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Not enough Woodpeckers

10,000 Birds

“I am not bad-looking, I am just badly photographed”: A Bay Woodpecker (Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia) using a joke from “Roger Rabbit” The pinkish eyerings of the Brown-capped Pygmy Woodpecker (Tansa, India) make it look as if it is constantly suffering from a hangover.

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Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

They took dogs to Australia, chickens across the Pacific, rabbits to England, horses to the New World, and then brought potatoes back. Secondly, New Zealand had already experienced on wave of extinction due to the introduction or rats and human hunting. Rabbits are still an agricultural pest.

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Listening to Falcons: The Peregrines of Tom Cade

10,000 Birds

But it wasn’t until he studied falconry’s appeal to centuries-old cultures–the Persians, English, Dutch, French, Chinese, Russians, and people of the Middle East–that Cade realized the sport of kings was slowly dying and would disappear along with the age-old mystique of a raptor returning to the human who trained her.

Falcons 184
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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

They are part of the scarab beetle complex and over 300 species have been described, occurring not only in Africa but also Europe, Asia and the Americas. They are harmless to humans and their horns are used for wrestling other males for mating rights. In Asia they are even commonly kept as pets! to the far reaches of freezing Siberia.

Buffalo 207
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What It’s Like to Be a Bird: A Review of the New Sibley Book

10,000 Birds

It is a book with a careful infrastructure, however (even though it doesn’t have an index), with references to one section from another, enabling the curious reader to go down structured rabbit holes, pursuing information on nesting or skeletal systems or feather structure throughout the book. copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley.

2020 264
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Comebackers

10,000 Birds

Most birders are familiar with this story; back in the day, the pesticide DDT was in widespread use all over North America. But within a couple of decades, it’s effects on both wildlife and humanity became apparent. While DDT is still used some places in the world, it has largely disappeared from use in North America.

Albatross 209