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Birding Shanghai in May 2023 – Part 1

10,000 Birds

A paper reports on how a female Common Cuckoo was mobbed and killed by Oriental Reed Warbler hosts. Not only does this species directly parasitize other species but also metaphorically, by imitating the sparrowhawks in its appearance and thus deterring potential predators.

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

10,000 Birds

From Hiro, we learn how Northern Pygmy Owls are “rule breakers,” not incubating eggs till all are hatched and then raising owlets that mature at the same rate even though the eggs were laid asynchronously (as most owl eggs are). They are also hunted.

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At Sea With the Marine Birds of the Raincoast: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The species was seemingly killed off by feather hunters, but then, after years, reappeared at the site of one of the deserted breeding colonies, Torishima Island in Japan. She’s described conservation successes in detail–the Bald Eagle, the Short-tailed Albatross, now protected in Japan.

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Why do birds living near Chernobyl have smaller brains?

10,000 Birds

Alternatively, imagine I set the dial to produce simple heat, like the kind that comes out of your stove to cook your scrambled eggs. The kind of energy produced by a cell phone signal is way more like the heat that cooks your eggs than like the scary radiation that comes form an H-bomb or X-ray machine or whatever. 0016862 a.

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Birding Shanghai in May 2023 – Part 2

10,000 Birds

The Large-billed Crow ( video ) is one of the natural enemies – in the study above, it predated 19 eggs from four pitta nests. Different from many other parasitic cuckoos, the chick typically does not kill all its nest mates, though one or two of them may die from starvation.

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Birding Shanghai in November 2022

10,000 Birds

Acariformes: Syringophilidae) from the Chestnut-eared Bunting (Passeriformes: Emberizidae) in Japan (morphology and DNA barcode data)” Ah, to be a scientist. Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). Maybe there is some justice in this world after all.

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