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Tiny Asian bird discovered as sole member of ancient family. Who’s next?

10,000 Birds

Big news about a small bird broke earlier this month when bird researchers from several nations announced that the species formerly known as Spotted Wren-Babbler ( Spelaeornis formosus ) — a tiny, secretive bird of montane forests from the eastern Himalayas to southeast China — is not a Spelaeornis wren-babbler at all.

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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

He also believes that we are living in an era of incredible scientific research, one in which new genetic technology and findings from diverse scientific disciplines have turned assumptions upside down, opened up new lines of thought, and provided answers, or at least probable answers, to many of our questions about why birds do the things they do.

Science 213
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Birds of Chile – A Photo Guide

10,000 Birds

Guiding aside, Howell is a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and the author of many books, including Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America (Princeton).

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Is the White-naped Xenopsaris Migratory? or The Limits of Citizen Science

10,000 Birds

The White-naped Xenopsaris is a member of the Tityra family (Tityridae), a newish family of mostly South American birds carved from various oddball birds formerly lumped with the manakins, the tyrant-flycatchers and the cotingas. eBird has a range of data exploration tools that, to my mind, exist help birders bird.

Science 107
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Far From Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

An array of tools ranging from geolocators to satellite trackers to depth measurers to miniature cameras have been employed by ornithologists and biologists over the past twenty years, yielding scads of information. Far From Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds is a book about seabird research by a passionate seabird researcher.

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National Audubon Society Birds of North America: A Guide Review

10,000 Birds

The designers employ graphic design tools of color, font, icon, and photographic illustration to produce pages that both look pleasing to the eye and help the user navigate the book. Using the icons to locate specific bird families takes a little getting used to, but if you do it often it works well as a finding tool.

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“Keep your taxonomy out of my field guide” – revisited

10,000 Birds

The figures show the order of bird families in the four field guides mentioned above. For easier reference, I have given the order of families in the oldest field guide (on the left) a spectral colour pattern and used the same colour for the respective families in the other guides. Order of bird families, non-songbirds.

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