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Out Birding to Help an Endemic Sparrow in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Today, along with teams in a few other parts of Costa Rica and elsewhere, I will be birding for a cause, watching birds to help one that only lives in Costa Rica, the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow. Around the size of a Song Sparrow or Chaffinch , maybe a bit bigger, this mini towhee forages near the ground in dense scrubby vegetation.

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Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America: A Review by a Sparrow Fan

10,000 Birds

I like sparrows. I like observing them, reading about them, grappling with species and subspecies identification, and even—on a good day—talking about sparrow taxonomy. The book does not include House Sparrow, an Old World sparrow that belongs to a completely different bird family. Scope of Book.

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The Hidden Qualities of House Sparrows

10,000 Birds

I therefore decided to counter this month’s heinous wood-warbler attack on my retina by choosing the good old trusty House Sparrow as the topic of my May post. The last aspect is something I will elaborate on further below, but not before showing off a prime fine male House Sparrow, unethically photographed at its nest site.

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The origins of tanagers, warblers, and sparrows are coming into focus

10,000 Birds

A new paper out this month attempts to paint the most comprehensive picture yet of the origins and diversification of the American sparrows, wood-warblers, blackbirds, cardinals, tanagers, and their kin, an enormous group of birds more than 800 species strong. We now know a lot more about who is a tanager vs. a sparrow vs. a cardinal.

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Birding Kota Kinabalu, Borneo: Rice Paddies

10,000 Birds

There, you may find the Java Sparrow. As a bird mainly feeding on seeds, it is regarded as a threat to crops (in fact, the Latin species name of oryzivora combines the words for rice, “oryza”, and eating, “vorus”). Another option is just to find some rice paddies on the outskirts and look for birds.

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Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

Marybeth Lima’s ‘real life’ work is academic, she is a professor of biological and agricultural engineering as Louisiana State University with research interests in community-based design and service-learning in engineering. Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species.

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Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. There’s more than one song per warbler? How do they know?