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Birding Shanghai in November 2022

10,000 Birds

Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). A study found that for Plain Prinia , egg characteristics in a mainland China location with many cuckoos make it much easier to spot cuckoo eggs than in a Taiwan location with few cuckoos ( source ).

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Birding Shanghai in September 2022

10,000 Birds

The bird “spent five months on Mindoro Island in the Philippines during the non-breeding season and migrated through Taiwan, the Chinese east coast, and the Korean peninsula” and on to the Russian Far East (indicating a certain lack of solidarity with Ukraine). This is the dark blue adult male (also shown on top of this post).

China 190
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Comebackers

10,000 Birds

They bred on a number of islands near Japan and Taiwan, and ranged widely and abundantly from the Aleutian Islands south through California. The most notorious effect is that their eggshells become so thin that a parent bird will crush it’s eggs while attempting to incubate them. What a horror! What a disaster! What a wrong!

Albatross 215