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Rip Van Winkle’s Crow Killing Contest

10,000 Birds

However, I will pick a fight with the Rip Van Winkle Rod and Gun Club in Palenville, New York, which is sponsoring their fourth annual “Crow Down” March 29-30, 2014. Some people think it’s just plain fun to kill enormous numbers of animals and pile up their bodies, and when there’s no “bag limit” it’s legal to do so.

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Solid Air: Invisible Killer Saving Billions of Birds From Windows–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

In 2007 I was working in a university building that was just begging for bird feeders. This was where I set up my bird feeders, just one at first, then expanding as everyone expressed delight in seeing the Carolina Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Downy Woodpeckers. There were no dead birds for weeks. I hoped it was an anomaly.

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Birding Under the Influence: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

If you followed Dorian’s adventures on his Big Year blog, Biking for Birds , you are familiar with many of these stories, but not the major one, the internal journey that was going on inside Dorian’s mind as he pedaled and birded: his history and multi-year struggle with alcoholism and related addictions.

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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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Best Bird of the Weekend (Second of February 2014)

10,000 Birds

Now that Winter Olympic fever has gripped the global imagination, I can’t help but wonder why we don’t have more international birding competitions like the International Birding Rally in Peru. A Cooper’s Hawk almost killed me this weekend. What was your best bird of the weekend? How about you?

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Can Birds Be Safe? If Only.

10,000 Birds

Another product has been invented that could cut down on the number of wild birds killed by domestic cats. The idea is that brilliant colors will warn birds that something is coming, and they’ll fly away. Susan Willson, who led a field study involving pet cats in 2013 and 2014. Sometimes two or three a day!”.

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Tricolored Blackbird in Trouble in California

10,000 Birds

More than 99% of the population of Tricolored Blackbirds ( Agelaius tricolor ) live within the state of California and form the largest colonies of any North American passerine bird 1. The Results of the 2014 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey confirm that this species is in rapid decline. Click on photos for full sized images.