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The National Wildlife Refuge System: Birders Leading the Way

10,000 Birds

For example, essentially the entire population of the endangered Whooping Crane winters at Aransas NWR in Texas. Farallon NWR , a group of islands near San Francisco, hosts the largest colonies of breeding seabirds south of Alaska. The System also helps implement the Endangered Species Act and other federal conservation laws.

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Sirocco the Kakapo

10,000 Birds

On the islands that make their home, they are rock stars compared to parakeets that dig up storm-petrels to eat ( Antipodes Parakeet ), parrots that kill sheep in order to eat (the incomparable Kea ) and parrots that chew my guttering in the hope that it has turned edible since the last time they tried ( Kaka ).

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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

But you can take solace in the results at the end of the breeding year, when loafing around the intertidal are a shiny new cohort of finely plumage grey youngsters, all ready to carry on Western Gull line into the future. The initial solution in New Zealand was to move species to islands where mammals hadn’t reached.

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Best Bird of the Year 2013

10,000 Birds

The bulk of my lifers were on a trip to India in October/November but all the birds were surpassed by watching and photographing a Snow Leopard hunting and killing a Blue Sheep , so none of them are real contenders for BBOTY. Hence my birding travel (and blogging) has been curtail (but life much enriched!)

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