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“Peacocks and Picathartes: Reflections on Africa’s Birdlife”

10,000 Birds

And apart from local people, primate researchers sometimes spot it, but it is a species seen by fewer than ten living birders. A few years ago, in the American Birding Association FB group I posted a question: Where would you go if funds weren’t a problem? Some are incredibly rare and hard to find.

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Our Favorite Bird Books (and one pair of Binoculars) of 2022

10,000 Birds

Myers, a professional birding guide in “real life,” summarizes the etymology and history of all common bird names (of bird families and groups, not all 10,000-plus species). The guide covers 265 of Maine’s 461 bird species: common nesting species, common migrants, and wintering birds.

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Pink in Africa

10,000 Birds

Of course Africa could not to be left out of the pink weekend so I have researched all African species whose official or alternative names include the word “pink”. This attractive (for a lark anyway) species is restricted to the dry savannah Somali-Maasai biome of north-east Africa (northern Tanzania, Kenya, southern Ethiopia and Somalia).

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Africa’s Barbets

10,000 Birds

Barbets are a group of medium sized, chunky, generally colorful, frugivorous, hole-nesting near-passerines, that are popular targets for anyone birding in the tropics. In Asia, their 30 barbet species are placed into their own family Megalaimidae , and finally in Africa, we have 42 species in the family Lybiidae , the topic of this blogpost.

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The Bee-eaters of Africa

10,000 Birds

The wonderful family Meropidae contains 27 dazzling species, of which Africa is endowed with no less than 20 species, the balance occurring across Asia and with one as far afield as Australia. We have both resident and migratory species, and this post will briefly discuss each of the 20 species of African bee-eaters.

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KwaZulu-Natal

10,000 Birds

Even in the tropics there are few birds that excel some of our own in elegance and beauty of plumage and we have an unusually large number of species considering the smallness of the area they inhabit. ” (Woodward brothers, “Natal Birds”, 1899) The mighty Drakensberg Mountains run along the western boundary of KwaZulu-Natal province.