article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in November 2022

10,000 Birds

Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). A study found that for Plain Prinia , egg characteristics in a mainland China location with many cuckoos make it much easier to spot cuckoo eggs than in a Taiwan location with few cuckoos ( source ). Better safe than sorry.

Birds 221
article thumbnail

Birding Tongbiguan, Yunnan (part 1)

10,000 Birds

Don’t you love it when blog post writers split topics that do not interest you in the first place into two separate parts? Of course, the same applies to pizza services for humans. Welcome to Birding Tongbiguan, part 1. eBird calls the Asian Green Bee-eater a “small, dainty bee-eater”, which sounds nice and peaceful.

Squirrels 141
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in May 2023 – Part 2

10,000 Birds

One study in Korea found that 37% of injuries and deaths were caused by predation by natural enemies, another 37% (a worryingly high number) by window strikes, 10% by traffic accidents, 7% each by flooding and dehydration, and 3% by human disturbance. I wonder what Barn Swallows did before humans started building houses.

Birds 130
article thumbnail

Birding Chongming Island in summer

10,000 Birds

I do not get too many comments on my blog posts, but it seems that whenever I write about jacanas – whether in Africa, Australia, or Asia – there is an unusually high number of reactions (well, maybe one or two rather than the usual zero) from female readers. This is ok as birds do not have teeth anyway). That means that.

Birds 162
article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in October 2022

10,000 Birds

Of course, it is hard to resist looking at a paper titled “Host personality predicts cuckoo egg rejection in Daurian redstarts” Basically, the personality of a female redstart (bold or shy) predicts the responses to parasitic eggs – bold hosts are more likely to reject parasitic eggs. Not this one though.

Birds 208
article thumbnail

15 Australian Birds (Episode 3)

10,000 Birds

So, even though this is a bit much, it seems justification enough to continue this series of blog posts – particularly as I wrote this series under lockdown in Shanghai, with nothing much to do. Similar to the (fortunately now gradually changing) situation among humans in China, these birds seem to prefer males over females.

Birds 147
article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in September 2022

10,000 Birds

Similar to the situation among humans, among Grey-capped Greenfinches , “high-quality individuals prefer to mate with each other” ( source ). An example is this study showing that indeed, cuckoo eggs are stronger than the eggs of the host species. Eurasian Bitterns similarly try to stay out of sight.

China 190