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Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Transported by the falcons’ inimitable aerial prowess, I could almost feel the wind stream behind me, feel every subtle movement of wing or tail that determined my trajectory, my speed, my effortless engagement with the wind. Well-researched and footnoted, these sections never feel disconnected from the more personal sections.

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Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce & Conservation: A Book Review by a Curious Bird Feeder

10,000 Birds

How to choose bird feeders; how to make nutritious bird food; how to create a backyard environment that will attract birds; how to survey your feeder birds for citizen science projects; how to prevent squirrels from gobbling up all your black oil sunflower seed (sorry, none of that works). million people in the U.S. in 2011*) came about.

America 229
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eBird Economics: How Much Would You Pay to See Birds?

10,000 Birds

The economic “impact” of a birding festival can be estimated by looking at expenditures of attendees ( e.g., hotel rooms, meals, souvenirs, transportation costs, etc.). I emailed the authors and asked about their research and their use of eBird data. Q: Can you provide a short summary of your research goals and your conclusions?

Oregon 178
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Journeys With Emperors: Tracking the World’s Most Extreme Penguin–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Indeed, most of what we knew about Emperor Penguins before Kooyman’s research expeditions was about their breeding behavior and physiology. Kooyman was there to work at McMurdo Station (a large American research station that we hear about throughout the book) as technical assistant on a science mission involving fish.

Penguins 156
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A Birder Reads a Scientific Paper

10,000 Birds

Several years ago, I read about the enormous colonies of breeding birds in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and I did some research to satisfy my curiosity. ( Google Scholar is an excellent resource and free full-text PDFs can be located for many papers, particularly when research is taxpayer-funded.

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15 Australian Birds (Episode 4)

10,000 Birds

“A reading of recent research shows that Australian birds are more likely than most to eat sweet foods, live in complex societies, lead long lives, attack other birds, and be intelligent and loud.” ” (Tim Low, “Where Song Began”). While this may sound attractive at first, it also covers highly immoral behavior.

Birds 228
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Pigeons have tiny compasses in their heads

10,000 Birds

Homing pigeons were apparently able to find their way home after being transported in a closed box a long distance away (many hundreds of miles in some cases). The same researcher then did the same thing but with big magnets strapped to the children’s heads. Back then, it was known that birds were pretty good navigators.