article thumbnail

Smoking is (good) for the birds

10,000 Birds

Back in the 1980s, it became popular for biologists to consider plant secondary compounds in understanding inter-species relationships and other ecological matters. I remember taking an advanced seminar in plant-animal interaction, in preparation for my own study of human-plant interactions. Insects ruled.

2001 148
article thumbnail

Can the Falcons Win the Super Bowl?

10,000 Birds

The Baltimore Ravens crushed my beloved New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV (2001) to become football’s finest feathered franchise. nationalist, holy person, or some species of pirate has won it all. Considering how humanity treats birds around the world, this is clearly a case of sports imitating life.

Falcons 109
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Into the Nest: A Book Review in the Time of Nesting

10,000 Birds

Second, reading about birds courting and parenting brings out the tendency to identify, which leads directly to anthropomorphism, the tendency to assign birds human emotions and thoughts. Think of birds too much as humans and you lose the specialness that makes them birds. Some people love books like that. Yellow Warbler fledgling.

Eggs 263
article thumbnail

Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The idea of Lost Animals was conceived after the publication of Extinct Birds (2001), a 400-page, four-pound book on 75 extinct species. Lost Birds looks at photographic representations of 28 species, 21 of which are birds. Some document one of the last views of the species, others are of the last representative of the species.

Animal 270
article thumbnail

The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The very first thing we notice about this large member of the Galliformes is that there is a wild version and a domestic version, and although the two are rather different, they are both given the same species name, Meleagris gallopavo. et al 2001. Which would be weird. Prior to this discovery, the earliest evidence of M. 11(4):643–57.

Turkey 210
article thumbnail

The Birds of Trinidad and Tobago: Two Guides, One Book Review

10,000 Birds

First published in 1973 in association with the Asa Wright Center, the book focuses on species descriptions, with illustrations grouped together in plates positioned in the center of the book. The guide covers 477 species, an expansion of 35 from the second edition, which was published in 1991. The AOU has not accepted that split.

Trinidad 205
article thumbnail

15 Australian Birds (Episode 4)

10,000 Birds

Gisela Kaplan has written a book about the species, and how they seem unperturbed by humans: “It’s one of their most successful defense strategies. ” The Australasian Swamphen used to think of itself as a subspecies of the Purple Swamphen but then started a self-improvement program and ended up as a full species.

Birds 242