, a female lays her fertilized egg in the nest of another species, in the hopes that her offspring will be raised by the unwitting hosts. It turns out that the two strategies may be related.

Breeders 206
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Birding Tongbiguan, Yunnan (part 1)

10,000 Birds

” Blue-bearded Bee-eaters seem to have a pretty clever hunting strategy. Location, location, location – some practical advice for River Lapwings aiming to have a family: “ River Lapwing nests on open, unvegetated river banks achieved significantly greater nesting success than those in crop fields” ( source ).

Squirrels 140
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The Bird Way: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

For one thing, we become more aware of cultural biases in our science (new findings on warbling female birds, for example, reveal both gender and geographic biases). Many popular science books have neither. As Ackerman explains in her Introduction, studying extreme behavior brings new insight into what we think we know.

Research 233
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Birding Nonggang, Guangxi, China – part 2

10,000 Birds

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. But the starting point has to be a real attraction, not a fake one.

China 237
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An unusual auk baby

10,000 Birds

Starvation and predators make it hard to grow up, and birds have evolved a lot of strategies to give (at least some of) their chicks the best chance in life. One strategy that varies among birds (and other animals) is the number of offspring. Seabirds are one group of birds that go for the latter strategy.

Eggs 165