10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2014

We worship birds, we hunt birds, we protect birds, and, yes, we eat birds. It includes stunning photographs by Tipling of eagle hunters (as in Kazakhs who hunt with eagles), Stellar Sea Eagles in Hokkaido, Japan, and Black Kites at the dump near New Delhi, India. As they say, the relationship is complicated. Think about their image.

Birds 218

Birds Egypt Family Eagles 218

10,000 Birds

JUNE 22, 2011

I stuffed it in my pocket and decided to take it to Richard Oehlenschlager at the Science Museum of Minnesota. He’s one of the managers of the specimen collection and loves a good dead bird mystery. He asked to take the pellet downstairs to do some comparisons to the collections.

Bats 209

Bats Dissection Owls Minnesota 209

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 14, 2015

What wasn’t publicised at the time, but the scientist later both admitted and owned, is that the kingfisher was then killed and collected for scientific reasons. I’m not going to rehash the arguments for scientific collecting here. The large room the collection was held in was a profoundly weird place. Bush Wrens.

Collecting 225

Collecting Solomon Islands New Zealand Fiji 225

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2020

But, I think it’s also time to start exploring new frontiers, new types of bird books, titles that allow us to leverage our citizen science data, explore the implications of local bird distribution and status changes in conjunction with related habitat and even political and legal change, and strategize for change.

New York City 152

New York City New York Birds Breeding 152

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

The various national versions of Ducks Unlimited are mostly an outgrowth of sports hunting. This is more than clear from the data they wish to collect, which emphasizes waterfowl over shorebirds, and seems to completely ignore the other birds that occur around bodies of water. (It

Pelicans 223

Pelicans Blackbirds Ducks Hunting 223

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

This is a delightful book, large (8-1/2 by 11 inches), filled with Sibley’s distinctive artwork and an organized potpourri of research-based stories about the science behind bird’s lives. copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley. As Sibley tells us in the Preface, he originally intended to write a children’s book.

2020 264

2020 Birds Groups North America 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

There is a depressing finality about extinction, but knowing when for certain something is extinct is an imprecise science and on occasion we’ve gotten it spectacularly wrong. For most of its history it has been known from only three specimens collected off the coast of New Zealand in the early 19th century.

New Zealand 192

New Zealand India 2003 Collecting 192

10,000 Birds

JULY 10, 2012

More than 150 bird species are known to have become extinct over the past 500 years, and many more are estimated to have been driven to extinction before they became known to science. Habitat destruction, hunting and disturbance are further factors affecting the population.

Endangered Species 194

Endangered Species Species Morocco South Africa 194

10,000 Birds

APRIL 10, 2012

White-chested Tinkerbird is one of Africa’s avian mysteries, known only from a single specimen collected in 1964 at Mayau in north-west Zambia, close to the borders of Angola and the DRC. Benson to collect birds. This has led some ornithologists to consider the specimen a hybrid of two other tinkerbirds, time will undoubtedly tell!

Ethiopia 235

Ethiopia Tanzania Africa Uganda 235