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The Storks of Africa

10,000 Birds

Africa has more than its fair share of storks, with 8 of the world’s 19 species gracing the continent. Marabous have also learnt another trick, and that is to follow vultures and scavenge off the remains of Lion and other large predator kills. The Saddle-billed Stork has a similar Africa-wide distribution as the Marabou.

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Flock to Marion

10,000 Birds

Birdlife South Africa has previously done two of these types of trips before, previously called Flock to Sea – Namibia in 2013 and Flock to Nowhere in 2017, in partnership with MSC Cruises. It has had very few humans walk its soil and who have had little impact to this otherwise pristine nature. Which makes it a haven for seabirds….and

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Book Review: Spillover – Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

10,000 Birds

It’s six weeks to the day till I go to Africa, and of late conversations about the subject have taken a reliable and predictable detour. ” I’ll sometimes add “It’s in West Africa, I’ll be in South Africa. The disease had killed a tourist like ourselves.

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Vultures, Human Evolution, Global Warming, and Windmills

10,000 Birds

The topic was the concept of humans as predators, or hunters, or really, eaters of meat, and I was discussing the many ways in which people misconceived this notion. Buffalo, even the big giant extinct ones that previously roamed Africa, are in some ways easier, though with drawbacks. Eland are pretty darn hard to hunt.

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After the recent Gorilla vs Grizzly thread I think this is needed: Gorilla myth busting

Reddit Animals

Claim 1: A gorilla can definitely kill any animal below 400 lbs easily and still put up a good fight for those above that weight class The truth: Forest leopards in Africa are known to kill gorillas, and while rare, the current record is skewed heavily in favor of the leopard coming out the better in these encounters.

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It may be hard to swallow, but Bumpus could get bumped to the back burner

10,000 Birds

They are a commensal species, meaning that they are a wild animal that lives in close association with humans, not as a pet or as a farm animal but more like a parasite, to the extent that it is hard to find them in truely wild settings, and it is hard to find human settlements without them. because of collisions with vehicles.

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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.