10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2022

Similar to the (fortunately now gradually changing) situation among humans in China, these birds seem to prefer males over females. So, I can only give you the sanitized version of the joke, in which humans have been replaced by birds. One, however, was potentially racist by today’s standards. A man sees some Black Swans.

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Australia Parrots Birds Memphis 147

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2022

According to the HBW, when breeding, male birds do most of the incubation and parenting while females often leave the nest up to one week before the eggs hatch. According to Couzens, after laying the eggs, females sometimes immediately abandon their first mate and pair up with another male. But maybe that is actually a good thing.

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Birds South Korea Japan Abandon 162

Animal Person

JULY 26, 2009

And then I read THE CHINA STUDY and was shocked to learn how unhealthy the Standard American Diet is--even cow's milk, which I thought I should be having three servings of per day! Who ever heard of a cupcake without eggs and butter in it? I recently watched Earthlings and cried the whole way through.

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Vegan Animal Rabbits Suffering 100

Animal Ethics

APRIL 11, 2008

," Andrew Revkin explores the brave new world of growing meat cultures in vitro as a more humane and possibly more environmentally friendly way of producing meat. In his post, Revkin cites Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University.

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Vegetarian Meat Meat Industry Vegan 40

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 5, 2023

I also only managed to see rather common bird species at Shennongjia, a nature reserve in Hubei province, China. In many Western markets, this is no longer a reliable income stream as the market has been flooded with birdhouses put up by well-meaning humans not realizing that this completely destroys the property market.

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China Eggs Birds Woodpeckers 250

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2023

The last time I birded Longcanggou, a national forest park in China’s Sichuan province, was in November 2021. Today, the national forest park is open to tourists – which in China means large groups of people in similarly large buses. Some individuals even rejected their own eggs when they were in the minority.

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Eggs China Mammals Birds 245

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Of course, it is hard to resist looking at a paper titled “Host personality predicts cuckoo egg rejection in Daurian redstarts” Basically, the personality of a female redstart (bold or shy) predicts the responses to parasitic eggs – bold hosts are more likely to reject parasitic eggs.

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Birds China Eggs Owls 272

10,000 Birds

APRIL 4, 2022

Once the egg has been laid, the female is chased away and the males hatch it.” ” This should make the bird somewhat unpopular with the socially rather conservative Chinese government – maybe the birds in China do not show this behavior in order to adapt to local customs?

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China Birds Pythons Breeding 264

10,000 Birds

MARCH 25, 2024

.” The website www.jwcpheasants.com seems to endorse polygamy for this species despite this being illegal in the USA for other animals such as humans. melliana from alleged contact zone(s) in northern Laos and possibly south-western China. The site states that in captivity, “two hens can be paired with one male.”

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Burma Vietnam Birds Laos 246

10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2024

Kind of an innocent version of tropical China, but I guess that is a rather naive view … Most birders coming here presumably do not have babblers as their main targets, even though there are quite a few species here, and some of them are quite attractive as well. My way of squeezing more blog posts out of my birding trips.

Vietnam 246

Vietnam Birds Woodpeckers Bangladesh 246

10,000 Birds

JUNE 23, 2022

The Blue Whistling Thrush is presumably named for its loud human-like whistling, and possibly for being blue. While it is listed as Least Concern, it is rare in China – the range map in the HBW barely touches Chinese territory. “It is not deep enough yet! The White-cheeked Partridge is classified as Near Threatened.

Myanmar 147

Myanmar Birds China Chicago 147

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2023

In the slightly frighteningly named journal “Science of The Total Environment”, there is a paper on organochlorine compounds in Purple Heron eggs nesting in sites located around a chloralkali plant (Ebro River). Summary result: relevant chemicals emitted by the plant can be found in the eggs. Bye, bye, Lesser Coucal.

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Birds Eggs Breeders McDonalds 130

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 19, 2011

qn Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China Runner-up: The Bald Eagle that swooped around over the Big Gay Race in Minneapolis in October, which I didn’t get a picture of. On Seymour Island, my group witnessed a very human-like interaction amongst three boobies , one female and two males.

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2011 Birds South Korea North Dakota 233

10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2021

One Oriental Pratincole of them was courageously raising its wings when I unknowingly drove towards its eggs – I reversed, but I am not so sure about the next person using that road … Being yelled at by the chick of an Oriental Pratincole. I guess looking elegant during sex is difficult for most humans, too.

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Uganda Birds Breeding Rats 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 18, 2022

Oh, and maybe humans need to be a bit less destructive to your habitat, too. On the other hand, for every disturbed Nanhui, there are probably at least 10 coastal places in China that are completely undisturbed, so it all evens out. No wonder that Oriental Pratincoles generally encourage humans to eat more beef.

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Cattle Portugal Buffalo Alaska 147

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 29, 2022

The Sacred Ibis was seen as the incarnation of the god Thoth, who (with gods apparently better at multitasking than humans) was (or maybe still is, who knows?) ” Somebody should have warned the poor kites not to copy everything that humans do. Nice to encounter a quail that is not as shy as the ones here in China!

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Australia Birds Sheep Zebras 147

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Similar to the situation among humans, among Grey-capped Greenfinches , “high-quality individuals prefer to mate with each other” ( source ). The Light-vented Bulbul used to be restricted to Southern China but has expanded its range in the past few decades. Eurasian Bitterns similarly try to stay out of sight.

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China Birds Ukraine Killing 244

10,000 Birds

MAY 15, 2023

I visited Tengchong in late 2020 and wrote about it – but I also went there earlier, in 2017, and this post shows some photos I took during that trip, along with the usual comments that seem to be much more about ridiculing my fellow humans (especially ornithologists and the like) than providing useful information on birds.

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China 2017 Birds Indonesia 257

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2023

Indeed, most cuckoo eggs are accepted by the babax ( source ), although a small proportion of hosts reject cuckoo eggs and often boast about this capability when having a few too many drinks. He spent the years from 1836 to 1858 in Asia, first in Indonesia, then in China, partly as the consul of the city of Hamburg in China.

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Hamburgers China Science Birds 246

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2023

One interesting paper argues that contrary to what might seem logical, cuckoos do not aim to lay eggs specifically into the nests of those parrotbills whose egg color and pattern match their own. The rationale includes the speed of the laying (too fast to check for color matches) and the low number of egg-laying attempts (i.e.,

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Pandas Eggs Birds China 263

10,000 Birds

JUNE 26, 2018

The Zoo episode focuses on two Pink Pigeon couples: The Stud and Serendipity, a male and female that the zoo people hope will mate and produce a viable egg, and Thelma and Louise, a same-sex pair-bonded couple who the zoo people hope will incubate the egg and nurture the chick. Because, Ms. On the WCS web page, Ms.

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Mauritius Stud Zoos Eggs 133

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 30, 2023

Anyway, one of the babblers of Sepilok is the Bornean Black-capped Babbler – the result of a split of the Black-capped Babbler (well, at least from a human perspective – the birds themselves are probably quite nonchalant about it). Fortunately, barbets are fairly common in Yunnan, China, so it was not a particular disappointment.

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Woodpeckers Birds Eggs India 246

10,000 Birds

MAY 1, 2023

To be honest, both the robin and the flycatchers shown above remind me of the easter eggs I hunted for as a child – the same strong colors in front of a green background, same time of the year (feel free to insert your own Proust Madeleine reference here) … Bluethroats apparently are good at imitating other birds.

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Monkeys Birds South Korea Owls 147

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 29, 2024

Of course, the same applies to pizza services for humans. As usual in China, there are some anonymous Leaf Warbler species – but who cares, apart from Bella of Alpinebirding ? While the HBW claims that the Rufous-gorgeted Flycatcher is uncommon in China, this probably does not apply to this part of Yunnan.

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Squirrels Birds China Bears 204

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Fortunately for the buntings, they seem to detect most cuckoo eggs smuggled in (75% in one study). A study found that for Plain Prinia , egg characteristics in a mainland China location with many cuckoos make it much easier to spot cuckoo eggs than in a Taiwan location with few cuckoos ( source ). Better safe than sorry.

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Eggs Birds Bangladesh China 264

10,000 Birds

JUNE 8, 2023

One study in Korea found that 37% of injuries and deaths were caused by predation by natural enemies, another 37% (a worryingly high number) by window strikes, 10% by traffic accidents, 7% each by flooding and dehydration, and 3% by human disturbance. I wonder what Barn Swallows did before humans started building houses.

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China Tenant Pakistan Birds 130