10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2011

As the name suggests, the National Bison Range is mostly known for its large mammals. To my disappointment the biggest and most visible species I saw was the introduced Common (Ring-necked) Pheasant , and my first lifer was the equally introduced Gray Partridge.

Rattlesnake 164

Rattlesnake Bald Eagle Mules Mammals 164

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2014

The magnificent history and diversity of birds on Earth came into sharper focus this month with the publication of 28 new scientific papers in Science and other journals. processed the entire genomes of 48 bird species and compared nearly 42 million base pairs of DNA (Hackett et al. American Flamingo photo by Dick Culbert).

Family 279

Family Birds Parrots 2014 279

10,000 Birds

JUNE 22, 2011

There was also a mammal jawbone in the pellet too. I stuffed it in my pocket and decided to take it to Richard Oehlenschlager at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I wasn’t as interested in the mammal jawbone, but it totally piqued his interest. What was throwing me off were the feathers. Was that a cardinal beak?

Bats 211

Bats Dissection Owls Minnesota 211