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Whale-watching! This may come as somewhat of a surprise to those who don’t know about it but the waters just off of Queens can apparently be pretty good for whales at the right time of year. As we headed east we stayed within several hundred yards of shore which seemed odd for a boat looking for whales. More whales!
Whales are cows. Fortunately for we humans, placing primates properly phylogenetically in relation to the other mammals requires an act or two of faith at the deeper ends of the family tree, but it is probably true that primates and rodents share a common stock to the exclusion of others, so maybe we are all mice. Cows do not.
Despite depicting 540 species/56 families, it is a lightweight book of 173 pages, easy to pack and carry. Larger species, that is, excluding dolphins and whales. Beside India, Lynx Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of South Asia covers Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. monkeys, deer, gazelles, etc.).
The list kinds crystalized during my first big trip, on which I knocked off my two big targets (the manta ray and whale shark) but since then beyond seeing an antelope (and then many other different kinds), it hasn’t budged much at all. A beaked whale. Any beaked whale. Hammerhead shark.
But while one a whale-watching trip with his family on Saturday and seeing only Herring Gulls at the back of the boat for a good half-hour, he heard Desi, his four-and-a-half-year-old son, pipe up with “There’s a Laughing Gull ! I was pleasantly surprised at the prevalence of American Redstarts in those woods.
In other words, you can’t say something like, “humans, gorillas, chimps, and bonobos are all in the same family and equally related to each other.” For example, “the Ungulata include hooved animals with multi-chambered stomachs, except the whales.”. That was useful, and it is still useful, even if there are often major exceptions.
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. This colossal bird is now placed in its own family Balaenicipitidae and it forms an ancient link between storks and pelicans.
This relatively new technique has been used to study relationships among and within several groups of mammals, including lagamorphs (rabbits and hares), rodents, and cetaceans (whales and dolphins), but I couldn’t find many references to its application in avian systematics yet.
A little longer than its predecessor (by eight pages to be exact), the East Coast guide is your handy dandy, pocket-sized, all-in-one guide to the seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles, fish, and other creatures you are likely to encounter on pelagics or whale watching trips, from Bar Harbor, Maine to Ponce de Leon Inlet, Florida.
So much so that the two species are placed within their own family, Chaetopidae. And from July through to December one can sit and watch Cape Rockjumpers, whilst a dozen or so Southern Right Whales propel their massive bodies clean out of the water, then belly-flopping with thunderous amounts of spray.
That’s right, I, along with my family and some really good friends, was camping. But my favorite sighting of the weekend was a whole family of Eastern Phoebes , four fledglings and at least one adult, that I found hanging around a small patch of trees and brush near the beach. You’ll remember Javi from whale-watching.
Do whales deserve constitutional protection against slavery? PETA went on to request that the whales be freed and released to a habitat better suited to their needs. Well, it's still historic and precedent-setting. Here's hoping we see more of these legal challenges. Full story posted on Global Animal and from the Huffington Post.
Artists rendition of Inkayacu paracasensis There are 17 living species of penguins, which make up their own Linnean family (Spheniscidae), which is the only family in the order Sphenisciformes. They eat only seafood, including fish, squid, krill and other organisms. Salas-Gismondi, R., Altamirano, A., Shawkey, M., D’Alba, L.,
Big Miracle is a film inspired by the true story of a small town news reporter (played by John Krasinski) and an animal-loving volunteer (played by Drew Barrymore) who are joined by rival world superpowers to save a family of majestic gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. Whale Plush.
In August, we took a family trip to beautiful San Diego, seeing SeaWorld , LegoLand , and the San Diego Zoo. On August 13, 2022, I woke up early, snuck out of the hotel room without waking the rest of the family, and was at Seaforth Landing on Mission Bay by 7:00 a.m. This was much larger.
Having flown to Washington State on a family vacation the first obstacle was easily out of the way, which you knew already if you ever read this blog. There was no pretending this was a whale-watching trip, a ruse that is growing stale anyway. when the puffin flew past, a bird that the whole family can appreciate.
People ascribe near mythic status to the members of the family Delphinidae (and other related families). Even people with no other interest in wildlife, who couldn’t tell a sparrow from an ostrich (or even a dolphin from a fish) love dolphins. Which has always mystified me slightly.
Nice. ((** all names have been changed to protect identities and have been substituted with (almost) randomly chosen substitutes suitable for a family of Alpine Accentors.)) Dale studied scarlet macaws, and worked in their conservation, for three years in southern Costa Rica, followed by a year in the Caribbean working on Whale Sharks.
In California I smelt the breath a Blue Whale as it passed feet beneath my boat. Ugandan Mangabeys were part of my family once. In Belize I cruised above reefs few people had ever seen. You may not get the species counts that the race delivers, but you’ll have memories burned into your skull.
It is acceptable to point out other sea creatures–dolphins or whales or dragonflies–but the main goal is the observation and identification of the birds. Not all of the group introductions go into this much depth, but they all provide clues for separating out that specific family from other possibilities.
Elephants, whales, hippopotamuses, giraffes, and alligators use low-frequency sounds to communicate over long distances, often miles; and bats, dolphins, whales, frogs, and various rodents use high-frequency sounds to find food, communicate with others, and navigate. A Grateful Whale.
Large areas of the islands are taken over as the breeding grounds of the Western Gull , a large bird that is without question the most ornery member of the family I have ever encountered. A great place to watch whales and pelagic seabirds. And it isn’t just on the ground or an occasional accidental hazard. Note about images.
If you aren’t the one driving it’s worth keeping an eye out for Southern Right Whales wintering in the bay (the road is rather to twisty to be looking if you’re driving). The coastal road from the suburbs is spectacular, winding along hills overlooking the bay through fynbos (the endemic scrubland).
We had a family picnic at Fort Tilden less than two weeks after my last set of predictions and a single Purple Martin was flying low over the fields with Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows. Cory’s Shearwater – 06 Oct 2013 – Going on a whale-watching trip with my family really paid off. Number 300 in Queens!
I took a gamble and got the family out on a (socially-distanced) whale-watching boat on the 12th and was rewarded, finally, with my Queens Great Shearwater ! At the end of summer we took a family trip to Cape Cod and on the way home a Black-throated Gray Warbler was reported at Jamaica Bay on 4 September. Two-for-two!
I started the year in Florida, traveled to India with the ABA in February, combined family and birding in an August trip to California, and in-between saw very good birds in New York and New Jersey. I tested the waters before my California pelagic, with a brief Atlantic Ocean voyage, a whale watching trip from Montauk, N.Y.
Birds arrive, and immediately start the business of breeding, so they can raise a family and be gone before winter arrives. Birds like American Coots and Long-eared Owls in Arviat, to Bald Eagles in Whale Cove. The first migrants arrive in a trickle and then in June everything seems to appear.
I come from a family where the worse the situation, the faster and more furiously the wisecracks fly, so I suppose I’m hardwired to look for humor. The book is darkly funny. Why did you decide it was important to find humor in Luna’s experience? I can’t write stories that are unrelentingly grim. I just can’t take it.
Another native bird that quickly showed itself to me in the capital was the Polynesian Triller , a member of the cuckoo-shrike family. The hotel we stayed on was on the shore, from which you could watching passing seabirds, including serene White Terns , as well as summering Humpback Whales!
I’ve been on a whale-watching trip in Orange County , twice gone out to Santa Cruz Island , and even visited Protection Island off the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. So you can imagine my great pleasure when it worked out for me to stay in California for two extra days at the end of our family vacation out west.
Chacachacare was also the site of a US Army base, a leper colony, and before that, a whaling station. Making ourselves comfortable on a small ridge overlooking the salt ponds, we had our sandwiches as we enjoyed views of a Northern Waterthrush and a small family of Bicolored Conebills working the vegetation. Northern Scrub Flycatcher.
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