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Birding Yancheng, Jiangsu

10,000 Birds

According to Wikipedia, these birds are good at multitasking, being “in some parts of its range … known as a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity” As in humans, “the social implications of dancing [among the cranes] are complex in meaning” ( source ). If everybody did this, the result would be chaos.

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Birding Shanghai in June 2023

10,000 Birds

In the slightly frighteningly named journal “Science of The Total Environment”, there is a paper on organochlorine compounds in Purple Heron eggs nesting in sites located around a chloralkali plant (Ebro River). Summary result: relevant chemicals emitted by the plant can be found in the eggs. Bye, bye, Lesser Coucal.

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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Part 1)

10,000 Birds

: “A female may share a nest with another, and 3 or more adults may take turns incubating the eggs and feeding the chicks.” Survival rates of chicks increase when there are helpers present – and if in captivity this is not an option, humans can also take the place of helpers ( source ). ” ( source ).

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Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History from Cave Art to Conservation–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

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Every sperm is sacred

10,000 Birds

That’s the finding of researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (If By studying Zebra Finches and domestic chickens, the scientists discovered that multiple sperm appear necessary for a fertilized egg to progress to the embryo stage (a process called “polyspermy”.)

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Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The six chapters that follow explore bird communication in mating; defending territory; rearing children; responding to predators; interacting with neighbors and functioning in large groups; and communicating successfully in a noisy human world. I do wish there was more about research on female bird song. There is so much here!

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Urban Renewal: Is It Safer for Songbirds in the City?

10,000 Birds

That’s what a group of researchers suggest in a paper recently published in Behavioral Ecology. Birds like cuckoos, who lay their eggs in songbirds’ nests, and whose young then off the hosts’ own chicks, tend to avoid cities. Smaller birds are much more likely to tolerate a human presence.

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