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Not that I don’t enjoy seeing new species myself, it’s just that they are an easy target and I am nothing if not lazy and mean spirited. But there is one kind of tick that I genuinely do enjoy, and as I do more and more birding it becomes harder and harder to get; new families.
The wonderful family Meropidae contains 27 dazzling species, of which Africa is endowed with no less than 20 species, the balance occurring across Asia and with one as far afield as Australia. We have both resident and migratory species, and this post will briefly discuss each of the 20 species of African bee-eaters.
I can’t honestly remember what the current Russian Doll arrangement is for the skuas, gulls, terns and skimmers, so they are either their own family or a type of skua, gull or tern. So go to Queen Elizabeth National Park and tick this tricky species (I actually have no idea how seasonal this species is here).
And apart from local people, primate researchers sometimes spot it, but it is a species seen by fewer than ten living birders. Madagascar, however, is beyond the reach of this book, notwithstanding its also being part of the Afrotropical region.” He has authored several other books and many articles, largely on natural history.
True geese belong to the tribe or sub-family Anserini within the larger family Anatidae that encompasses ducks, geese and swans. And the Magpie Geese of the same country are believed to be neither ducks nor geese nor swans and are now placed within their own family Anseranatidae.
And now we enter into a family of birds more or less unknown to non-birders. And truth told, over the years they’ve been something of a square peg for ornithologists too, not fitting precisely into any of the known families of birds. I would never have believed it, but if the science says so who am I to argue otherwise?
Of course Africa could not to be left out of the pink weekend so I have researched all African species whose official or alternative names include the word “pink”. Its mostly found on the ground in thickets or the edges of dense vegetation and usually in small family parties. Another not very pink species is the Pink-footed Puffback.
Or, one of the 145 species of Glass frogs living in the Cental and South American rainforests, I could look through the transparent skin on their undersides and see their internal organs. All species of frogs and toads share the fact that they are amphibian creatures, they have two types of skin gland, four legs, and, well, they jump.
Africa has more than its fair share of storks, with 8 of the world’s 19 species gracing the continent. Furthermore we have another very special stork-like bird, the regal Shoebill , previously known as the Whale-headed Stork but now placed in its own family. Its range also extends to nearby Madagascar.
The broadbills are always a family* that birders visiting South East Asia want to see, and who could blame them? I’m not sure if they are as difficult a family to spot in the wild, but I certainly have had little luck with them in the past. This isn’t even the prettiest species they have!
Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. One species alive today offers a glimpse of such behavior: the Nicobar Pigeon ( Caloenas nicobarica ). .’s
I actually have many targets, in a way, a I want to see lots and lots, but there is one species that the reason that the trip is even happening, the animal that has been pretty much the top of my animal bucket list for well over a decade. It’s a species that has bedeviled and bewitched me over the years. The African Wild Dog.
Getting to know the subtleties in differences between closely related species takes years of dedication and practice. Thirdly, many species of shorebirds display such vast differences in their summer and winter plumages that it is always interesting to note how some birds in the same flock are in contrasting stages of plumage.
The Peterson Reference Guide to Seawatching offers two types of information: Species Accounts–descriptions of 112 birds within 15 families as they appear over and on the water, and Where to Watch, brief descriptions of 47 sites on the North American eastern coast and interior recommended for seawatching. No rails or gallinules.
In one of the first of Dee’s observations about gullers he calls them: “men leaving their homes and their families to spend time peering at arsey birds in some of the arseholes of the world.”. At some stage, in the darkness with Claire and Callan, Tim Dee was stalking a nightjar in Madagascar.
The countryside too is full of signature European species like European Bee-eaters, European Rollers and Great-spotted Cuckoos … Within a shortish drive of the lodge is an unusual birding spot called Pulo do Lobo or The wolf’s Leap. This is worthwhile to pick up some rocky terrain species and the scenery is stunning.
1300kms off the coast of East Africa and over 1000kms NE from Madagascar is a tiny speck in the ocean. They are all recognisable from their families in Africa and are simply referred to by prefixing with “Seychelles” With most species being the only representative of their family, it made identification easy.
Some entire family groups are unique to the region, this holds true for the genus Cinclocerthia – tremblers. Comprising two species, these mimids are as full of charisma as many of the more familiar mockingbirds, catbirds, and thrashers. Yet, both species are not known to coexist on the same island.
On the grounds, Punta Cana has preserved a 1,500 acre Ecological Park that is an excellent place to view the local endemic bird species and enjoy nature. Tags: Dominican Republic , Worldwide Birding Adventures • Camping tents - Check out our pop up tents , family tents , and more!
Bad developments indeed, particularly as the White-backed Vulture was found to be a good avian biomonitor species – if it does badly, most likely the environment as a whole will do badly, too. I could immediately tell them it was an Egyptian Goose – an invasive species in Germany but not at Kruger.
Birds of Kruger National Park covers the 259 species most frequently seen in the park, about half of the total number of birds documented there. This still leaves the user flipping through sections, looking for the species in question, though I don’t think there are many species with this habitat overlap.
The IOC world birdlist recognizes 90 species that bear the name “weaver” or “malimbe” Not all of these are true weavers as we will discuss below. There are currently 64 recognized species in this genus, a remarkable number indeed, and this includes the 5 Asian and 2 Malagasy species.
One such controversial bird is the Veraguan Mango , a small hummingbird species that was, until very recently, believed to be a Panamanian endemic. Veraguan Mango by Carlos Bethancourt Although the Neotropical region supports fewer bird families than Africa, there are considerably more bird species here than anywhere else on earth.
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. Take the Scaly-crowned Babbler , with its chestnut crown.
It’s actually a member of the family Artamidae, which includes the woodswallows (not actually swallows), the butcherbirds (not actually shrikes) and the peltops (which actually are peltops, since there are no others). The Australian Magpie is not actually a magpie, a fairly common state of affairs for birds from the colonies.
I have thoroughly explored vast parts of the continent as well as neighboring Madagascar, in the process seeing over 2,000 birds on the continent and all but one Malagasy endemic. Approximately 2,300 bird species inhabit Africa, however as impressive as that sounds, much smaller South America boasts nearly 1,000 species more.
As usual, birds seem to like these off-the-way places best – eBird lists 337 species based on a little more than just 100 checklists. While the HBW describes the bulbul family as “often rather plain”, I find them usually quite attractive, though in an understated way that may not appeal to the flashiness-seeking HBW authors.
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