article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in January 2022

10,000 Birds

Good habitat, apparently, for a Pacific Reef Heron , though the East China Sea is only a peripheral arm of the Pacific and there are no reefs to be found here. In the same location, a Blue Rock Thrush benefits from the liberal Chinese use of concrete, which seems to be a sufficient substitute for rock for the species.

China 194
article thumbnail

Laughing at you, not with you

10,000 Birds

While I am still not so sure about China’s sense of humor – though admittedly, the issue is mostly a mismatch between what I think is funny and what the average Chinese thinks is funny, an issue that I have had in other countries as well – the country sure has its fair share of Laughingthrushes. This post shows some of them.

San Diego 227
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

Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan

10,000 Birds

I saw two Pitta species at Hongbenghe, both among the slightly less glamourous among the pitta family: The Blue-naped Pitta … … and the closely related Rusty-naped Pitta. While it is listed as Least Concern, it is rare in China – the range map in the HBW barely touches Chinese territory.

Birds 147
article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in February 2022

10,000 Birds

The new Guide to the Birds of China (John MacKinnon) has been published. This is partly due to hunting in China, where about 90% of the species winter (HBW). I guess it would be wise for Shanghai not to make this species its city bird, as it may not be around for much longer. And it does not even live in reeds.

Raccoons 237
article thumbnail

Exploring the Uncharted Bird World

10,000 Birds

It divides countries into categories, where the next category has 200 more species. In some cases the data are outdated, e.g. Costa Rica has 900 and not 800 species, but I made no corrections, remaining faithful to the original map data. Shown as a list, it looks like this: Less than 200 bird species: Antarctica; oceanic islands.

article thumbnail

Birding Tianmashan, Shanghai in January 2023

10,000 Birds

Shanghaibirding describes the Brown-headed Thrush as “a scarce passage migrant through northern and central coastal China, including Shanghai” – given that I only saw it once on Tianmashan, that is probably correct, though the date (January 09) seems rather late for a migrant.

Birds 147
article thumbnail

What happened with Archaeopteryx?

10,000 Birds

An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China Then one day you go to a conference of historians and there is a special symposium being held by some well regarded colleagues, who have been working for months with some archaeologists on a secret project. The trait must then be identifiable as to whether or not it exists in a certain species.

Mammals 261