10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Bearing witness to the cyclical fluctuations of the seasons is a boon to the psyche on a level that tends to go unnoticed and unannounced. The first step in preparing for the breeding season is getting ready for courtship. The often overlooked Cattle Egret has legs that turn bright pink during this brief courtship period.

Cattle 176

Cattle Bears Breeding Animal 176

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

This can mean some interesting birding, if you can bear the Shanghai heat … Of course, the egrets and herons described in my last post are still around. Cattle Egret … though some of them seem to want to hide (which is really difficult for a white bird). Another new breeding record for Shanghai . Some cuckoo species.

Tigers 174

Tigers Breeding Cattle Bears 174

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 14, 2018

Unlike Barred Owls they were accompanied by no great controversy , and unlike Cattle Egrets or Eurasian Collared Doves they didn’t come as an abrupt continent-hopping surprise. But shifting baseline syndrome doesn’t just apply to things that have become diminished.

New York Times 140

New York Times Montana Oregon Deer 140

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2013

Other members of the family include the huge Australasian Bittern (a species I have yet to see), the coastal Eastern Reef Egret (hardly difficult since it’s habitat requirements are basically “an island in the Pacific”), and of course the Cattle Egret. It wasn’t always this way.

New Zealand 147

New Zealand Indonesia Cattle Guinea 147

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2022

.” And after separating all the parts of the boluses and presumably weighing them, your conclusion would have been that “the most regularly occurring food items recorded are fish (63%) and insects (33%)” (the other 4% are the few remaining bits of chocolate and gummy bears brought to the chicks by their grandparents.

Birds 162

Birds South Korea Japan Abandon 162

10,000 Birds

JULY 20, 2018

Beset by poaching by cattle ranchers, habitat loss, DDT, and lead poisoning (from consuming shotgun pellets embedded in the condor’s carrion fare), populations of this enormous New World vulture fell into a serious decline in the twentieth century. With enough room for another, of course.

California Condor 103

California Condor Oregon California Zoos 103