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Swarovski Skills Camp, or men and their toys

10,000 Birds

The indoor workshop started with a Covid self-testing (where everyone was negative), followed by lectures on the Swarovski company, its ethos and products. The next day we had an outdoor workshop and a chance to test the toys. At the end of the workshop we all went birding, to further test the glasses of our choice.

Austria 298
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My Global Big (half-)Day, May 2022

10,000 Birds

First, that new pair of bins for testing arrived, of which you will be reading in a due time, and two days later, the Global Big Day. A few Eurasian Tree Sparrows land by my car as I am scanning for Purple and Squacco Herons , Pygmy Cormorants and Black-necked Grebes in their brilliant breeding plumage. Where to go?

Mules 214
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Some Hokkaido Winter Passerines

10,000 Birds

One website states that only 15% of the birds that hatch make it to become first year breeding adults, 6% make it to the second year, and 3% to the third year. Other species – such as starlings or t**s – stealing the nesting site of Eurasian Nuthatches is one of the major reasons for breeding failure.

Iran 179
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Celebrating a Waxwing Winter

10,000 Birds

Secondly, much of the appeal is that this is a bird we don’t see in the UK very often, for Waxwings are an irruptive species, and in most years only a few ever reach our shores from their breeding grounds in the boreal forests of Scandinavia. At the time I was writing about cars, so I recall we travelled in a road-test Porsche.

Finland 217
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My Personal Favorites

10,000 Birds

It breeds on the shores of the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic, then gathers around the southern arm of Hudson Bay, to fly non-stop all the way to the southern tip of South America. I could not test this theory in 2024, as by that month the lake had disappeared. An early photo of mine, which is also still to be found on Merlin.

Squirrels 229
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More Heath Birding around Bonn

10,000 Birds

While experiments have shown that some birds (like crows and parrots) can count, this rule unsurprisingly did not hold when subjected to testing. Incredibly, this was the first time I saw a male of this species in breeding plumage (plus the first time I heard its song, just as for the Wryneck ).

Germany 190
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Boy Crazy: Why Older Loon Ladies Chase Young Studs

10,000 Birds

That is one of many interesting findings from The Loon Project, which studies the territorial and breeding behavior of Loons in northern Wisconsin. The behavior described in this blog post is observational, not the result of a rigorous, extensive testing. All the single ladies, take note.

Stud 100