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The Gas Station Bird

10,000 Birds

The bird is just chilling out, waiting for the urge to fly. The bird below is also waiting, but not to fly. One might assume this is a falconry bird, but it’s not. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of birds knows the efficiency and delicacy of their respiratory systems. Now imagine you have the lungs of a bird.

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Spring Migration on South Padre Island, Texas

10,000 Birds

There are a few spectacles in the birding community that are high energy, happen quickly, and is worth any effort to experience it. One such experience is a bird grounding event, sometimes called a fallout. However, if the wind blows in from the north, then these poor little birds have much more of a struggle.

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Save the Painted Bunting, y’all: Keep wonder alive

10,000 Birds

For reasons no one fully understands, much of Mississippi, Alabama, and inland Georgia lack Painted Buntings during the breeding season, a gap of several hundred miles. You can see the two disjunct populations mapped in this animated occurrence model from eBird. Birds AOU names Painted Bunting taxonomy and systematics'

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The Nonessential Whooping Crane

10,000 Birds

Over the winter, the universe lost four whooping cranes to what appears to be recreational shooting: three gunned down together in Georgia on December 30, 2010, and another in Alabama on January 28, 2011. photo by JZ When a population of birds numbers only 400 in the wild, there can be no such thing as a “nonessential” individual.

2011 243
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Lest we Forget – BP Oil Spill 2010

10,000 Birds

Oil on the beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama I covered the spill for several months for a special TV series on the Gulf Disaster. Oil begins to wash up on the beaches throughout May and June of 2010 May 6, 2010 Oil washes ashore on the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast, an important nesting and breeding area for many bird species.

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