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Good News for South Georgia Island’s Pipit Population

10,000 Birds

Researchers say that South Georgia Pipits have hatched chicks. That’s because these birds won’t breed when rats are around. And let’s face it, would you go to all the effort of breeding if there was a hefty chance that your newborn would just go down some invader’s gullet?). Image above by Brian Gratwicke/Wikimedia Commons).

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

10,000 Birds

The Hawaiian Crows face much more destructive threats–extreme loss of habitat; malaria, the scourge of so many Hawaiian species; predators–rodents, cats and the ‘Io, the Hawaiian Hawk. Well-researched and footnoted, these sections never feel disconnected from the more personal sections. Endangered. Extinction.

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Great Tit Telomeres, Baby Talk, Brainy Birds

10,000 Birds

They used Great T**s from non-urban and urban areas, and mixed them up through breeding, to rule out any possible family history of telomere length. The benefits are many, including the availability of anthropogenic food sources, breeding boxes and warmer temperatures. Research done quite a while back suggests that this is adaptive.

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Rats Taking Over from Mice in Labs

Critter News

Morse, corporate vice president for research model services at Charles River Laboratories, a Wilmington company that started by breeding lab rats in 1947 and has become a major supplier of rodents for research. “To what degree the rat will replace the mouse remains to be seen,’’ said Iva S.

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National Audubon Society Birds of North America: A Guide Review

10,000 Birds

610)) to a little history (“The elegant White-tailed Kite was formerly shot in large numbers by farmers who thought it threatened their chickens, although these birds feed almost entirely on insects and a few rodents” (p. 334) is how Black Skimmer is introduced). These are all informative and current.

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Deconstructing Slate's "Pepper" Series

Animal Person

Beloved family pet Dalmatian, Pepper, is stolen, and after several weeks of searching is discovered to have been experimented on at a hospital and died on the table when researchers tried to implant her with an experimental cardiac pacemaker. By the end of my time as researcher, I was performing behavioral experiments on humans.

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First Outbreak of Usutu Virus in Germany

10,000 Birds

We now know a lot more, and the following information is largely based on the excellent work of our local bird data compiler Armin Konrad , who was amongst the first to notice the die-off in the first place and was also instrumental in coordinating the surveys and research that finally led to the identification of the culprit!

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