article thumbnail

Whooper Swans at Lake Kussharo, Hokkaido

10,000 Birds

They are ridiculously unafraid of people there – so the cynic in me suspects that swan meat is not regarded as tasty by the Japanese (another explanation, that the Japanese just like animals too much, can presumably be discarded given the country’s very principled approach in insisting on the right to kill whales).

China 215
article thumbnail

How many birds are killed by windmills and other green energy projects?

10,000 Birds

However, in this post, I’d like to lay out the basic numbers as we pretend to know them about overall bird mortality, human related causes of mortality, and somewhere in there I’ll note that the number of birds that are killed by windmills is so small that it says “zero” on my pie chart. So keep that in mind.

Killing 274
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

Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The tiercels (young Peregrines) must deal with Golden Eagles, Ravens, adult Peregrines, and foxes; they must also learn to navigate the skies and make their own kills, luckily these skills appear to be innately learned. Coyotes took carrion from young Condors and then killed the weakest ones. It’s not easy.

article thumbnail

Castellare di Castellina: Chianti Classico (2019)

10,000 Birds

Shrikes were practicing their own form of butchery – that is, their particular practice of impaling their kills from thorns and barbed wire for later eating – long before we began domesticating and slaughtering livestock on our own.

2019 222
article thumbnail

Nature is Tough

10,000 Birds

We watched the bird for awhile as it foraged and though the injury was painful to contemplate for we humans the bird seemed to be getting by alright. After all, what good is getting a kill if in doing the killing the predator is injured? Of course, injured animals have a very difficult time making it in the wild.

Culling 157
article thumbnail

Altruism, Albatrosses, and Vicious Young Men

10,000 Birds

Ka’ena Point is also a breeding ground for the Federally protected Laysan albatross, where 45 nests were being carefully monitored by the non-profit Pacific Rim Conservation. But no one who has ever cared for another creature – be it bird, animal, or human – can comprehend, much less cope with, this kind of brutal, pointless killing.

Albatross 214
article thumbnail

Murder Most Wildfowl: A Review of “A Dance of Cranes” by Steve Burrows

10,000 Birds

But I insisted he try the blood and violence guy, and he humored me, only to send me, later, a longish email, pointing out the flaws in my judgment and in the book and the author, and closing with this: “Since I didn’t care for any of his characters, I really didn’t care who killed whom.”. Fair enough.

Humane 134