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The Hidden Qualities of House Sparrows

10,000 Birds

In its natural old-world range, the House Sparrow offers an interesting identification challenge and has vagrant potential since it is a polytypic species with a highly complex taxonomy. The genus Passer has several well-recognized and recognizable species in Europe, and still holds several enigmas.

Sparrows 209
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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan

10,000 Birds

I saw two Pitta species at Hongbenghe, both among the slightly less glamourous among the pitta family: The Blue-naped Pitta … … and the closely related Rusty-naped Pitta. It seems that this is another species for which the standard phrase of scientists anywhere, “more research needed”, applies.

Birds 147
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Emerald Ash Borers vs. Woodpeckers (and Nuthatches)

10,000 Birds

These bark-burrowing beetles, which apparently hitched a ride in cargo shipments from their native Asia, have been starving the ash trees of eastern and midwestern North America to death for a dozen years now. … Here at 10,000 Birds 20 July – 26 July is Invasive Species Week.

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Phillipps’ Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Did I dare dip my toe into this catalog of tantalizing species? Kinabalu (at 13,455 feet the highest peak in southeast Asia), and human development that has resulted in freshwater rice fields, secondary forest, and oil palm plantations, this means that Borneo offers an incredibly high degree of biodiversity. Now, I’m not so sure.

Brunei 172
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Best Bird of the Year 2014

10,000 Birds

Finally, the Similan Islands are perhaps one of the most beautiful islands in the world and form a stunning backdrop to this species, one of the loveliest pigeons in the world. Apart from being an incredibly exciting bird, this is a species I had longed to see since my first trip to southern Africa way back in 1991.

2014 183
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The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The very first thing we notice about this large member of the Galliformes is that there is a wild version and a domestic version, and although the two are rather different, they are both given the same species name, Meleagris gallopavo. This is not entirely unknown among domestic animals, but many domesticates have no living wild version.

Turkey 198
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Birding the Kruger Park (2): Bateleur area

10,000 Birds

The one bird I did not see here, however, was the Bateleur Eagle … One highlight in the area is the Saddle-billed Stork , likely to be the tallest species in the stork family. Habitat loss, as documented by hieroglyphs. Hence, this species has earned the German colloquial common name “Nimmersatt”; meaning “never full”.

Ostriches 147