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Photo Essay: Green-rumped Parrotlets from Egg to Adult

10,000 Birds

Green-rumped Parrotlets: from egg to adult Text and photographs copyright Nick Sly (except Rae Okawa where indicated) and are used with his permission. Getting intimate with a species over the course of the breeding cycle is one of the more rewarding aspects of birding, and field research too.

Eggs 269
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Egg Dumping by the Seaside

10,000 Birds

13 different seabird species, chief among them Common Eider and (Eurasian) Oystercatcher , stand accused of egg dumping or laying their eggs in other birds’ nests. Actually, the act seems less nefarious than oblivious since most incidents place eggs in the nests of predators!

Eggs 178
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Banded Semipalmated Sandpipers at Big Egg Marsh, Queens, New York

10,000 Birds

One of my regular stops in late May and early June is Big Egg Marsh, a wonderful salt marsh just a short distance south of the much-more-famous Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. It is a great spot for Horseshoe Crabs to spawn and lay eggs so it is no wonder that shorebirds congregate to eat those eggs. Eh, Semipalmated Sandpipers.

Eggs 183
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Grallards: New Zealand’s Next Extinction or Newest Species?

10,000 Birds

The obvious choice was the Mallard , that plucky familiar northern hemisphere species that is the father of the even more familiar domesticated duck. In fact, as the species was quickly identified as as creating hybrids with Grey Ducks, the opinion was by the 1920s that the species shouldn’t be released further.

Species 203
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Birding the Datang area, Yunnan

10,000 Birds

Somewhat strangely, the HBW calls it a “small grey to yellow babbler” – while the species indeed has some grey parts, that is not the color that sticks to mind when seeing or remembering the bird. Plus the sibia apparently plays an important role in the pollination of one endangered rhododendron species ( source ).

Eggs 246
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Into the Nest: A Book Review in the Time of Nesting

10,000 Birds

And of eggs and nests and birds on nests. Into the Nest , as the title says, is about the courting, mating, egg-laying, nesting, and parenting behavior of “familiar birds”. Some chapters focus on one species (Yellow Warbler), some on several related species (Chickadees and Nuthatches). And of birds courting and mating.

Eggs 263
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Avian squatters at the end of Europe

10,000 Birds

The Cuckoo Cuculus canorus has a bad reputation because of its habit of laying its eggs on the nests of other birds, who then raise their young. The White-rumped Swift Apus caffer , a tropical African breeding species, was only discovered breeding in Europe in the 1960s. The confusion was understandable. White-rumped Swift in flight.

Europe 299