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What’s in a Name: Brewer’s Blackbird

10,000 Birds

Blackbirds, as a family, often have those simple descriptive names that are easy to mock ( Yellow-rumped Warbler , ugh) until a non-birder comes describing such a species to you and asking for an ID. Which is not to say that the creeping hand of ornithological nepotism has never touched the blackbirds.

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The Blackbird that is a Meadowlark – Red-breasted Blackbird in Trinidad

10,000 Birds

Blackbirds are blackbirds. In the new world all meadowlarks and blackbirds, along with grackles, cowbirds, orioles, oropendulas, and some others, are members of the family Icteridae , the New World Blackbirds. adult male Red-breasted Blackbird showing off its namesake. female Red-breasted Blackbird.

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Do nine-primaried oscines represent 16 different families?

10,000 Birds

For those of us in the Americas, nine-primaried oscines are among our most familiar and beloved birds: finches; sparrows, juncos, and towhees; warblers; blackbirds, meadowlarks, and orioles; cardinals and grosbeaks; and tanagers. Some scientists have lumped them all into one enormous family (e.g., Keith Barker, et al.,

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Herdade do Esporão Bico Amarelo Vinho Verde (2019)

10,000 Birds

The bird is, of course, none other than the Common Blackbird ( Turdus merula ), the original blackbird of European folklore and nursery rhyme fame, better known to North American birders as the Eurasian Blackbird and unrelated to those “blackbirds” of the family Icteridae found in the New World.

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Tiny Asian bird discovered as sole member of ancient family. Who’s next?

10,000 Birds

Instead, it appears to be the sole member of a very old family ( Discovery of a relict lineage and monotypic family of passerine birds , Alström et al.). The Spotted Wren-Babbler had been classified with a handful of other wren-babbler species in the genus Spelaeornis , in the babbler family Timaliidae. An ancient lineage.

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You Work with What You’ve Got

10,000 Birds

There is also a family of Barn Owls on the premises, and I have briefly seen the largest of them (enormous!) That’s a Melodious Blackbird in the background. A Roadside Hawk perched on a post next to, of course, a road. And two Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls toot-toot-tooted from the brush. flying by at night.

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Who belongs in the Evening Grosbeak’s family tree?

10,000 Birds

Ourselves, for instance; just consider how many sweet or gritty stories you’ve seen about Olympic athletes’ family backgrounds over the last few weeks. We’re going to look at its family tree today, at where it fits in the grand avian assemblage, at what makes it at once unique yet not so alone after all. But not all.

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