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

10,000 Birds

Jennifer Ackerman points out in the introduction to What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds , that we don’t know much, but that very soon we may know a lot more. What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds is a joyous, fascinating read.

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A Fierce Cartoon Bird: Steller’s Sea Eagle on Hokkaido

10,000 Birds

In what might nowadays be regarded as a slightly weird scientific practice, after meeting naturalist Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, he married Messerschmidt’s widow after his death and got notes from Messerschmidt’s Siberia travels from her that had not been handed over to the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

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Birding the Wolongshan area in June 2023

10,000 Birds

Meaning: we did real science, Martens did not. ” Meaning: we did real science, Martens did not. ” Meaning: Martens did not do his homework and does not do real science. .” ” Meaning: Martens did not do his homework and does not do real science. In contrast, the paper by Martens et al.

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Birding Balangshan (tunnel area) in June 2023

10,000 Birds

Humans are not always bad for birds, only about 95% of the time. Sounds a bit like some weird Nazi eugenics experiment to me, but I guess it is just science. Biologists – or as Ze Frank would say, the Science Hippies – call this ecological segregation (e.g.,

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Journeys With Emperors: Tracking the World’s Most Extreme Penguin–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

It’s all about the improbable intersection of human beings and Emperor Penguins, and if I can’t make it to an Emperor Penguin colony (highly unlikely), reading this book has been the next best thing. It’s part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific narrative, part prologue to making an argument for Antarctic conservation.

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Birding Shanghai in March 2024

10,000 Birds

A few changes happen in March – for example, many European countries and the USA switch to daylight savings time. I am sure some people will hate this photo of a Eurasian Hoopoe , framed as it is by human artifacts. But anyway, Shanghai in March. Of course, me being me, this is a good reason to show it.

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Vagrancy in Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Today’s vagrant could be tomorrow’s resident, a change that is visibly happening with, for example, the Clay-colored Thrush in southern Texas. There are many more factors than I imagined: compass errors, wind drift, overshooting, extreme weather and irruptions, natural dispersal, and human-driven vagrancy.

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