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High level negotiations

10,000 Birds

To make things even better, a family member I had not yet met (after close to four decades of marriage) joined us. Just the other day we had an extensive lunch with my Mozambican in-laws. The reminiscing started.

Portugal 210
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Our Favorite Bird Books (and one pair of Binoculars) of 2022

10,000 Birds

Lees and Gilroy delineate vagrancy status and trends for every bird family worldwide, highlighting examples, synthesizing research, and framing it all with their own thoughts and conclusions. It’s a unique title; twitchers and naturalists interested in migration will find it fascinating reading and valuable for future reference.

Sri Lanka 223
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What is a Palm-thrush?

10,000 Birds

It all comes back to a split in one of the great bird families, the Turdidae, or thrushes. Once upon a time, when I started birding, this great family included a wide range of species collectively known as the robins and chats. The family reunited in safety. Collared Palm-thrush with no collar visible. They remain little know.

Zambia 163
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Tembe Elephant Park, South Africa

10,000 Birds

It was founded as a safe place for refugees from the Mozambique Civil War , which ran from 1977 to 1992. It is a good place for South African birders, as several species are found here and nowhere else in South Africa, and it holds a small number of endemics that it shares with the Mozambique lowlands.

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Pink in Africa

10,000 Birds

This species is a southern African endemic, restricted to, but fortunately not uncommon, in dry woodland and sand forest habitats of northern Zululand, Swaziland, scattered pockets of north-eastern South Africa and southern Mozambique. Once their soft trilling call is learnt, they are easily detected.

Africa 207
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Landfill by Tim Dee: Review

10,000 Birds

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.”. Claire didn’t stopped there, but repeated the same kind of rediscovery after the war in Mozambique.

Angola 183
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KwaZulu-Natal

10,000 Birds

The famous Verreaux family who made several expeditions into the province through the 1820’s and 1830’s procuring specimens for rich collectors. Gurney’s Sugarbird was discovered by the Verreaux family and named after wealthy English banker and amateur naturalist John Gurney from Norwich. Image by Hugh Chittenden.