article thumbnail

My Top 12 Wildlife Watching Moments

10,000 Birds

I remember, several times while motionlessly surveying birds, I found myself being investigated by Striped Field Mice , who would dare to come to sniff me. Africa: Two more shadows in the spotlight, two of the most endangered carnivores of the sub-Saharan Africa are coming along the road, toward us: African Painted Dogs (Wild Dogs).

Wildlife 185
article thumbnail

The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. Solomon Islanders say that the species was driven to extinction by cats and dogs introduced by Europeans.