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Leaping Foxes

10,000 Birds

In German, if you are a rodent and you are smaller than – say – a human hand, you’re a mouse. If however you are a larger “mouse”-like rodent you are a rat. The Common Buzzards , for example, who usually hunt by circling high above the landscape, will hover in kestrel fashion much more frequently.

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Z. Alexander Brown: Uncaged – Cabernet Sauvignon (2017)

10,000 Birds

The deadly prowess with which their resident Barn Owls hunt rodents allows Z. It certainly makes an attractive mascot in its own right, but it’s also one that was chosen for a reason: as the company explains, the Barn Owl is a “guardian of the vine” and it welcomes the presence of these birds in its fields by installing nest boxes.

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Grassy Green Space in the Central Valley- Trash Habitat or Prime Real Estate for Oddball Birds?

10,000 Birds

Keep birding and you might see a White-tailed Kite hovering as it hunts rodents and one of the few Bat Falcons in the Valley might dash into view. Lesser numbers of other common birds also occur; birds like the Gray-crowned Yellowthroat , Inca Doves , saltators, Groove-billed Anis , and other species.

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Freeze-birding down the Danube

10,000 Birds

A shot or two coming from the opposite bank, but they do not sound like geese shooting – more like boar hunting. A goose hunt sounds like a WWII battle. The only mammals of the day were feral Nutrias (Coypus), aquatic rodents originally from southern South America released from the bankrupt fur-farms and well established here.

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On the threshold of flight

10,000 Birds

” We don’t call any rodents “flightless rodents” though almost all of them are. Soon after carnivores that could hunt on land evolved, things like ancestral centipedes. Not all birds fly, but all birds have flight related anatomy and at least descend from those that did.

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People of a Feather

10,000 Birds

A bit alarming, given the events of the last few weeks in Missoula, but after years of close encounters with chipmunks and ground squirrels I have finally gotten to have a pretty good idea of a rodent when I hear one. The one thing that a traditional nature documentary often lacks is real characters, to its detriment.

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Loggerhead Shrikes breakfast

10,000 Birds

Loggerhead Shrikes are well known for their hunting skills, chasing down lizards, various insects, small rodents and even an occasional snake. It is not uncommon to find results of their skills, in the form of a lizard or other trophy, left on a cactus thorn or barbwire, there for a future meal.

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