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Altruism, Albatrosses, and Vicious Young Men

10,000 Birds

Laysan albatrosses are ocean-dwelling seabirds who have 6-foot wingspans, weigh 7-8 pounds, occasionally sleep while flying, and rarely land except to raise their chicks. The oldest Laysan albatross was last seen raising a chick on Midway Atoll in 2016, at age 66. They are docile and devoted parents who will not leave their nests.

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Year of the Eagle

10,000 Birds

It really looked like a game of tag. As the weaker juvenile became stronger, its flight mentor stepped up the game, though I didn’t realize it at first. I didn’t get to witness such cooperation in the second year of the project, as only one egg hatched. … Birds Bald Eagle raptors'

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Birding Shanghai in October 2022

10,000 Birds

I used to play Subbuteo as a kid … a kind of tip-kick football game that was named after this species (apparently, the inventors first wanted to name the game “Hobby” but that was rejected as too generic, or so the story goes). The Eurasian Hobby was another notable raptor of the month.

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An unusual auk baby

10,000 Birds

A few families have a small number of eggs in the clutches, like gulls or cormorants. Others, like the petrels and some of the auks, will lay a single egg per breeding attempt. Unique among the auks, indeed among seabirds, they will attempt to double brood, to lay another clutch after successfully raising the first chick.

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Harley the Starley

10,000 Birds

He had two major strikes against him: one, he had been found and raised alone by someone with little knowledge of birds, and so was imprinted. Energetically sticking his head out, then in, then back out a different hole was a vaguely sinister-looking brown bird, obviously outraged that someone had the nerve to put him in there. “He

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Birding Shanghai in July 2022

10,000 Birds

I have written about the interesting sex life of these jacanas a few times already (short version: female mates with male, lays a bunch of eggs for him to incubate and raise the chicks, leaves him, finds another male, repeat). Once I am moderately successful, I often find such photos quite pleasing. but they do. See the sequence below.

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