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The complete guide to Dodo relatives, living and dead

10,000 Birds

One of these clades holds a diversity of Old World species in several distinct groups, including an Australasian clade, the green-pigeons, the emerald- and wood-doves, the imperial-pigeons and fruit-doves (favorites of mine), and the subjects of our investigation today, the 15 known members of the Raphini. ” Beehler et al.’s

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Confusing Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

The world of birding is filled with challenging groups well known to all, birds like gulls , Empidonax flycatchers or cisticolas that require attention to the tiniest details in order to assign an individual to a specific species (if it can be done at all). Above we have an example of the species. Subspecies humii , Thailand.

Samoa 166
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Clearing up the Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

All the way back in 2011 I wrote about the confusing taxanomic enigma that is the Collared Kingfisher , a species that ranges from the Red Sea to Tonga in a bewildering variety of forms. I’m happy to report that an analysis of the species and some relatives has found that, as suspected, it isn’t a single species.