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As the rice paddies near Kota Kinabalu described in an earlier post , Tanjung Aru beach is not really a major birding spot in its own right. However, it is only a short taxi ride away from the airport where most travelers will arrive at – better to see birds instead of just eating fast food while waiting for a connecting flight.
It varies in appearance across its enormous range, and a new genetic study — Dispersal and speciation in purple swamphens (Rallidae: Porphyrio) — bolsters the case that this “supertramp” is actually a superspecies that could be split into six different species. Above: Swamphen in Australia by James Niland).
The 125 Best Bird Watching Sites in Southeast Asia, edited by Yong Ding Li & Low Bing Wen. And now I am holding the “The 125 Best Bird Watching Sites in Southeast Asia” – an expanded and fully updated second edition of “The 100 Best Birdwatching Sites in Southeast Asia”. That is about it – I do not know much more about this region.
so I’m a bit behind in my intense pursuit of scientific findings related to birds. First, the bird butts. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of birds flying by out there are going the other way. If half the Warblers go extinct, that would be a lot of species but you’d still pretty much have Warbler DNA.
Last week I introduced the Great Frigatebird , one of five species of man-o-war bird. I got rather carried away showing all the plumages you can see around a breeding colony, which means I had to split my post on the species into two. In summary then, these are awesome birds! An adult female with a wingtag from the study.
It took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of Birds and People , Mark Cocker and David Tipling’s book that, in 592 pages, explores the intersection of just that—birds and us. Nor have I overlooked “sightings” of birds in movies mouthing other birds’ calls. I’m not sure why.
Both new species were recently peeled off from the Philippine Hawk-owl , which may have a few more species to contribute before all is said and done. Those of us who adore owls can be grateful for more species to either love or chase futilely, depending on whether your owl luck is as bad as mine!
BIRDING WITHOUT BORDERS: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World. The most impressive photograph in Noah Strycker’s new book is not one of a bird, but of the author. He’s standing next to a pile of several dozen birding guidebooks — the stack is fully as tall as the 5’9” Strycker himself.
Mantanani is a biological link between Borneo and the islands of the Philippines. Like many small islands that fringe the Philippines side of Borneo, it has a handful of species that are mostly found in the Philippines, or species that are supertramps, meaning they occur on many of the smaller fringing islands in the Indo-Malayan archipelago.
How many species there were is probably lost to history, but there were certainly many hundreds. Sadly, as I’ve explained before , most of these species became extinct as humans arrived on the islands, and with it one of the most astonishing radiations of birds imaginable. But here’s the thing.
When birding, as in life in general, it is important to stop occasionally and smell the metaphorical roses. This isn’t just because roses smell nice (although many do) or even because we need to remember that almost all birds depend in one way or another on plants (although they mostly do). Sure, they aren’t birds.
A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say. Scientists had suspected the species—listed as "data deficient" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2008 Red List—was extinct.
I’ve never been to the Indonesian Archipelago, but I really like the birds there. Lynx Edicions, the ornithological (and now mammal) publisher that gave us the Handbook of the Birds of the World , has now published Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea , by James A. So, this is no ordinary bird guide.
It feels good to start a post with some truly attractive birds – such as two species of broadbills. If you like cute birds, you will probably like the Black-and-yellow Broadbill. Homework assignment: Is the bird in this video a male or a female? Strangely, there do not seem to be many papers on this species.
Tan Phu Forest is about 2 hours North of Ho Chi Minh City, and the location of a few bird blinds set up by a Vietnamese who used to be a park ranger at Cat Tien National Park and probably learned about the economic potential of attracting foreign birders. My way of squeezing more blog posts out of my birding trips.
The name is a puzzle though – even the HBW states that the bird has “small or no crest” These photos were taken on Sep 26, indicating that the birds passed Shanghai rather late (according to the HBW, “autumn migration from early to late Sept”). The Japanese Paradise Flycatcher is listed as Near Threatened.
When birding Sabah, Borneo, one almost inevitably passes through Kota Kinabalu, the biggest city and the destination of almost all international flights. While no birder would come here just for the birds of the city, some of them are worth spending a few hours on. There, you may find the Java Sparrow.
Picidae, Woodpecker, is one of those charismatic bird families that everybody gets excited about. The title is a bit deceptive, for while photographs are a huge part of the book, it is grounded in the 239 species accounts written by woodpecker guru Gerard Gorman. The Species Accounts vary in length from one to three pages.
Rather, during autumn migration, it first flies to east Siberia, then turns south across eastern China, and finally turns west (source: Birds of Two Worlds: The Ecology and Evolution of Migration). A paper on this also describes the song of the species as extremely complex and variable. So better not let a rubythroat bite you. .
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