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Vagrancy in Birds: A Book Review

10,000 Birds

It also summarizes the vagrancy status of every bird family in the whole wide world, which makes it fun to read as well as superbly educational. 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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Birding Shanghai in May 2023 – Part 1

10,000 Birds

The bird on the photo is one of the estimated 3500-15,000 individuals still alive according to the HBW – a frightening thought given the (too) large number of humans, of which there are about 1 million times more (and of course, each of which weighs 5000 times more than the flycatcher).

Birds 130
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Laughing at you, not with you

10,000 Birds

Not bad given that the 5 families in the inner circle of the laughingthrush family have a combined number of about 68 species. Given current trends in the Western world, I wonder whether it will remain known under its Latin species name sukatschewi (after a Russian explorer) in the future. This post shows some of them.

San Diego 213
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Honey, I Shrunk The Dinosaurs!

10,000 Birds

So, for example, humans are apes. Fortunately for we humans, placing primates properly phylogenetically in relation to the other mammals requires an act or two of faith at the deeper ends of the family tree, but it is probably true that primates and rodents share a common stock to the exclusion of others, so maybe we are all mice.

Camels 201
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Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan

10,000 Birds

I saw two Pitta species at Hongbenghe, both among the slightly less glamourous among the pitta family: The Blue-naped Pitta … … and the closely related Rusty-naped Pitta. The Blue Whistling Thrush is presumably named for its loud human-like whistling, and possibly for being blue. A worrying trend. I am only joking!

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Urban Ornithology: 150 Years of Birds in New York City–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Not all habitat change is due to humans; there is Chestnut Blight destroying American Chestnuts in the early 1900s, and the more recent Dutch Elm disease. Clearly, members of the birding community and their families–thanked in the opening Acknowledgments section–played a strong role in getting this project done. .

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Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Ballantine and Hyman explore how birds communicate and summarize studies on how that communication functions in diverse bird families all over the world. Their text is combined with 200 (rough count) brightly colored photographs, many full or three-quarter page in size, and 10 charts and diagrams. There is so much here!