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My Favorite Release

10,000 Birds

August arrived and I was releasing birds knowing they’d need time to adapt prior to making that long flight across the Gulf of Mexico, headed to South America. I raised them, banded them and released them back to their colony site that summer. It was like they said, “You reek of humans, go wash.”.

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Lesser Antillean Specialties

10,000 Birds

The presence of this tanager in the Caribbean is a rare aspect of South American flair, as its closest relative is the similarly plumaged Scrub Tanager of northern South America. Interestingly, this species has been split into two distinct subspecies, one for each of the islands on which it is found.

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The Complicated Mating Systems of Rheas

10,000 Birds

Perhaps the most complicated and bizarre mating system is that of the Rheas of South America. They live in flocks in the open country shrubland of Southern South America. All chicks never know their mothers, most are raised by their father, but some never know neither and are raised by an unrelated foster father.

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Swift Care Ontario: Sometimes It Takes a Village

10,000 Birds

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it sometimes takes a “village” of rehabbers to save threatened wildlife. As a result of human interference, four Chimney Swift nestlings had to be rescued. For the next two and a half weeks Sue continued to raise them, along with four other swifts she had in care.

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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

In fact, the Dodo belonged to a clade (sometimes called Raphini) of 15 remarkable, bizarre, intriguing island-adapted pigeons, some of which are still alive today, but eight of which have been hacked from the tree of life, driven to extinction by humans. placopedetes occurred since the arrival of people and presumably was due to human impact.”

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Selling Birds Short: A Heretical View Of Avian Intelligence

10,000 Birds

Between staying warm/cool, finding food, avoiding predators, migrating thousands of miles every year, finding mates, raising chicks and doing all this at the mercy of the elements, it makes sense that they have more brainpower than just simple instinct to run on. crossing the Carribean and winding up in South America?

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

10,000 Birds

So do parrots, some songbirds, humans, and a few other mammals. Humans don’t share merely a similar capacity for vocal learning with hummingbirds, we share share similar brain machinery , and that brain machinery is regulated by similar genes , genes not shared by hummingbirds’ closest relatives, nor by ours.

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