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Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in Pennsylvania: A Review by an Atlas Novice

10,000 Birds

A breeding bird atlas is a special kind of book. For the nature lovers and birders who participate in breeding bird surveys, the atlas represents hours, often hundreds of hours, of volunteer time spent within a community of citizen scientists doing what they love, observing birds. So, what exactly does a breeding bird atlas contain?

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Some Ingenuity Can Go a Long Way

10,000 Birds

Among birds the Egyptian Vulture uses rocks to crack Ostrich eggs, the New Caledonian Crow and Woodpecker Finch (one of several Darwin Finches of the Galapagos Islands), uses sticks to extract grubs from inside a branch. Further support for inherent behavior comes from experiments. Woodpecker Finch using a tool.

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Violet-green Swallows Take Up Residence on my Bluebird Trail

10,000 Birds

The featured image above shows a female incubating eggs from my first resident breeding pair back in 2007. Violet-green Swallows will nest solitarily or in colonies and in my experience seem much more mellow than other swallow species. The four to six eggs are white and unmarked.

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Birding Villahermosa’s Urban Parks

10,000 Birds

Being a westerner — raised in California, and now living in western Mexico — I was perhaps most excited about the migratory birds that breed in eastern North America. And then there was a Green Heron , not only showing us its nest, but also an egg. Then, around 4:00 p.m., And yet, there it was. But what could I do?

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The Wryneck: Biology, Behaviour, Conservation and Symbolism of Jynx torquilla: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The Eurasian Wryneck is the woodpecker that doesn’t look like a woodpecker, the bird with the portmanteau name that is also a medical condition (and which may remind some people of a Nora Ephron essay). But they are woodpeckers: the genus Jynx of the subfamily Jynginae of the Picidae family. It’s an open question.

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Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America: A Review by a Sparrow Fan

10,000 Birds

Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America covers 61 species of the New World sparrow family Passerellidae that breed in Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico. The text has to be read; details are not laid out in bold headed, brief paragraphs as they are in the Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America.

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Birding Tengchong, Yunnan, China in 2017

10,000 Birds

Unfortunately, the Ashy Drongos did not exactly do what he predicted that they would do – mob potential predators more frequently during the breeding season and mob the more dangerous predator (in this case, the Black Eagle) more intensely. If you do not want to be put in a cage, it presumably helps to be a bit aggressive.

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