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Big Ticks; What Was Your Last New Family?

10,000 Birds

But there is one kind of tick that I genuinely do enjoy, and as I do more and more birding it becomes harder and harder to get; new families. Getting entirely new families is easy when you start birding. Sometimes you may even lose them, like the aforementioned woodswallows which are probably no longer a family.

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Birding Botswana’s Borders

10,000 Birds

But I do have rules about whether I can have said to have visited a country, ie does the country “count” which I have inherited from my family, particularly my Dad. But you haven’t come here to read my writing about mammals or reptiles, so, yeah, there are also lots of birds. Red Lechwe.

Botswana 162
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My Year in Birding 2012

10,000 Birds

We had a wonderful family vacation in Germany and the Czech Republic during which I managed to do a bit of birding. Whether it was hawks , terns , seabirds , wood-warblers , shorebirds , geese , falcons , finches , or songbirds and woodpeckers I was there with my camera. Oh, and there were mammals too. Pied-billed Grebe.

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Here’s the new bird family tree. It’s amazing.

10,000 Birds

’s bird family tree in a new tab and follow along as you read. The extinction event that wiped out the pterosaurs, the non-avian dinosaurs, and so much other life created enormous opportunity for new organisms to diversify and thrive (lucky for us placental mammals!), In 2008, Nick Sly published a review of Hackett et al.

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Proposes 2015 Expansion of Hunting and Fishing Opportunities on National Wildlife Refuges

10,000 Birds

The Refuge is now home to nearly 200 species of birds, over 50 species of mammals, 25 species of reptiles and amphibians, and a wide variety of insects, fish and plants. The mosaic of wetlands, open water, bottomland forests and prairies provides habitat for numerous mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and nearly three hundred bird species.

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The Kerkini Lake, Greece: Dipped One, Got One

10,000 Birds

By the cliffs we find several Eurasian Crag-Martins and a consolation species – a family of Golden Eagles in the air! The next morning is for the Kerkini Lake, one of the youngest national parks of Greece, protected only ten years ago, in 2006 and inhabited by 11 amphibian, 27 reptilian, 44 mammal and 312 bird species.

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Missing Syrinx Found! Mesozoic Vegavis vocalization verified

10,000 Birds

Primates are exceptional among the mammals, living amphibians (which represent only a small part of the original amphibian family tree) are pretty noisy too. 66 million years ago, and one of those groups gave rise to the ducks and geese. One of the key features of birds, and I use the term “key” literally, is vocalization.

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