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Birding Yibin, Sichuan

10,000 Birds

The Latin species name alphonsiana refers to Prof. Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1835-1900), a director to the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, whose study of bird fossils led to the discovery of tropical birds such as trogons and parrots from prehistoric France. Indeed a “handsome, large laughingthrush” (eBird).

Italy 182
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Fur and Fangs rather than Feathers and Beaks

10,000 Birds

There’s also a much greater variety of species of deer living here now than than there were four or five hundred years ago, for along with our native Roe and Red Deer we also have large populations of Fallow, Sika, Reeves’s Muntjac and Chinese Water Deer. Reeves’s Muntjac , a highly successful invasive species in the UK.

Fur 200
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Birding the Cyclades: My my, how can I resist you?

10,000 Birds

Nick finds a bird-shaped protrusion at the top of the rock – Black-eared Wheatear , not exactly a species I expect to observe from a boat deck. Tha dropping numbers are suspected in Greece and Croatia, and confirmed in Italy, France and Malta. The Sun already sets and I haven’t seen a new species in a while.

Greece 228
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The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The very first thing we notice about this large member of the Galliformes is that there is a wild version and a domestic version, and although the two are rather different, they are both given the same species name, Meleagris gallopavo. This is not entirely unknown among domestic animals, but many domesticates have no living wild version.

Turkey 199
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Collaborative list – December 2019

10,000 Birds

They contributed 150 lists accounting for 1032 species and more than 36,000 individual birds. Thus 100 species were missed by the time he woke up and noticed that eBird had reset the counters at midnight(do you guys have nothing better to do?). They came home exhausted. The life list was pumped a further 27 sp up to 3953.

2019 162
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A covey of Greys

10,000 Birds

You’d be lucky today to find even a pair in Hungary, while according to the European Breeding Atlas 2 , it “has almost completely disappeared from S, central and W Italy, Switzerland, Norway and W Austria”. Northern France is another area with a strong population. There are just a few areas left where it still thrives.

Hungary 154
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The Red-billed Leiothrix of Tuscany

10,000 Birds

Clearly, some scientists should never have been granted the privilege of assigning common names to bird species. And while most of these introduction attempts failed, the species has now become firmly established as a “countable” species in several areas of France and Italy, and even Spain so far as I was able to find out.

Italy 177