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What is the State Bird of Alaska?

10,000 Birds

In 1955 – before Alaska was a state – the Territory’s leaders in charge of drafting a constitution allowed schoolchildren to choose what would eventually become the state bird. The Willow Ptarmigan was officially designated in 1960, when Alaska entered the union.

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Signs of Spring Migration in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Other warblers such as Chestnut-sided and Black-throated Green are still around but based on their breeding plumage, they will be quick to leave for the north any day now. All the way to Alaska maybe? Wilson’s Plovers are in Breeding Plumage. More Birds are Singing. Where will they go?

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Listening to Falcons: The Peregrines of Tom Cade

10,000 Birds

Raised in and around the West Texas steppe country where temperatures reached 100 degrees with regularity, he began life as the Dust Bowl and Great Depression converged. “I’d witnessed Peregrines and Gyrfalcons in the fall of 1949 while I was doing undergraduate work at the University of Alaska. He came for the hawks.

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The “Rufa” Red Knot is now protected under the Endangered Species Act

10,000 Birds

One of the two sub-species of Red Knot occurring in North America, the Rufa subspecies breeds in the Canadian Artic Region and migrates along the east or Atlantic coast of the United States. The other sub-species, Calidris canutus roselaari , migrates along the Pacific Coast and breeds in Alaska and the Wrangel Island in Russia.

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Comebackers

10,000 Birds

Kirtland’s Warbler is a classic niche species; they breed in only very specific conditions, which occur in only a very specific area. this species breeds. Fortunately, there were still a handful of immature birds alive at sea, and a few years later they were back on Toroshima breeding again.

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What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

What the Owl Knows is organized into nine chapters: introduction, adaptation (including vision and flight), research and researchers, vocalization, courtship and breeding, roosting and migration, cognition, and two chapters on owls and humans–captive owls (not zoos, educational owls) and owls in our cultural history.

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My Championship Hummingbird Season

10,000 Birds

Those of us who were raised in the four-season north (here in Michoacán one could define, at the most, three seasons) tend to think of avian migration in terms of seasonal temperatures. For us, it’s all about birds moving north during the warm season to breed, and south to escape the winter cold. It was worth it.

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