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Best Bird of the Weekend (Fourth of April 2016)

10,000 Birds

I enjoyed encountering a lot of first-of-year spring arrivals, but the species that most piqued my interest was White-winged Scoter , with a late flock of 17 hanging around Braddock Bay. The birds had already adopted their drab eclipse plumage, unlike the winter warrior featured in the photo above. What can I say?

2016 100
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Birds of Belize & Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide Review Doubleheader

10,000 Birds

An associated issue is that the Belize and Costa Rica guides share many of the same descriptions of species, written by Howell. Similarly, descriptions of species repeated across volumes do not lose their accuracy with each publication. Other species are splits and lumped and have had their names changed. Why are these issues?

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I Remember Elephants

10,000 Birds

We are facing a plague of poaching that is again decimating the species. Will the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) conference delegates up-list them to Appendix I of the Convention, forbidding any future sale over international borders? I say they were butchered, face-off.

Elephants 208
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Birding Tongbiguan, Yunnan (part 2)

10,000 Birds

The scientific species name of the Golden-throated Barbet is franklinii , commemorating Capt. The HBW section on this species’ behavior mostly repeats the phrase “more information needed” Though of course scientists, hungry for grants and topics, say that all the time. Ok, I made that up. Then, on to nuthatches.

Birds 207
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The Case for Adding the U.S. Territories in the Caribbean to the ABA Area

10,000 Birds

The USVI are smaller and have fewer habitats and, as a result, fewer bird species. Puerto Rico has a checklist of 269 species, 207 of which are migratory and the USVI has a checklist of 149 species, 124 of which are migratory. Herbert Rafaelle includes 284 species in his field guide , which covers both territories.)

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Birding Shanghai in December 2022

10,000 Birds

This is a rather photographer-friendly species, staying on the same branch for quite a while and even returning to it after catching some insects – you can see this on video here and here. While the source does not say so directly, it hints that this means the species is not as intelligent as Eurasian Magpies (which pass the test).

Finland 147
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Birds of the West Indies by Kirwan, Levesque, Oberle & Sharpe

10,000 Birds

Within its 400 pages, the Birds of the West Indies covers 712 species, 550 of them regularly occurring and 190 of those endemic to the region, many of them to single islands. An active birdwatcher, he has found more than 50 species new to Guadeloupe, the Lesser Antilles and, in some cases, the Caribbean as a whole.