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Rip Van Winkle’s Crow Killing Contest

10,000 Birds

Some people think it’s just plain fun to kill enormous numbers of animals and pile up their bodies, and when there’s no “bag limit” it’s legal to do so. Obviously killing contests have nothing to do with traditional hunting, and “animal abuse” is normally used when describing domestic animals.

Killing 272
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Cooper’s Hawk Eating a Road-Killed Canada Goose

10,000 Birds

On the same day that I journeyed out to eastern Long Island to enjoy birding Shinnecock Inlet in the fog I also explored the fields of Riverhead, where large flocks of geese congregate and where a Yellow-headed Blackbird had been reported recently amid a large flock of icterids at a Buffalo farm.

Canada 201
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Kerkini in Winter

10,000 Birds

One year we found an impressively big calidus Peregrine, feeding on a Wigeon that it had killed. Kerkini’s most famous mammal is the domesticated Water Buffalo – large herds are kept around the lake. Such an abundance of wildfowl attracts Peregrines. Despite appearances, they are remarkably docile.

Greece 226
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From the Niagara Frontier: A Book Review of “Birder’s Break”

10,000 Birds

But when both birds approached an eagle, it attacked: the hawk was able to evade the eagle, but not so the crow, which was killed instantly. and the Buffalo native Fred Szatkowki. and the Buffalo native Fred Szatkowki. A crow was repeatedly bothering a hawk from above and behind, pecking at the tail feathers.

Buffalo 100
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Rancho Naturalista Lodge, Costa Rica, or When Harry Met Mercedes

10,000 Birds

I am taking a sip of coffee, my eyes following an impossibly colourful Kill-Bill ( Keel-billed) Toucan , flying against the background of the Irazu Volcano slopes and, farther to the right, water-vapour ‘smoking’ Turrialba Volcano on the horizon. Some years later, he returned to Rancho for a few months as a volunteer.

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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

They are not necessarily the biggest African animals, but represented those that were considered a real hunter’s worthy prey or “game” – the African Elephant, Cape Buffalo, Black Rhinoceros, Leopard and king of the jungle, the Lion (which of course doesn’t inhabit jungle but savanna!).

Buffalo 215
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Can we talk about Cecil the Lion?

10,000 Birds

The killing of Cecil was equated with murder, a moral crime rather than a symptom of a ecological problem. So now there are lots of lions, and they like buffalo, so now there are less buffalo. And since the lions like the big buffalo and not the smaller Nyala, the Nyala have increased in numbers.

Lions 220