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Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America, Second Edition: A Field Guide Review

10,000 Birds

Ranging in color from off-white to dingy black, with pastel to gelatinous shades of yellow, orange, purple, and brown in-between, found in moist crevasses, decaying trees, rain-soaked pastures, mushrooms lack the beauty of butterflies and wildflowers cannot equal the action of bats, or flying fish, and certainly lack the spiritual zest of birds.

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Solid Air: Invisible Killer Saving Billions of Birds From Windows–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

In 2007 I was working in a university building that was just begging for bird feeders. This was where I set up my bird feeders, just one at first, then expanding as everyone expressed delight in seeing the Carolina Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Downy Woodpeckers. There were no dead birds for weeks. I hoped it was an anomaly.

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Flight Paths: A Book Review Written During Migration

10,000 Birds

Flight Paths is a splendid but risky title for a book about bird migration. It could easily be mistaken for a book about aviation or space navigation or even a flight simulator game if you don’t read the long, adjective-filled subtitle: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration.

Science 200
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Raptor Map Suggests Best Spots to Scan the Skies

10,000 Birds

North America is in the prime of raptor migration season, with millions of hawks, accipters, and buteos flying south for the winter. It features spots, associated with Audubon centers or contributed by individual birders, which may afford views of thousands of birds a day. Calling all hawkeyes!

Illinois 195
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Clapper and King rails may represent four or five species

10,000 Birds

Their taxonomic status long has been unclear due to their overall similarity and the fact that in eastern North America and Cuba, they hybridize. But some recent work by James Maley and others is shedding more light on these secretive and fascinating birds. King Rail and chick in Illinois cc-by Andy Reago.

Species 230
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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. These birds may be the North American ash tree’s last line of defense against the EAB invasion.

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Western Bluebirds Are Back

10,000 Birds

From the 1913 USDA Farmers Bulletin #513, Fifty Common Birds of Farm and Orchard: “The bluebird is one of the most familiar tenants of the farm and dooryard. For rent the bird pays amply by destroying insects, and takes no toll from the farms crop. ” Nest Boxes (Bird Houses) from 1912. It was in 1926 that Thomas E.

Tenant 161