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The Common Raven , sometimes called the Northern Raven , is an amazing bird. Largest of the passerines, or perching birds, it has long been noticed, loved, and reviled for its size, its smarts, its je ne sais quoi. The raven makes an appearance in essentially every mythology that sprung up in its range from Christianity to the tales of trickster gods common among indigenous Americans of the Pacific Norhwest.
I was going to change Animal Person to Vegan Atheist 40+ Parenting and come back to blogging. Doesn't have a ring to it at all, but a young man at Whole Foods yesterday called himself an "animal person" while ordering a roast beef wrap and I thought: Note to self-must change blog name if going to resume blogging. Hal Herzog writes about how many people who say they are vegetarians will also say they ate meat within the last 24 hours.
As you may know, cats are known to live very long lives….21 years or more! Wow! And while many owners may know the calendar age of their cat, many aren’t as in tune to how old their cat really feels. The new Science Diet CatAge Quiz gives people the opportunity to determine the true age of their pet and provides tips on ways to easily help them retain their youthful vigor.
The Indian government has decided to add bulls to the list of animals protected from entertainment uses. This prevents them from being exploited in Goa, an Indian state that had considered reviving the tradition. (Goa was once part of the Portuguese empire which is where the bullfighting ridiculousness comes from.as a Portuguese-American, I can say that.
We have next to consider who the "all'' are, whose happiness is to be taken into account. Are we to extend our concern to all the beings capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct? or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former view is the one adopted by Bentham and Mill, and (I believe) by the Utilitarian school generally: and is obviously most in accordance with the universality that is characteristic of their principle.
Imagine you study history. You and your colleagues are experts on the history of France, Poland, Spain, all those European countries. And one of the things you do is to study old documents, and you have this old book, this very very old book, that chronicles the life and times of some historic people in some historic period, but you don’t know exactly when it is from or where it was written.
Bald Eagle image is by Francois Portmann and is used with permission You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole dustup over hunting cranes in Tennessee and now Kentucky. And my thinking has come around 180 degrees from where it was. I get it now, I really do. I think it’s time to hunt Sandhill Cranes. And while we’re at it, I think it’s time to open a limited season on Bald Eagles.
Bald Eagle image is by Francois Portmann and is used with permission You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole dustup over hunting cranes in Tennessee and now Kentucky. And my thinking has come around 180 degrees from where it was. I get it now, I really do. I think it’s time to hunt Sandhill Cranes. And while we’re at it, I think it’s time to open a limited season on Bald Eagles.
After dipping on an extremely rare bird twice in two days I decided to further punish myself yesterday morning by once again braving New York City traffic on the trip from Forest Hills in Queens to Brooklyn’s famed Coney Island. To add an extra level of difficulty I brought Desi along with me for the twitch, both because he needed to get some fresh air and because an array of social service agencies look askance at anyone who leaves a twenty-month-old home alone.
Besides the avian attributes of flight, feathers and laying eggs, potoos are quite possibly the most unbird-like birds in the world. Sometimes called “Poor-me-ones&# on account of their haunting calls, these bizarre denizens of the night come in 7 different flavors from the family Nyctibiidae within the order Caprimulgiformes. 10,000 Birds writers have previously featured 2 of the 7 species (Renato’s post on Rufous Potoo and Corey’s post on Great Potoo ) and now you’ll m
The California Quail ( Callipepla californica ) is the California state bird, inhabiting scrub, broken chaparral and woodland edges primarily in California, Oregon, Washington and Baja California. They are part of a family of New World Quail which includes Gambel’s, Mountain, Scaled and Montezuma Quail, as well as the Northern Bobwhite. All New World Quail are highly gregarious, typically found in coveys or flocks except during breeding season.
One of the birds that birders visiting the Pacific Northwest most want to see is, of course, the Northwestern Crow , otherwise known as Corvus caurinus. Slightly smaller on average than its American Crow kin, with a voice that David Sibley describes as “slightly lower-pitched and hoarser&# though he also points out that the “ American Crow from Pacific region sounds distinctly lower and hoarser than eastern birds.&# Sibley is also careful to say that the Northwestern Crow is not id
Birding the High Andes is no joke. If, like me, you have trouble breathing at sea level, consider bringing an oxygen tank. Florida, where I currently live, is many things. But high is not one of them unless you’re referring to a large percentage of the population. So, having been to Ecuador before, I knew that a few days in Quito and surrounds would be good for the old lungs before embarking on our quest for Seedsnipe.
My friend Lorraine is awesome. Her nickname is Fabulous Lorraine. She’s not really a birder, but having been friends with me she knows that they are there, watches some ( Red-bellied Woodpeckers are her favorite) and will even drink shade-grown coffee because she knows it’s good for migratory birds. Photo courtesy Kimm Schroeder She also has some serious cats.
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So, in the face of my inevitable return to the mountain strongholds of Missoula, I now have one bird that I can count on being with me, country or city. Any habitat, any season, any continent, any time. Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus By Su Houston at Venus Modern Body Arts, NY, NY. a.
Doi Inthanon National Park in northern Thailand is a birding paradise (IMHO). I only got to spend a couple of days there, but the altitudinal range - and corresponding habitat and bird assemblage variation - really touched me. We were visiting Doi Inthanon with Jan and Tu - two of Thailands most extraordinary birders (great people and wonderfully knowledgeable guides) - and as any birding tourist knows: the depths of the birding and peripheral experience is made all the greater by great company.
Dave Magpiong is a birder, father, Special Education teacher, and founder of the Fledging Birders Institute , “a non-profit environmental education organization with the dual mission of enhancing the healthy development of our youth with the profound benefits of birdwatching AND promoting public awareness of avian diversity and factors which threaten it thereby fostering a societal bird conservation ethic.&# He also is organizing the Focus on Diversity: Changing the Face of American Birdi
A panel of the Iowa legislature decided to ignore common sense, wildlife professionals, and Iowa’s own Natural Resources Commission and allow lead shot to be used for the new Mourning Dove hunting season. This decision is just plain dumb. Hat-tip to John. a.
Cliff Swallows ( Petrochelidon pyrrhonota ) nest in large colonies that may contain as many as 3,500 active gourd-shaped mud nests. They are currently heading south on their yearly migration to South America where they will winter, and during this migration, they can often be seen in large flocks with other swallows numbering in the hundreds or even thousands.
The ducks landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota in May and June where they were found dead. The so-called reserve pits are used during oil and gas drilling operations. Once a well is completed, companies are required to clean up the pit, and it must be covered with netting if it’s open for more than 90 days. None of the pits referenced in the charges were netted, but it’s unclear how many of them were open beyond three months, documents show.
The Olympic Peninsula is known for a host of endemic creatures, including some mammals like the Roosevelt Elk. One creature that I almost overlooked as just another chipmunk is the Olympic Chipmunk , known to scientists and Latin enthusiasts as Tamias amoenus caurinus , a subspecies of the Yellow-pine Chipmunk Tamias amoenus. In Olympic National Park the Olympic Chipmunk is “most common in the park’s subalpine zone where the forests blend into meadows.
Here I am, back from my first ever visit to the Pacific Northwest. We had a blast, the family and I, and experienced some amazing natural places, to say nothing of the fine city of Seattle. To go by the numbers, I saw 79 species of bird while in Washington (150 county ticks), 21 of which were year birds and 8 of which were lifers. We traveled from sea level to mountain ranges, port towns to wilderness areas, industrial wastelands to manicured parks.
I was worried that I may not have a post for this weekend until I noted Corey’s submission about the Gray-hooded Gull at Coney Island, New York. The ABA is still considering its response to the gull and its provenance, but more to the point, Jochen has called its pedigree into question by asserting that it is a Ring-billed Gull x Black-headed Gull hybrid.
The Seattle Seahawks are, of course, a professional (American) football team, known as much for the inability to win it all as for anything else. Their one Super Bowl appearance, in Super Bowl XL, ended in a 21-10 drubbing by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Fortunately for Seattleites there is another kind of seahawk that can be found within the limits of the Emerald City.
Like most birders in the path of Hurricane Irene I couldn’t wait for the storm to arrive and pass because I couldn’t wait to get out searching for birds driven north and to land by the powerful wind. Neither having to spend a day reading about the terns that showed in North Carolina on Saturday nor studying my Sibley helped me tamp down the eager anticipation I felt.
I love puffins. Before my trip to Washington the only species of puffin I had ever seen in the wild was the puffin of the Atlantic Ocean, the appropriately named Atlantic Puffin. I had high hopes, however, of adding Tufted Puffin to my life list provided I could overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to accomplish this near impossible goal.
Quiz 3. Good day to you, my fine fellow birders. How is your August progressing? As you read this, I am riding my trusty Grizzly Bear through the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, helping my colleague Seagull Steve find some new birds. Birding by bear is by far the best way to view the park, although it seems to terrify the hoofed animals. Various European tourists have taken to calling me “Beastmaster&#.
While eating the nests of swifts is nothing new, the large-scale production of these nests is. Already a $200 million a year industry largely concentrated in Malaysia and Thailand, the farming of swifts is now being ramped up in Vietnam. Because they will rebuild the nests made of their own saliva when they are taken, and because they are worth more alive and building nests than they are dead, the practice does not harm the swifts and gives a positive economic incentive to conserve them.
This comes from BirdLife Cyprus’ research officer Mike Miltiadou, and shared by Melpo Apostolidou: Waterbirds that bred on the island this year. Kentish Plover / Credit: Jane Stylianou It’s just the thing that I thought birders from outside of Cyprus would want to hear that I had to share it in full: BirdLife Cyprus conducts yearly waterbird breeding counts.
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