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Urban Birding in San Diego

10,000 Birds

There are beautiful beaches, a plethora of amazing food and drinks, a multitude of family fun locations, a world-renowned zoo, and one of the biggest birding festivals in the US. My family visited San Diego every year as part of a Disneyland-SoCal Road trip to escape the rainy Christmases at home near Portland, Oregon.

San Diego 245
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Australasian Snapper, Pagrus auratus

10,000 Birds

The species is fairly widespread in the Western Pacific, ranging from New Zealand to Japan, and contrary to its name it isn’t actually a true snapper (family Lutjanidae), but is instead a member of the porgy and sea bream family (Sparidae). They were also part of the diet of early European settlers.

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Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Marybeth learns as she birds, embraces listing goals as a means of engaging with community, unabashedly enjoys a little competition, struggles to balance her absolute joy in birding with unexpected, life-and-death family obligations. The book focuses on two listing events: her 2012 Louisiana Big Year and her 2016 Louisiana 300 Year.

Louisiana 264
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Evolution of the Multi-Media Bird

10,000 Birds

Among the Efe (Pygmy) people that I lived with in the 1980s, the young men would in fact disappear from the bosom of their families and spend a lot of time, perhaps months, living on their own in the forest. you’d get to see the much larger samples of prepared specimens in the drawers. Or get your own. Not birds, though.

Birds 183
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Birding in a Hellmouth

10,000 Birds

There were opportunities to go to far flung places like the islands of the Pacific or the coast of Canada or the Yorkshire Dales… Anyway, as I was obsessed by Africa at the time, I leapt at the opportunity to go to Namibia to collect samples of bat DNA for a biogeography project. A Bat Hawk hunting bats.

Bats 157
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Birding the Kruger Park (1): Skukuza area

10,000 Birds

For some reason, the largest member of the heron family is not called the Great Heron nor the Giant Heron but rather the Goliath Heron. The shrike family (Laniidae) has two genera, one (Lanius) with 32 species and one (Eurocephalus) with 2 species. Consistency is overrated. Sorry to disappoint you.

Birds 147
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What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The species are taxonomically divided into two families: Tytonidae, Barn-Owls, and Strigidae, Owls, encompassed in one order, Strigiformes. When you look at Clements latest taxonomic spreadsheet, you get a sense of the depth of their relationships to each other and the world. This is a great summer read.

Owls 246