Bird Population and Feral Cats
There are more than 90 million pet cats in the U.S. learn about their effect on the bird population.
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May 2024
Birds Named After People
It is considered the height of arrogance, and now against the rules of nomenclature, for the discoverer of a species to name the organism after his or herself, but many species have been named in honor of others, such as Baird’s Sandpiper, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Bouganvilla. Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823 -1887) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, ichthyologist, herpetologist, and
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Bird Names
There are a number of species of birds with widespread distributions such as the Peregrine Falcon, Mallard, and European Starling. Each has a designated scientific name, but all of the nearly 11,000 species of birds have an official common English name as well, as established by the International Ornithological Committee. So for every English-speaking country
Cabinets of Curiosities
Museums did not come about as we know them, places for education, study, and research, until the late 19th century. Before museums, wealthy individuals made their own collections, sometimes in the form of “cabinets of curiosities,” which came about in the sixteenth century. They were not actually cabinets but rooms with a plethora of natural
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Birds and the Eclipse
On April 8, 2024, there was an eclipse. On average, there are total eclipses of the sun every 18 months, so every two or three years. In this century, there will be 224 eclipses, 68 of them in total. Some people are so fascinated by the phenomenon that they travel the world to see each
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Mimics of the Bird World
There are lots of examples of birds looking like other things in order to avoid or frighten away predators. Many nightjars (Order Caprimulgiformes) look like leaf litter, bark or leaves. The Brown Creeper blends in with the tree trunks it climbs. The winter plumage Willow Ptarmigan is all white to blend into their snowy landscape.
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AI and Birdwatching
There’s a new development in AI and this one pertains to birds. Swarovski is coming out with Optik Ax Visio smart binoculars – the world’s first AI-supported binoculars that claim to help you identify 9000 species of birds as well as other animals. I haven’t used them so I can’t speak from personal experience and
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Avian Coprophagy
The strange title is simply a euphemism for “birds eating poop.” You are familiar with bird poop as that white stuff deposited on car side view mirrors, pool decks, and window ledges, but new research reported in the National Library of Medicine provides a different way to look at it. Just as in our gut,
Intuitive Birdwatching
Throughout my biological education and career, identification “keys” were very handy. Called “dichotomous” keys because they typically branch in two, they look like an upside-down tree with many branches. Identifying bird specimens in the hand with a key is pretty simple. The first choice might ask whether the bill is straight or curved. If it
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