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Birding the Ndumo area, South Africa

10,000 Birds

Ndumo Game Reserve lies in the Easternmost part of South Africa, close to the border of Mozambique and Eswatini. It is not particularly big but has a reported 430 bird species including migrants, though during my short stay it seems I missed most of the key attractions among them. Pel’s Fishing Owl, where were you?

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I Remember Elephants

10,000 Birds

Nevertheless, only the most important news I did follow, those about the decision-making process on future sales of elephants and their ivory at a global wildlife summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the first such meeting since 2013. We are facing a plague of poaching that is again decimating the species.

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New Big Day Record Broken for Costa Rica!

10,000 Birds

Yep, those two guys identified 331 species in one small area, sans vehicle. Can you imagine even identifying more than 250 species while walking and using a canoe in one day? Essentially, their record was broken in 1986 by Terry Stevenson and John Fanshawe when they recorded 342 species during one calendar day in Kenya.

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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

Thankfully the days of visiting Africa purely for slaughtering its wildlife have mostly come to a merciful end, and safari operators have adopted the Big Five term to market tours that offer sightings of the fortunate remanants of Africa’s once teeming great herds.

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Birding Eastern Zimbabwe

10,000 Birds

Due to the large number of specialty and range-restricted species it is a must-visit destination for any South African birder who wants to surpass the 800-mark of a Southern African life-list. End result – precious birding time lost and 43 adopted African kids. An incredible close encounter with this magical cat species.

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I and the Bird: What is a Vulture?

10,000 Birds

The smellier the better, particularly as, unusually for birds, many species can boast a robust sense of smell. In any case, our hang-ups with vultures clearly stem from our own issues rather than any inherently bizarre trait of the species themselves. Vultures famously feed on carrion. Dead things. New World Vultures.

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The A-Team

10,000 Birds

Anyway, so I started checking my bird photo collection for photos of species starting with an A (after all, this is a bird photo blog, though I sometimes tend to forget this). Let us start with some of the cheaters in the A-Team – the ones just adopting the name of a continent to get into this post. Are you still with me?