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Altruism, Albatrosses, and Vicious Young Men

10,000 Birds

Ka’ena Point is also a breeding ground for the Federally protected Laysan albatross, where 45 nests were being carefully monitored by the non-profit Pacific Rim Conservation. The oldest Laysan albatross was last seen raising a chick on Midway Atoll in 2016, at age 66. They are docile and devoted parents who will not leave their nests.

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Flock to Marion

10,000 Birds

These two islands are about halfway between the tip of South Africa and Antarctica in the Subantarctic Indian Ocean, have had relatively few human visitors, and are primarily inhabited with some of the rarest seabirds in the world and a smaller number of mammals. Yellow-nosed Albatross. Wandering Albatross. and seabirders.

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Survival of the Flexible

10,000 Birds

By weird things I don’t mean human weird things, like for example wasting their time in wild places looking for unusual feathered animals and ticking them off a list, but things that fall outside of their usual repertoire of normal behaviour. But no one told this young albatross that. And the hole looks fairly fresh.

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The Gap Between Wildlife and the Animal Rights Movement

10,000 Birds

I know on some level, I think that’s something almost all of us can get behind…no one, except the most callous and cold-hearted of the human race things its fine to torture animals, or deny that they are capable of pain and suffering. Albatross chicks will no longer have to endure slowly getting eaten alive, unlike this poor bird.

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At Sea With the Marine Birds of the Raincoast: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

At Sea With the Marine Birds of the Raincoast opens with the unexpected appearance of a Laysan Albatross. We are all suckers for an albatross, at least in the United States. The author, conservation biologist Caroline Fox, is observing the albatross’s shadow to the side of the boat. Do I need to say anything more?

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Remotest Endemic Birds

10,000 Birds

How far is the closest human settlement? Well yes, but all of the planet’s tall mountains are relatively close to some form of human habitation. Some rain-forests could rightfully be termed remote but again, human habitation is actually relatively closer than what one might think.

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Here’s the new bird family tree. It’s amazing.

10,000 Birds

So do parrots, some songbirds, humans, and a few other mammals. Humans don’t share merely a similar capacity for vocal learning with hummingbirds, we share share similar brain machinery , and that brain machinery is regulated by similar genes , genes not shared by hummingbirds’ closest relatives, nor by ours. Jarvis et al.

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