The African Ground Hornbill, Bucorvus leadbeateri. Hornbills are know for their giant bills, large enough in relation to body size that they typically have two of their neck vertebrae fused to support the extra weight in the head.
Hornbills fall into two different families, the Bucerotidae (most of the hornbills) and Bucorvidae (the […]

Search and Serendipity is hosting I and the Bird # 60. Don’t miss it!

Larus philadelphia
Larus philadelphia, or Bonaparte’s gull. We were driving at 60 mph. Looking out the front window of the car, it was possible to see twenty or thirty gulls flying erratically overhead. As we drove forward, those gulls would disappear behind us and more would be visible in front of us. […]

A new species of bird is discovered in Brazail, discussed at length by GrrlScientist.
Meanwhile on the extinction side of things, we find the discovery by both congress and experts of an extraordinarily cynical plan but together by the Bush Administration to save an endangered owl. Instead of protecting rapidly vanishing habitat, just kill off […]

Greetings.
I have returned from South Africa, and I’m now resting up from a busy trip in a cabin on a lake in in the North Country. From where I’m sitting, I can watch as three seagulls and two crows harass one of the two Bald Eagles that nest a few hundred meters from here. […]

… because it used to be EXTINCT!
But then, it got better.
From the National Geographic:
The rare recurve-billed bushbird, recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia after a 40-year absence, sports a curving beak that gives the illusion of an enigmatic smile.
This photograph, taken by a conservationist with the Colombia-based nonprofit Fundación ProAves, is the first ever taken […]

(That’s Kimberly Bostwick of Cornell)
[Thanks Joe!]

A recent report by the National Audubon Society (available here, and blogged about here, on 10,000 Birds) indicates that a number of “common” birds are in decline. I have heard of criticism of the report, specifically, that the data are not very good (this is based on bird census data). I currently have […]

Please consider visiting The Creation Museum. This is a “web carnival” of Internet resources about the new museum in Kentucky.

Why does a soldier throw himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of a half-dozen unrelated fellow soldiers? Why does someone run into a burning building they happen to be passing to save a child they don’t know? From a Darwinian perspective these seem to be enigmatic behaviors that would “select […]

For the first time in about 400 years, cranes are breeding in East Anglia. Drainage practices of the 17th century wiped them out, but just over a decade ago the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds procured a carrot field and turned it back into a wetland. The cranes arrived there unexpectedly. […]

Catalina Island is NOT the place to be if you are a bald eagle, apparently. Remember back when Eagles were Endangered? Before the Bush Administration Fish and Wild Life “Service” delisted them? The main (but not only) reason they were endangered was because of the widespread use of DDT. DDT was […]

According to the American Bird Conservancy, a rare owl, the Long-whiskered Owlet (Xenoglaux loweryi), discovered only in 1976, was just recently seen for the first time in the wild. This is one of the world’s smallest owls (you can see an indication of this in the photo of one of these birds sitting on […]

Golden Eagle

I hope I won’t disappoint you … this is not about John Ashcroft. It is about golden eagles (actually, maybe its about one golden eagle in particular).
The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) has been in decline for a very long time, so you may not know it formerly bred in a much wider range […]