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“The Wise Hours” — a review

10,000 Birds

She accompanies Luke on his Barn Owl counting, a heartening and optimistic chore now that British farmers have learned to prefer owls, as a pest control method, to strychnine, which kills rats but also the owls that feed on them.

Barn Owls 113
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Hey, that’s not in my field guide!

10,000 Birds

Tucked into the shadows the hawk can complete the kill. No, wait,Red-shouldered Hawk dragged into the water by the weight of its prey, a giant rat. Redtails hunt at night… sometimes. Check out the submariner Coot and the startled Great Blue Heron. Unfortunately since this isn’t their usual prey it takes some time.

Rats 219
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Can Nature Take Care of Itself?

10,000 Birds

Inserts in rodent poisons that assure the public they will not kill anything but the offending rats or mice pedal the same questionable claims as those of the snake oil salesmen of bygone days. We use toxins, pesticides, and herbicides in many ways, from dusting our pansies to increasing the yield of thousands of acres of crops.

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A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Great Frigatebirds engage in “unihemispheric sleep” on hunting trips of six to ten days, never landing, sleeping less than an hour in a 24-hour cycle, often keeping one-half of their brain awake while the other slept. Pause while we all try to imagine what our lives would be like if we could do that.)

Cyprus 246
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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

I’ve written at length about the specific vulnerability of insular faunas and the catastrophic extinctions caused by the arrival of rats, mice, ferrets, cats and possums (amongst others), here in New Zealand fully half the pre-human bird species were lost. Two activists where even caught spreading antidote to the poison on the island

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Are We Much Better than Michael Vick?

Critter News

Like Vick, most of us shamelessly abuse and kill animals. Homemakers employ deadly rat traps and poisons to rid their dwellings of vermin. Americans systematically exploit and kill animals - sometimes for scientific progress; sometimes for leather jackets, ham sandwiches, or horse-racing.

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Come@Me: Don’t Mourn for Extinct Birds

10,000 Birds

The causes were the usual reasons for island extinction—deforestation by both humans and invasive plants that crowded out native plants, hunting, and invasive rats, mongoose, monkeys, and, of course, feral cats. A foot deep by some accounts, it killed what life was left in the forest. We know what those large flocks were like.

Mauritius 101