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Angry Birds, What’s Black and White and Hungry All Over, and a Little Something for the Ladies: This Week in Bird News

10,000 Birds

If there’s one common theme to this week’s bird news items, it’s their collective bizarreness: The eagle has landed—on the drone, as France trains birds to take out drones that stray into restricted airspace. Scientists ponder the feasibility of genetically engineering chickens to lay the eggs of endangered bird species.

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“Understanding Animal Behaviour” by Rory Putman

10,000 Birds

E.g. I remember trying to enter my local scrubland once, just across the car park behind the last apartment building and there, awaiting me, was a territorial pack of stray dogs barking at an intruder – me. Cactus finch, Geospiza species. Galapagos cactus finch, Geospiza species. How did I know that? Black grouse, Tetrao tetrix.

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Zero Gravity Brewing Company: Bobolink Saison

10,000 Birds

For many grassland species, our vast expanses of tilled and plowed fields, orchards and vineyards, pastures and rangeland offer an abundance of convenient food and shelter – and some bolder birds even wander indoors to find these things in our barns and stables. For most of history, beer has thrived in agrarian settings, too.

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Feral Cats in American Cities

10,000 Birds

… Matthew Anderson [of Audubon] said proponents of colonies are putting the interests of one invasive species — cats — over the hundreds of other native ones that are their prey. Free-roaming cats will hunt and kill birds, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, resulting in wildlife mortality.

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Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

10,000 Birds

In each instance they start with a striking anecdote — my particular favorite took place on the University of Montana campus, where in 1964 an American Crow learned to call and taunt stray dogs into causing perhaps the most adorable college riots of the decade.

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Searching for vultures in India

10,000 Birds

Yet, in 1990s India has killed more than 99% of its Gyps vultures (e.g. The disappearance of vultures has allowed other species such as rat and [stray] dog populations to grow. Oddly, I saw no rats, only a mongoose or two and a few stray dogs. Not for the same reason, although. Vultures are anything but elusive.

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