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This Week in Bird(ing) News: Orange Is the New Beak, and a Dead Parrot (No Joke!)

10,000 Birds

obsessing over World Cup matches), here’s some bird news to peruse: Loss of suitable habitat , instead of insecticides, seems to be the culprit in declining numbers of grassland birds. Know what else kills grassland birds? officials are considering bird-friendly building regulations. Planning on birding Kenya?

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Fur and Fangs rather than Feathers and Beaks

10,000 Birds

Memorable encounters with Mammals: Part I Most birdwatchers enjoy seeing mammals, but the trouble with mammals is that they tend to be much more challenging to see than birds. I remember the guide on my first Kenyan birding safari remarking that “birding groups always see far more mammals than those who come just to see animals.

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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

As visitors’ and the public’s interests expanded from the Big Five, and an appreciation for lesser mammals, birds and smaller wildlife has became more widespread, the term Little Five was coined. Prime destinations for seeing African Elephant in the wild include Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Uganda.

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On Jeff Corwin's 100 HEARTBEATS

Animal Person

And managing means killing them, breeding them, and otherwise fiddling with their populations. Corwin tells the story of the Maasai of Kenya, whose culture involved disdain for and slaughter of lions. When I was asked if I wanted to read Jeff Corwin's 100 HEARTBEATS (Rodale 2009) I was ambivalent.

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Vultures, Human Evolution, Global Warming, and Windmills

10,000 Birds

Placing one hand over his pate, as he was wont to do, and pointing at the others as he spoke with the finger of his other hand, Isaac stated in his semi-elvian voice, colored with the British Colonial Accent he grew into as the son of a South African Brit exiled to Kenya, the following: “Eric, shut up. Your argument is invalid.

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Birding the Kruger Park (3): Malelane area

10,000 Birds

I usually do not write much about traveling to and from birding places but my friend and I arrived in Malelane in the afternoon. Fortunately, we were there for the birds, not for the room. The Lilac-breasted Roller is the national bird of Kenya, but of course, this does not help it pay its bills in South Africa.

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Africa’s endangered species

10,000 Birds

Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, experts have determined that the current rate of bird extinction is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times the background rate. Globally, 1,313 bird species of a total of count of 10,064 are threatened, a frightening 13% of the total.