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Siberian Chiffchaff in the Altai Mountains

10,000 Birds

The Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita is an abundant species with an impressive global range that stretches from the West of Europe across Siberia to Russia’s far East, just falling short of reaching the Bering Straits by a laughable 800 kilometres, a fact one individual apparently found too awkward to bear. canariensis ).

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Of Snowflake Birds and the Cold War

10,000 Birds

I was given my first real field guide to the birds of Europe by my parents, a guide beyond the species found at backyard feeders and city ponds. In 1996, during my university days at Greifswald, I was invited to join an excursion to eastern Kazakhstan, travelling along the Chinese border from Almaty to lake Zaissan and back.

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The World’s Most Beautiful Goose?

10,000 Birds

According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s BirdFacts website, “Although a small number of vagrant Red-breasted Geese from the declining arctic Siberian breeding population winter in Britain each year, the species is popular in wildfowl collections and many birds are of captive origin. The post The World’s Most Beautiful Goose?

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