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The Gas Station Bird

10,000 Birds

Here’s a quote about bird lungs from Britannica: “Himalayan geese have been observed not only to fly over human climbers struggling to reach the top of Mount Everest, but to honk as they do so.” The bird is a captive-bred Peregrine/Gyrfalcon hybrid owned by people with an Exotic Species Permit.

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Reflecting on a Year of Less Birding

10,000 Birds

In addition to spotting exciting new species in Florida, including the rare Snail Kite, travel across the country brought me into contact with birds in Oregon, California, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alabama, and more. With my new job, I feel privileged to work towards protecting vulnerable species each and very day.

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

10,000 Birds

There’s a new proposal before the American Ornithologists’ Union’s North American Classification Committee to split Painted Bunting into two species (yay! — maybe, more later) and to name the new species “Eastern Painted Bunting” and “Western Painted Bunting” (no!).

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Spring Migration on South Padre Island, Texas

10,000 Birds

Warblers, thrushes, buntings, and other migrants move across the Gulf of Mexico in an extremely stressful, marathon flight from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida before spreading throughout the flyways and heading north.

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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. As you read the below timeline and see the below images, don’t ever forget the perils that walk hand-in-hand with human greed. Traces of hydrocarbon poisoning are showing up in fish species.

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A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

It’s not always an easy book, at times dense and challenging, it is also fascinating and stimulating, motivating us to look at the totality of a bird’s life and the interconnectedness amongst bird movements, shorelines, landscapes, weather, and us–humans.

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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. It may be as sick as deliberately targeting an endangered species for death. Speculation is useless in acts of vandalism.

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