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Living in, on and around cactus

10,000 Birds

Bear in mind, even the plants have to find ways to survive, so virtually every one of them has some form of thorny defense. When it comes to a one stop shopping for food and shelter, no other plant is as widely used as the Cardon Cactus family. Therefore, nothing here ever passes on a chance for a meal.

Elephants 108
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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. At first glance, the difference between the Black-hooded Oriole … … and the Black-naped Oriole is just that they use different makeup artists.

Birds 147
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The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds–A Hummer Book Review

10,000 Birds

If you had your choice of one bird family to pursue, to seek out and observe and photograph and kvell over, which one would you choose? A passion for one bird family is also very useful. I hope by this time you have settled on a bird family for your avian obsession. (I Still, I would really love to see this in some form.

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Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds: An Identification Guide?A Book Review

10,000 Birds

It’s the bird family that most people don’t know is a bird family. For many years it was thought the two bird families were related taxonomically. Like Antpittas and Gnateaters by Harold F. Introduction. Images of typical display poses are included for many of the birds of paradise.

Guinea 264
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Licking Clay: the Macaws of Tambopata, Peru

10,000 Birds

Geophagy, the intentional consumption of soil by vertebrates, has long been documented in a number of bird and mammal species – including wide-spread use by humans – which consume soil to increase absorption of certain minerals not naturally occurring in the local diet. That’s right – birds eating clay.

Peru 255
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The Jewel Hunter: A Book Review About One Birder’s Quest for Pittas and Beer

10,000 Birds

It’s my fantasy and it’s yours: Quit the job, say good-bye to the family, and bird. how guides and drivers are found and where they live and what their families and homes look like, birder friends who accompany him on some legs of his quest, and the quirky people he ends up sharing beers with, in bars in huts on stilts. And sun bears.

Hunters 202
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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

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 bird’s skeleton bears similarities to New Guinea’s much smaller (!)