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A Near Conjunction

10,000 Birds

Alas, he was gone before I had a chance to lift my camera. As if to stamp its approval on the habitat alteration, a Pale-breasted Spinetail voiced its content with the human disturbance. That depressing news aside, we enjoyed a good view of a female Collared Trogon just out of earshot of the human activity at the entrance.

Trinidad 162
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Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of January 2015)

10,000 Birds

Alas, the team named for a bird fell short of the crown in Super Bowl XLIX. While many human beings felt anguish and rage at the loss, most avifauna appeared unperturbed. The non-Seahawk birds that caught my eye this weekend were Northern Cardinals , which always look their best burning crimson against a blanket of white snow.

2015 176
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Birding around Chaka, Qinghai, China

10,000 Birds

The Ala Shan Redstart (which I will not call Przevalski’s Redstart, see my juvenile rants about the evil Mr Przevalski in earlier editions of this blog) is a very attractive bird and – as many attractive birds – listed as Near Threatened. “ Not the bird’s fault, I guess.

China 243
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Birding Shanghai in March 2023

10,000 Birds

Alas, it seems they were already gone from Tianmashan in March. Ironically (and personally, given that I am not particularly fond of the human race, also deservedly) this may help the spread of diseases carried by birds, such as avian influenza ( source ). Of course, for the birds involved, this often leads to death.

Birds 191
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Laughing at you, not with you

10,000 Birds

The author of the eBird entry for Elliot’s Laughingthrush (various locations, Qinghai and Sichuan) seems almost a bit contemptuous of the bird, remarking that on its habit of “scrounging for human-made trash” I thought that is more of a gull thing to do?

San Diego 202
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A Gull at the End of the World

10,000 Birds

I, alas, did not have time to make the full journey on foot, so I cheesed out and caught a bus. Until 2007 the British Ornithologists’ Union lumped it with the Herring Gull , perhaps the classic “sea gull” of human contempt. But DNA analysis not only established Larus michahellis but gave it two subspecies of its own.

Portugal 164
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On Dominance and Animal Birth Control

Animal Person

When taking the issue to simplest common denominator, spaying/neutering is essentially exercising human dominance over non-human animals. Meanwhile, I would love to be able to have some kind of law against human beings producing/reproducing more than one person per person.