Category: Birding
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Dancing for Sex in the Rainforest
Though advertising for sex often results in a jail sentence in most areas of the United States, these advertisements are highly conspicuous and visible daily in the animal world. You may not often think about it, but sexual innuendo is all around you. If you are one of many who glance up from the morning…
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Antbird Aggregations: The Dynamics of Foraging Formicarids
Note: The following is a write-up I did for the February 1998 Song Sparrow, a publication of Columbus Audubon, as part of a series I authored on tropical ecology. It is based on a term paper I wrote for an animal behavior class at Ohio State. The original term paper (“Dominance Hierarchies in Foraging Antbirds”),…
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On Jinx Birds and the Great Snowy Owl and Bighorn Sheep Conspiracy
Most birders are familiar with the concept of a “jinx bird”. A jinx bird is a species that you have made repeated efforts, often over many years, to see. It is one where you have shown up repeatedly at locations where the species has been reported, and it has always just left the area right…
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A Sense of Place: Ohio and the Mohican 100
As I write this, I am sitting on Southwest flight 4472, returning from a week in my home state of Ohio. While I have gone back to Ohio one or two times per year since I moved to California in 2003, this is my longest return visit, and the first where I’ve spent most of…
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On Family and Falling: 254 Species
My younger brother and I have a history of adventuring through the wooded hills of Ohio. Through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, we have spent much of our adult lives separated by as much as half of the planet Earth, and even when he ended up in northern California several years ago,…
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You Win Some, You Lose Some: Big Year Species 251
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve added a new species to the Big Year count. I think it’s getting to that point where I actually have to make a concerted effort to find new ones, primarily by chasing after species reported by others. While I’ve been birding for over 30 years all over the…
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Birding (and Botanizing) on the Run: The Mt. Wilson Toll Road
A year or more may elapse before it is finally settled, but there is little doubt that a great astronomical observatory will shortly grace Mt. Wilson and make Pasadena a central point of interest to the scientific world! – Pasadena Star, April 8, 1892 Today, I ran the Mt. Wilson Toll Road. In fact, I…
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Big Year Update – 250 Species
My Los Angeles County Big Year is rolling along, if ever so slowly. I’ve picked up four new species in the last week.
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Big Year Update – 246 Species
After completing a survey fairly early this morning, I went a little ways up the coast to Palos Verdes. At Pt. Vicente, there was a large flock of shearwaters and other seabirds quite a ways off the coast. The handful that came in close enough to ID were Black-vented and Sooty Shearwaters, both new species for…
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Big Year Update – 242 Species
After birding the Antelope Valley this morning, my year list for Los Angeles County now stands at 242 species. April 4, Coastal Los Angeles County BBI has a project site on the coast that I am surveying for birds for a full day, twice per month. While the site is heavily disturbed, it is surrounded…