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

10,000 Birds

” Writing about owls means writing about roughly 250 species (I counted 245 on the 2022 Clements spreadsheet, but I might have missed a few, and we all know that each classification system is different). These are behaviors that are most likely to vary across species and topics that make for compelling stories.

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

10,000 Birds

Shockingly, the Ashy-throated Parrotbill apparently is a species heavily hunted for bird fighting in Guizhou Province, China ( source ). Apparently , they use the presence of their own eggs as a cue for recognizing parasitic eggs – so without the presence of their own eggs as a template they fail to recognize a parasitic egg.

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Birding the Wolongshan area in June 2023

10,000 Birds

For birders, the Wolongshan area is like a poorer cousin of Balangshan – due to the lower elevation, the bird species here are more common and thus less interesting. Some Chinese Babax waste part of their lives feeding chicks of Large Hawk Cuckoos, which parasitize the babax species.