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Storm’s Stork

10,000 Birds

Take a medium-sized stork, then imagine placing a fried egg over each of its eyes. Color the white of the egg yellow and the yellow of the egg dark red, and you get a close approximation of what Storm’s Stork looks like. It is also by far the stork species with the lowest number of scientific papers focusing on it.

San Diego 166
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Journeys With Emperors: Tracking the World’s Most Extreme Penguin–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

As we know from the French documentary La Marche de l’Empereur ( March of the Penguins) , the females skedaddle from the breeding colony once she produces an egg, leaving the egg to be incubated by the males, who fast for 120 days while keeping the egg in a flap of their feet. (I

Penguins 151
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Birding Wawushan, Sichuan

10,000 Birds

So, for example, there was ample warning of the danger of snow. The disadvantage is that this is not a typical parrotbill at all – it is a bit like the old joke of searching for your keys not where you lost them, but where there is plenty of light to facilitate the research.

Pandas 193
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How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity: A Book Review by a Non-Science Person

10,000 Birds

He also believes that we are living in an era of incredible scientific research, one in which new genetic technology and findings from diverse scientific disciplines have turned assumptions upside down, opened up new lines of thought, and provided answers, or at least probable answers, to many of our questions about why birds do the things they do.

Science 203
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Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests: A Field Guide Review

10,000 Birds

This may have been partly a leftover from the Victorian fascination with egg collecting (the infamous passion known as oology), but probably more from people’s burgeoning interest in the nests and eggs found in their gardens and fields, gateway artifacts to a newer hobby called birdwatching. The Harrison guides are out of print.

Eggs 218
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What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Ackerman’s new book is about owls and owl research–the knowledge recently and currently being discovered through DNA analysis, new-tech tracking and monitoring, and old-fashioned fieldwork under the auspices of organizations like the Global Owl Project and the Owl Research Institute.

Owls 199
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Birding Longcanggou, Sichuan again (but maybe for the last time)

10,000 Birds

It even seems that the pliant researchers indirectly support the fighting (even though it has led to the species being one of the most hunted ones in that province) by developing a quick method to identify the sex of the bird (the males turn out to be somewhat bigger and thus presumably the more coveted fighters). Shame on the researchers.

Eggs 163