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Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History from Cave Art to Conservation–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

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What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Ackerman’s new book is about owls and owl research–the knowledge recently and currently being discovered through DNA analysis, new-tech tracking and monitoring, and old-fashioned fieldwork under the auspices of organizations like the Global Owl Project and the Owl Research Institute.

Owls 220
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Into the Nest: A Book Review in the Time of Nesting

10,000 Birds

Producing a book about birds and nesting is a dangerous business. Some people love books like that. I’m happy to say that Laura Erickson and Marie Read have written a book, Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting, and Family Lives of Familiar Birds , that is not too cute and that does not anthropomorphize.

Eggs 263
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Life Along The Delaware Bay: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Life Along the Delaware Bay: Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds , by Lawrence Niles, Joanna Burger, and Amanda Dey, is a book with a mission. The numbers, as detailed in this book, are alarming: the horseshoe crab harvest grew from less than 100,000 in 1992 to over 2.5 million in the late 1990’s. Should the gulls be controlled?

Delaware 182
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National Audubon Society Birds of North America: A Guide Review

10,000 Birds

The Pough & Eckelberry guides (add in artist Earl L Poole who did black-and-white drawings for the later titles) were notable for Pough’s discursive text and Eckelberry’s lovely painted portraits, and many older birders have stories about how they were inspired by these books. This is a fairly large book: 907 pages; 7.38

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Birding the Kruger Park (2): Bateleur area

10,000 Birds

Studies on improving ostrich egg hatchability. Also, I learned that in the US , ostrich eggs are priced at $40-$75. Each fresh egg weighs 4 pounds and is the equivalent of 24 chicken eggs. . Each of these ‘families’ consists of a single mating pair and 1-5 ‘helpers’ who assist in raising the young.

Ostriches 147
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Birding Shanghai in November 2022

10,000 Birds

In contrast, the females need to make sure not to get duped into raising actual cuckoos – the buntings are a targeted host species ( source ). Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). Maybe there is some justice in this world after all. Better safe than sorry.

Birds 216