10,000 Birds

AUGUST 28, 2014

The use of tool by animals is surprisingly rare. Among birds the Egyptian Vulture uses rocks to crack Ostrich eggs, the New Caledonian Crow and Woodpecker Finch (one of several Darwin Finches of the Galapagos Islands), uses sticks to extract grubs from inside a branch. Some individuals are somehow smarter than others.

Fish 163

Fish Woodpeckers Ostriches Eggs 163

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2016

I remember, several times while motionlessly surveying birds, I found myself being investigated by Striped Field Mice , who would dare to come to sniff me. One Nilgai – the largest of Asian antelopes and a few Sambar deer later, we hit a jackpot: there is one jackal-like animal sitting among the dry leaves!

Wildlife 185

Wildlife Tigers Asia Europe 185

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ) — that towering icon of modern anthropogenic extinctions — was a pigeon.

Solomon Islands 279

Solomon Islands Guinea Mauritius Humane 279