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Shearwater Chase in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

I strained to see them, could only see an occasional booby escape our bow, watch some of the hundreds of Wedge-tailed and Pink-footed Shearwaters zip by and hold on as our boat tested its speed. As we approached and drew nearly alongside the small seabirds, we also tested the limits of our optics, our balance, and our focus.

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Saving the Drowning Cormorant, or the Kerkini Lake, Greece

10,000 Birds

Several Ferruginous Duck and one surprising male Goosander , four Glossy Ibises , Common Kingfishers , Eurasian Hopooes , a high note of a Penduline Tit somewhere from the willows along the canal, Eurasian Spoonbills , European Turtle Doves gently purrring …. Five years ago, I observed Dalmatian Pelicans breeding on purpose-built platforms.

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How The Bird Got Its Beak

10,000 Birds

Most likely, the researchers have indicated, the hatched birds would be viable and not too different from regular chickens, possibly less different than some of the odd breeds generated by more traditional methods. In order to test the mechanism, we used inhibitors of both pathways to replicate in chicken the ancestral amniote expression.

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Urban Ornithology: 150 Years of Birds in New York City–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

The authors’ detailed delineation of problems with the accuracy of NYC breeding bird surveys or with the limits of historical writings may test a reader’s patience. Because, as this book demonstrates so well, it is sometimes important to look back in order to move forward. It’s a very mixed chapter.

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I and the Bird: What is a Vulture?

10,000 Birds

New World Vultures are their own family, Cathartidae, that has moved around a bit with the proliferation of genetic testing such that for a while they were thought to be allied with storks, but is now pretty well within, but not too within, the other diurnal raptors. Hooded Vultures , photo by Adam Riley. Black Vulture, Coragyps atratus.

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Best* Bird Books, Binoculars, Bottles** of Booze, and Backpacks of the Bygone Year

10,000 Birds

Of the dozen gifts mentioned in the Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” seven are birds: the seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and – of course – a partridge in a pear tree. Donna). ==. Donna). ==. But craziness is not a requisite.

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