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In defence of museum collections

10,000 Birds

To quote from their Facebook post: It is my sad duty to report to you that the ULM administration has decided to divest the research collections in the Museum of Natural History. This includes the 6 million fish specimens in the Neil Douglas fish collection and the nearly 500,000 plant specimens in the R. Dale Thomas plant collection.

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Seeking the Bahama Nuthatch

10,000 Birds

In 2021, the American Ornithological Society announced that it has now classified the Bahama Nuthatch as a distinct species, Sitta insularis. He noted that this new bird had longer bills and “darker loral and auricular regions” than the mainland Brown-headed Nuthatch, and collected two of them for science.

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COMMENTS ON COLLECTING BIRDS: A Reply

10,000 Birds

After my post about collecting two weeks ago I received a bit of feedback, some positive, some negative, and I’ve been mulling it over with the intention of writing about some of the issues that could be considered the root cause of the disagreement. You see, the bird was collected for scientific study.

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Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Chapter Two is a potpourri of stories about nemesis birds, birding by ear, birding for science, under the rubric of birding ‘for the love of it.’ ’ “Is this going to be a collection of essays?” Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species. ” I wondered.

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Is the White-naped Xenopsaris Migratory? or The Limits of Citizen Science

10,000 Birds

I was looking for a new project to write about on Wikipedia, something unusual, and this species appealed for reasons I can’t quite define. I hadn’t until a little over a month ago when while flicking through one of my volumes of the Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) I came across it. It was both mysterious and plain. .

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Birding Sepilok, Borneo (Part 2)

10,000 Birds

It feels good to start a post with some truly attractive birds – such as two species of broadbills. Strangely, there do not seem to be many papers on this species. In one paper , you can find fascinating sentences such as “The new species is most similar to D. My cats refuse to even try Fiery Minivets.

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Our Favorite Bird Books (and one pair of Binoculars) of 2022

10,000 Birds

Myers, a professional birding guide in “real life,” summarizes the etymology and history of all common bird names (of bird families and groups, not all 10,000-plus species). The guide covers 265 of Maine’s 461 bird species: common nesting species, common migrants, and wintering birds.

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