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What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Jennifer Ackerman points out in the introduction to What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds , that we don’t know much, but that very soon we may know a lot more. What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds is a joyous, fascinating read.

Owls 224
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Bird Science and Evolution: 2013 Year In Review

10,000 Birds

Many, many things happened in the area of bird science this year, so this review can not be comprehensive. Birds are raised from the egg to follow a certain migration timing, but that timing shifts when the egg hatches later or earlier due to changes in conditions. With global warming, this has meant earlier hatching.

Science 192
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The return of the Old Man

10,000 Birds

Storks, Ibises and Spoonbills of the World states that “disturbance by local people, tourists, and egg and zoo collectors has similarly reduced the colonies, and more protection is vital”. Many have been shot since the project started, despite a great deal of publicity raising awareness of the birds.

Morocco 235
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Birding Shanghai in November 2022

10,000 Birds

In contrast, the females need to make sure not to get duped into raising actual cuckoos – the buntings are a targeted host species ( source ). Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). Maybe there is some justice in this world after all. Better safe than sorry.

Birds 221
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Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History from Cave Art to Conservation–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

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.

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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. Her narrator is Gabriel, 23, raised in Northern California by an American father and a Uruguayan mother.

Uruguay 156
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Birding Shanghai in October 2022

10,000 Birds

Of course, it is hard to resist looking at a paper titled “Host personality predicts cuckoo egg rejection in Daurian redstarts” Basically, the personality of a female redstart (bold or shy) predicts the responses to parasitic eggs – bold hosts are more likely to reject parasitic eggs.

Birds 208