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How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity: A Book Review by a Non-Science Person

10,000 Birds

He is also a serious birder (and a birding friend), and his birding observations and adventures are used throughout the book to introduce evolutionary questions and illustrate the mental interplay between personal experience and scientific curiosity. The book is smartly organized into 12 chapters. that’s three birds). ” (p.

Science 228
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Fur and Fangs rather than Feathers and Beaks

10,000 Birds

On my 21-day Kenyan safaris we reckoned to find around 600 species of birds and around 60 mammals, both impressive totals. In 2023 I attempted to keep a year list of mammal encounters: the list barely exceeded 20 species, while it became complicated by seeing bats and voles that I was unable to name specifically.

Fur 199
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Birding Shanghai in June 2023

10,000 Birds

This leaves Shanghai in June with basically just the year-round species and the summer breeders, maybe with a few added ultra-lazy individuals of migratory species. Fortunately, there are a few more such breeding species than most Shanghainese are aware of. Such as the Black-winged Cuckooshrike.

Birds 130
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How I dipped the Horned Grebe

10,000 Birds

In the Old World, Horned (Slavonian) Grebe breeds in a wide belt stretching from Scandinavia to Kamchatka and it spends winters along sea coasts, from Japan to China and from Norway to France, plus the Adriatic and the Black Sea (west and east of the Balkans, respectively). As a consequence, this species is only a rare vagrant in Serbia.

Serbia 176
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Bird-Eating Fish

10,000 Birds

In parts of Western Europe, it is considered to be “exotic” because it has been introduced, possibly by anglers, in lakes and rivers in France and the Iberian Peninsula. It has also found its way to Japan where it is considered to be an invasive species. My own experience at catching catfish (big ones!)

Fish 210
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The long and winding road

10,000 Birds

In the High Arctic we find several migrating species that break that mould. Their journey between the Arctic and Africa takes them from here, across Greenland and the North Atlantic, onto Great Britain and then south through France, Spain, across the Mediterranean and down into Sub-saharan Africa.

Africa 204
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Britain’s Dragonflies & Britain’s Butterflies: A Review of Two Field Guides

10,000 Birds

I found this out last year, on a trip to France with my daughter Sarah. I couldn’t wait to give names to all my new species. I tried using the Internet, but found it frustrating for all the usual reasons; websites either didn’t include all species or were difficult to use for identification.

Ireland 180