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The Gas Station Bird

10,000 Birds

This may seem like government agency hair-splitting, but the calls needed to be made not to the wildlife division of the wildlife agency, but to the exotic species division of the wildlife agency. The bird is a captive-bred Peregrine/Gyrfalcon hybrid owned by people with an Exotic Species Permit. Are we fed up yet?

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Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

There are the endemics, which are odd in their own way, and then there introduced species, which are so varied in their type and origin that you get the feeling you’ve arrived at the aftermath of a small zoo that escaped. What is surprising is quite how many species did end up here, and how economically unimportant they were.

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I and the Bird: What is a Vulture?

10,000 Birds

The smellier the better, particularly as, unusually for birds, many species can boast a robust sense of smell. In any case, our hang-ups with vultures clearly stem from our own issues rather than any inherently bizarre trait of the species themselves. The California Condor has a story well-known by anyone with an interest in birds.

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Kinabatangan – Borneo’s Mighty River

10,000 Birds

When I was a small kid I lived in Southern California, and my parents used to take me to Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth(TM). The animals aren’t quite so closely packed as Hollywood can manage, and they tend towards slightly smaller species, in general, but still, its impressive. Wallace’s Hawk Eagle was a lifer.

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Birding by Volunteering

10,000 Birds

My third trip was six months spend working on a monkey project in the jungles of Uganda. In Uganda I would often cross paths with Chimpanzees as they went about their lives and I went about mine (which was living with a troop of monkeys). In California I smelt the breath a Blue Whale as it passed feet beneath my boat.

Uganda 162
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Potpourri of Amazing Bird Science

10,000 Birds

If this was America, we might not be concerned because starlings are an invasive species, at least in North America. Last year, beginning about Halloween, thousands of juvenile auklets started washing ashore dead from California’s Farallon Islands to Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) off central British Columbia.

Science 152
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Petrel Paradise

10,000 Birds

Birders who have been to California might be familiar with the latter two, indeed we would be close to the Poor Knights Islands later in the day, the site of the only breeding colony of Buller’s Shearwaters in the whole world. The final large petrel species is another gadfly petrel, albeit a much larger one than the Cook’s Petrel.