10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

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.

Dissection 222

Dissection Birds Research Europe 222

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2015

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

Eggs Family 2006 New York 263

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2014

2014), presents an authoritative framework for our understanding of and future work on bird phylogeny. Now it’s late 2014, six and a half years later, and here’s what we know today. ’s bird family tree in a new tab and follow along as you read. So do parrots, some songbirds, humans, and a few other mammals.

Family 279

Family Birds Parrots 2014 279

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2021

A brief personal digression: I moved back into the house I grew up in back in 2014, my parents vacated at the end of 2016. Thankfully, they now have a home here where they can court, build their nest, and raise their young. Life here is experiencing a boon in the face of encroaching human activity, at least in my immediate vicinity.

Opossums 264

Opossums Barn Owls Hunting Reptiles 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ) — that towering icon of modern anthropogenic extinctions — was a pigeon.

Solomon Islands 276

Solomon Islands Guinea Mauritius Humane 276

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2015

None fly, most are curious and social, which probably contributes to our cultural perception of penguins as one step away from human. This is not your ordinary reference book, though it was cited as one of the best reference sources of 2014 by Library Journal. Raised in the Galapagos, she’s been exposed to penguins her whole life.

Penguins 200

Penguins New Zealand South Africa Albatross 200