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Not only is it a bird species we rarely encounter, but we had never found a breeding colony before. The Yellow-billed Spoonbills had found the perfect environment to breed and we were lucky enough to come across it. Adult breeding plumage in Yellow-billed Spoonbills. Not all of the nests had been vacated yet either.
The Crested Pigeon will breed at any time of year if the conditions are right. The Crested Pigeon family remained in the tree away from danger for quite some time with both parents present. Although Crested Pigeons are quite a common bird Australia-wide you don’t always find a nest, so that you are able to observe the family grow.
We really don’t like the presence of Black Kites along the beach when the Pied Oystercatchers are breeding. Of course Black Kites also breed and at the moment there is a nest very close to the highway. The header photo shows the small group of trees where the Black Kites have chosen to nest this year. Black Kite nest.
Some bird groups take more to learn than others. Challenging groups of birds are those with very similar species occurring in one locality. Others include species where males and females have breeding and non-breeding plumages and those species that take multiple plumage stages to reach the adult age.
This year we have had high numbers of Magpie Geese once again in the Broome area and this last weekend we observed our first family groups for the season. The Magpie Geese families are on the move and the family groups that we saw last weekend all consisted of three adults and ten or more goslings.
That still leaves 11 Warblers that breed in Michoacán. Like the Common Yellowthroat , the Yellow Warbler breeds no further south than the central Mexican highlands. I must admit that I had the idea the Grace’s Warbler , common in our pine forests, were also at the southern edge of their breeding range here.
Adult Audouin’s Gulls now passing show heavily abraded plumage after breeding I covered the main species in my 23rd June article “When the sea becomes a desert”. These also show up, often in family groups, from the east and steadily approach the point before turning south-west towards the Atlantic.
They begin to show up in August and peak in September as they make their way south to their Antarctic breeding grounds. European Storm Petrel The European Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus is the other species of storm petrel that’s around in the summer months and these are birds from local breeding colonies.
This extreme similarity among all the redpolls stands in marked contrast to studies of other groups of birds—such as Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees—which show differences at many regions of the genome.
Whether these are transient birds flying to the Andean Mountains to their breeding grounds or back, is yet to be determined. Fortunately, local veterinarians and biologists have formed a group that rescues storm-petrels and ensures that as many birds as possible make their way back to sea before it is too late.
The most recent estimates suggest that some 1,500 pairs breed in Spain. That’s about half of the entire European breeding population. Look further back, to the first census undertaken and the number of breeding pairs had been estimated at 94 in 1987. Its stronghold is the Iberian Peninsula.
All New World Quail are highly gregarious, typically found in coveys or flocks except during breeding season. The family group pictured below has been visiting my yard recently. In the group photo taken four days later of the family in the video, the chicks are completely feathered, leading me to believe it is a different family.
A friend of mine told me, she has been seeing small groups of Swallow-tailed Kites ( Elanoides furficatus ) in the general area; in south Florida. Of all migratory birds breeding in North America, Swallow-tailed Kites are among the first to leave for the wintering grounds. I then proceeded to expand on her observation.
The goal of Around the World For Penguins is simple: Describe the 18 species of penguin and their breeding grounds “from the perspective of a traveller.” Plantema gives highly detailed information about the weather, terrain, ownership of and access to the islands and coasts where penguins breed.
Over the next few days, the Alpine Accentors ( Prunella collaris ) will arrive on their high-Alpine breeding grounds – it is time to start singing, despite that the treeless Alpine landscape is still under metres of snow. all Alpine Accetor photos digiscoped (c) Dale Forbes. all Alpine Accetor photos digiscoped (c) Dale Forbes.
It’s a bang-up breeding year for super-endangered birds! The species, which migrates from the Russian Arctic to Southeast Asia, is down to about 200 breeding pairs in the wild, due to habitat loss and poaching. For the past several years, getting the birds to breed has been an exercise in futility.
These subspecies can be divided into two major clades, the domesticus group and the indicus group, with the indicus group occupying south and parts of central Asia. Members of the indicus group have often been regarded as a separate species in the past, and some taxonomists still tread them as such today.
These charismatic, colorful and finely formed birds are favorites amongst birders from experts to novices, and lie within the group of birds whose beauty even non-birders really appreciate. Carmine bee-eaters occur throughout most of Subsaharan Africa, and many populations migrate widely post breeding.
It is not unusual for only one Pied Oystercatcher chick to survive throughout the whole breeding season despite in excess of sixty eggs being laid by sixteen pairs. It is for this reason that there was not an update last year on Pied Oystercatchers breeding success , because there was not any. Pied Oystercatcher nest.
The wood stork occurs and breeds in Central and South America. I have seen them foraging on sandy shores of rivers deep in the Amazon, enjoyed them in their raucous breeding colonies in the Everglades, flushed them out of canals during walks around my house, and perhaps more importantly contribute to their recovery. Photo: U.S.
It’s a bird that rarely occurs inland, and outside the breeding season it spends its time far out to sea. In March, as the days start to lengthen, so the wandering birds return to their breeding cliffs. Adult pairs are very site faithful, and if their breeding is successful, they will return to the same colony year after year.
Few birds sport such magnificent breeding plumage as the male ruff, but not a single bird showed more than a hint of this plumage. These ruffs still had a 1,000 or more miles to fly to reach their northern breeding grounds. They were sharing the same habitat as the resident Kentish Plovers, the only wader to breed here.
This is my first visit to this area, known as the Madz Brod, where two new breeding species for the country were discovered a decade ago. They are common winter visitors, but this is my first observation of them in the breeding season. Madz Brod by Slobodan Puzovic. Still, it’s a new bird for my country list. We wait again.
Waxwings and their relatives are a small, interesting group of songbirds that have seen some interesting taxonomic changes in the last few years. The Palmchat has long been grouped with waxwings and silky-flycatchers based on morphological similarities, and genetic work has confirmed the relationship. Meet the bombycillids: Palmchat.
Africa’s pelicans can be a bit confusing on the identification front as Great White does show an overall pink blush in its plumage during breeding season whereas the pinkest part of Pink-backed Pelican is its lower back, which is only seen in flight! Great White Pelicans showing the pink flush of breeding plumage. Photo by Adam Riley.
Most Acorn Woodpeckers are cooperative breeders and live in family groups of up to a dozen or more individuals. Within a group, 1–7 male co-breeders compete for matings with 1–3 joint-nesting females who lay their eggs in the same nest cavity. This is a photo of a juvenile at my water feature.
I assume this is because so many of them breed in the Arctic and tundra regions, so their summer is much briefer than that of other birds. Still, most of the birds were locals, including Fulvous Whistling-Ducks , Black-necked Stilts , and a lone American Avocet (still with a bit of breeding color). Let that be a lesson, to me.
One was “Superdad,” one of the few successful breeding whooping cranes in the entire eastern population. Eastern flyway breeding populations appear to be maxing out their available habitat, and are subject to abundant natural limitations such as ground predation by coyotes, foxes, raccoons and opossums. Quick: what’s this?
And much of that time is spend loafing around the breeding colonies trying to pair off and engaging in silly-looking behaviours referred to as dancing by scientists. It can take over a year to raise a chick for the larger species, and even species that can fit their entire breeding cycle into one year tend not to breed in consecutive years.
DNA evidence then indicated that they are an ancient group mostly closely related to the bizarre and wildly different rockfowls and they were therefore contentiously placed in the Picathartes family, before finally finding a contented home in their own family, Chaetopidae. A dancing Blue Crane , South Africa’s national bird.
And, of course, there was a group of youngsters barbecuing. For example, the White-headed Duck is nowadays a rarity in Europe (okay, excluding Spain, I know… that Spain …), but until some 50 years ago, it used to breed in Serbia. The hide overlooking the breeding colony of Red-footed Falcons. And a table, too.
A simple, useful world map in outline shows approximate breeding ranges in yellow and wintering ranges in blue, and for some birds, permanent resident ranges in green. Some birds with populations on different breeding grounds move not to the same winter quarter but to far-distant ones – such as the Red-necked Phalarope.
This Monday, I went in a group of four to bird around the town of Atzimbo. In this very rainy year, there’s a whole lot of breeding going on.) So I kind of feel that I should not talk about which birds are best. And yet, I just can’t help myself. But this was clearly an immature bird.
Although parrots are generally assumed to have complex social groups, few studies have quantitatively examined these assumptions about parrot social structure. We critically assessed 4 assumptions about parrot socioecology using data from captive and wild groups of Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus). but not steep (,0.1).
But you can take solace in the results at the end of the breeding year, when loafing around the intertidal are a shiny new cohort of finely plumage grey youngsters, all ready to carry on Western Gull line into the future. This is quite a big deal for an island group that had no mammals save bats for millions of years.
Known breeding localities are now limited to only a few of the islands in the Caribbean including the Bahamas, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Antigua/Barbuda. Here is a short clip featuring a small group of birds from a roadside pan in central Jamaica… www.youtube.com/watch?
Specifically, the plight of the Rusty Blackbird , which has experienced the sharpest rate of decline among North American landbirds, according to the International Rusty Blackbird Working Group (IRBWG), and has a conservation status of Vulnerable. From March 1 through mid-June, birders in the Rusty’s range (38 U.S.
According to locals the bird has overwintered near Klamath Falls for the last 5 years…I wonder where it’s breeding? We were with a large group of people and we didn’t want to flush the bird so we kept our distance while we enjoyed, but what fun to look for this bird among the 500 other Bald Eagles in the area.
The boat had been chartered by a big group of Mumbai birders to see a Long-billed Dowitcher that would make a most unusual addition to an Indian list. It turns out that the dowitcher was showing so well that the group had had a whipround for the crew to encourage them to stay longer. This was its fourth year. Common Redshank.
The Dry Tortugas National Park is located some 70 miles off of Key West in a small group of keys that makes up the farthest points included in the state of Florida, so it was no surprise that we had a four hour boat ride ahead of us before landing in the park. Banding is best done in teams split into three, potentially four groups.
The non-breeding distribution is virtually unknown, although they are suspected to winter in northern South America (Howell and Web 1995). Until recently the vocalizations of Sinaloa Martin were unknown and known breeding sites are few and far between. Very little is known about this enigmatic species.
Another cool fact was learning that the Barn Swallows has started to breed in South America since the 80s. This is quite a remarkable fact if one thinks that this is the only (and first to do this) migratory bird to change its breeding and migratory habits. Swallows have migrated north to south along the Americas for millennia.
A group of Wattled Cranes in the Okavango Delta Wattled Cranes are the only African cranes with all-white necks, rendering them unmistakable in the field. They are not bound to wetlands the entire year and large groups of birds will disperse to dry grassland and savanna outside of the breeding season.
This is when we might see the greatest variety and numbers of wood-warblers, where we can watch dizzying groups of swallows zip through the skies as kettles of Turkey Vultures , and Broad-winged and Swainson’s Hawks flow towards South America. It picks up in September but the biggest numbers seem to pass through Costa Rica in October.
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