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One of the sweetest subsections of the duck family has to be the sawbills, formally known as mergansers. Mergansers are a family of diving waterfowl in Merginae , the seaduck subfamily of Anatidae. Ironically, only one of these seaducks is truly a seafarer, the others favoring rivers and lakes.
When all of you are settling in inside away from the snow for family, food and arguments, we’re all getting our travel on. I saw one other species of stork on the river, the Lesser Adjutant , a species that can be seen in Borneo but one people aren’t sure even breeds in Borneo anymore. Greater Adjutants are even rarer.
Also known as the Flyeater, this tiny bird is the only representative of the Australasian warbler family found in mainland Asia, and very similar to my own Grey Warblers in New Zealand, even their songs. A target bird was next, the Pheasant-tailed Jacana, which was sadly not in breeding plumage but was still attractive.
Old World Vultures are nestled within the family Acciptridae along with the hawks and eagles. It’s actually a pretty classic example of convergent evolution, wherein two unrelated families of lifeforms evolve to fill the same niche independently. Thailand’s Adopt a Vulture Program – YC Wee, Bird Ecology Study Group.
I am not sure about the security situation in Iraq these days but at least some people do ornithological research there – resulting in papers such as one titled “Breeding observations of the Black-winged Kite Elanus caeruleus (Desfontaines , 1789) in Iraq” Impressive. Like this bird family b. Like bad jokes and c.
In Grey-backed Shrikes (at least those breeding on the Tibetan plateau), the eggs laid during one breeding attempt get larger with time – presumably an attempt to at least partly overcome the disadvantages the last chick faces ( source ). The site states that in captivity, “two hens can be paired with one male.”
Wrynecks are fascinating because they are woodpeckers, taxonomically and evolutionarily, yet they do not share many behaviors and anatomical features of most members of the Picidae family. But they are woodpeckers: the genus Jynx of the subfamily Jynginae of the Picidae family. They are beautiful, but in a different way.
On the way I managed to sneak in a manic day of birding in and around the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. I must confess I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, as the related Australian White Ibis is something of a trash bird in Sydney, but this species is extremely rare in Thailand or for that matter South East Asia.
Pardalotes are actually their own family, and a family entirely endemic to Australia. Insofar as they relate to other bird families, they are perhaps closest to the thornbills, another family that is mostly Australian but reaches as far as Thailand and Fiji. A Spotted Pardalote ! What a treat!
My review copy (well, actually a contributor’s copy—more on that later) was waiting for me when I returned from the ABA birding tour of Thailand and Malaysia (more on that in a separate post) in early March. The book does not include House Sparrow, an Old World sparrow that belongs to a completely different bird family.
So, inspired by a similar article on road birding in Thailand, I present road birding in New Zealand. This New Zealand endemic, more than any other, has benefited from the clearing of forest and pairs are commonly seen everywhere you go in New Zealand, often with their large families in tow.
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