10,000 Birds

JANUARY 1, 2013

The incipient ferociousness of the hawk set against the skyscrapers, the Red-tail’s stillness against the human rush. I thought of this experience as I read Still the Same Hawk , a collection of twelve essays about nature and New York City, edited by John Waldman. This is what got me, the incongruity.

New York 111

New York New York City 2013 Collecting 111

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Steve Howell has spent decades of experience in the field studying the birds of Belize, Costa Rica, and especially Mexico. Examples of two types of informational aids offered in both guides: Pictorial Contents for Songbirds (Birds of Costa Rica) and Key to Species Range Maps (Birds of Belize). Fantasy is the key word here.

Costa Rica 227

Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 227

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

I would love to have a Red-tailed Hawk but with my travel schedule, there’s no possible way I could work with a bird, so I content myself with going out with my friends when they are gracious enough to invite me along like in the above photo when one of my falconer friends let me join him when he was hunting with his goshawk.

Wisconsin 251

Wisconsin Falcons Owls Hunting 251

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2023

I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. It’s also about human-owl interaction on an individual level and a wider sociocultural level, and ultimately how we can use all this for habitat and bird conservation. Humans were drawing owls 36,000 years ago, as Ackerman points out! They are also hunted.

Owls 224

Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 224

Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Over at Animal Rights and AntiOppression , we’ve been discussing tactics and sharing our thoughts and experiences about what works and doesn’t work when it comes to advocacy. The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical.

Vegan 100

Vegan Morals Animal Rights Advocacy 100

10,000 Birds

MARCH 18, 2011

The experience is one of the ornithological highlights in the world. Geophagy, the intentional consumption of soil by vertebrates, has long been documented in a number of bird and mammal species – including wide-spread use by humans – which consume soil to increase absorption of certain minerals not naturally occurring in the local diet.

Peru 255

Peru Parrots 2011 South America 255

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

Experiments in the field (the famed Asa Wright Nature Center veranda) involving Bananaquits and bananas came up with numbers ranging from 7 to 16, but a tanager always came along to interfere with Bananaquits’ noisy appreciation of their namesake fruit. Even during the breeding season the birds appear to be quite unwary of humans.

Trinidad 205

Trinidad Birds South America Research 205

10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2015

The Refuge has also become a place where people can experience and learn about wildlife and the places they call home, whether through self-guided discovery or by participating in one of our many educational programs. The Service proposes opening the following refuges to sport fishing for the first time: North Dakota.

Fish 145

Fish Wildlife Hunting Game 145

Animal Person

MAY 26, 2010

Reading thousand-word long posts in black type on a plain white screen with nothing interesting to look at isn't exactly a satisfying sensory experience. Also, four years ago you couldn't put a Google search button on your blog to search only the contents of your blog. People are lazy and want to be entertained. So I failed.

Vegan 100

Vegan Suffering Free Range Animal 100

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 7, 2016

I’d been volunteering at rescues through my young adulthood, and I was training as a cat socializer, teaching terrified felines — the unlucky victims of cruel people — to trust humans again. All of these afflictions are human-caused and largely preventable. One typical, blue-sky, L.A. I was mortified. And, I would have understood.

Cats 218

Cats Stray Cat Stray Wildlife Rehabilitation 218

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

The four authors, themselves field ornithologists, conservationists, birders, and writers with years of experience in southeast Asia, researched scientific studies ranging from early 19th-century descriptions of the birds of Java to the latest phylogenomic studies. Or, I can peruse the 107 family listings in the Table of Contents.

Indonesia 134

Indonesia Brunei Birds Malaysia 134

10,000 Birds

JULY 22, 2014

I new him because we enlisted his Dryfus Lion and one of his tigers to carry out experiments with bones (this is something archaeologists do). It isn’t like not killing the cat is in any way humane, considering the number of animals it will kill over time. To access the entire week’s worth of content just click here.

Feral Cats 256

Feral Cats North America Feral Cats 256

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2023

The Grey-backed Shrike apparently prefers locations close to human settlements – not because humans are particularly nice (we are not), but “because these habitats offer a better foraging substrate and places safe from large predators” ( source ). This male Plumbeous Water Redstart tried to ignore its chick.

Hamburgers 222

Hamburgers Birds Science China 222

10,000 Birds

MAY 13, 2024

It seems a bit sad to me that a paper on the Eurasian Tree Sparrow and the House Sparrow has to justify the need for research on these species by arguing this benefits humans: “Sparrow species … live in a close association with people. The first bird I saw in Saigon was less exotic though – a Eurasian Tree Sparrow.

Vietnam 180

Vietnam Zebras Birds Sparrows 180

Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 29, 2006

According to Dr. Spock: Most families have become more conscious about the fat content of meats, and many are choosing the lower-fat cuts. That animal product is human breast milk. Human breast milk is a near perfect food for human newborns and infants. Spock recommends feeding children from birth up until two years?

Animal 40

Animal Meat Cows District of Columbia 40

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2015

None fly, most are curious and social, which probably contributes to our cultural perception of penguins as one step away from human. The contents are a balance of the visual, the factual, and a form of participant-observation, oriented towards people who know little about penguin habitats, life cycles and conservation issues.

Penguins 209

Penguins New Zealand South Africa Albatross 209