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On the threshold of flight

10,000 Birds

” We don’t call any rodents “flightless rodents” though almost all of them are. It has evolved in non-vertebrate animals like insects more than once. Soon after carnivores that could hunt on land evolved, things like ancestral centipedes. Indeed, we call the very rare non-fliers “flightless.”

Rodents 183
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Falconry – Bloodsport or Alternative Form of Birding?

10,000 Birds

Dirt hawking is a form of falconry that involves hunting rabbits and other small game with Harris Hawks (other hawk species also qualify). One of the primary reasons that these hawks make such excellent falconry birds is because they are one of only two raptor species (the other is the Galapagos Hawk ) that hunt cooperatively.

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Invasive species in Australia

10,000 Birds

European Red Foxes were brought into Australia in the 1850′s for recreational hunting and soon spread rapidly. We have seen them on remote beaches hunting shorebirds and taking their eggs and they have been responsible for much of the egg loss in breeding Pied Oystercatchers along the Broome coast.

Australia 157
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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

Originally a hunting term, the Big Five were the most dangerous and prized targets of the great white hunters on safari. Image taken in Uganda’s Budongo Forest by Adam Riley Buffalo The big – to anyone familiar with the wilds of Africa, the Cape or African Buffalo is the most fearsome of all animals.

Buffalo 195
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Can Nature Take Care of Itself?

10,000 Birds

Inserts in rodent poisons that assure the public they will not kill anything but the offending rats or mice pedal the same questionable claims as those of the snake oil salesmen of bygone days. Will all rescued animals survive to have a happy ending? Veterinarians were taught animals did not “feel” like we did.

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Seal Industry Tries to Capitalize on Medical Researchers Conjectures

Critter News

While I'm not a fan of using animal hearts for transplants, I'm far more sympathetic to that than to simply using their parts for human vanity consumption. But the seal industry doesn't care. They'll exploit anything to try to save their barbaric trade and, if they can use guilt, even better. Excerpted from the Chronicle-Herald.

Seals 100
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White Storks Everywhere

10,000 Birds

They’re the classic charismatic megafauna, and it’s not at all hard to see why they’ve worked their way into so much folklore and why the people of Europe have made so many efforts to conserve them in the face of industrialization, pesticide overuse, hunting, and other threats.

Spain 169