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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Part 1)

10,000 Birds

It seems this species is shy even by pitta standards – the HBW calls it a “very shy and secretive pitta, easily overlooked” and says that it is “very rare in China (S. Congratulations, you are much younger than me and got spared a lot of truly awful music). ” ( source ).

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Birding Shanghai in April 2023

10,000 Birds

To be honest, both the robin and the flycatchers shown above remind me of the easter eggs I hunted for as a child – the same strong colors in front of a green background, same time of the year (feel free to insert your own Proust Madeleine reference here) … Bluethroats apparently are good at imitating other birds.

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Birding Shanghai in December 2023

10,000 Birds

I was thinking of inventing a background story about a Chinese poet mentioning starlings (and other bird species) in one of his poems, and a rich Chinese fan of these poems pursuing the ambition of introducing all bird species mentioned therein to China, explaining the occasional occurrence of the starling in Shanghai.

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Birding Sepilok, Borneo (Part 1)

10,000 Birds

Fortunately, barbets are fairly common in Yunnan, China, so it was not a particular disappointment. In fact, John MacKinnon (of “Guide to the Birds of China”) in a recent Shanghai presentation called it “not a real woodpecker at all”, and while he is wrong about that, I sort of see his point.

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Our Best Birds of 2020

10,000 Birds

Common Cuckoo is a fascinating bird, an obligate parasitic breeder that employs numerous strategies, including fraud and murder, to survive. Kai chose a heck of a bird for his BBOTY: My bird of the year was a rather late entry, a bird I just saw a few days ago in Tengchong, Yunnan. A Collared Owlet.

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