Pakistan is witnessing a mounting backlash against Arab sheikhs who spend part of their winters hunting a rare bird that conservationists warn is at risk of extinction. Activists in the country say they are determined to end the annual killing of houbara bustards, an elusive bird that migrates each winter from central Asia to Pakistan’s […]
Tag: falcon
Why Are Birds of the Arctic in Decline?
With some species of Arctic birds experiencing steep drops in population and their prey also undergoing marked shifts, scientists are working to understand what role climate change is playing in these unfolding ecological transformations. On Coats Island, in northern Hudson Bay, thick-billed murres — members of the auk family — have been under assault on […]
Review: Bird Sense: What it’s Like to be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead
Who’d be a bird anyway? Chickens have bi-focal vision: one eye for the close-up work of pecking seed; one for the fox on the horizon or the hawk in the sky. Peregrine falcons don’t swoop directly on prey – as the crow flies, to coin a phrase – but in a wide arc, using the […]
Windhover Woes
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding high there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing. “ The year of 1877 saw the placing of pen to paper and the creation of “the Windhover” […]
Bird’s Eye View of the Changing Climate
“The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and […]
Summer time
Shachar Shalev (ourKiwi representative) has gone birding over the weekend and the following report shows that it is neverboringaround here. When there are few migrants, there is plenty of time to enjoy some of the region’s very interesting species… I Went out 5:30 in the morning not seriously expecting to find anything. I Started at […]
Ross’s Geese at Klamath National WIldlife Area, Miller Island Unit
A few weeks ago I took a ride up to the California/Oregon border to visit the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex. You can read my posts on two of these refuges over at the Wildlife Conservation Stamp website. This state wildlife area is just south of the town of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and is […]
Drama at Oe
This morning at Oe I observed a Peregrine Falcon consistently attack an Eurasian Bittern. Although the falcon gained height and swooped down on a few occasions, it never actually “hit” the bittern – it kept breaking off its attack just before striking. I can only surmise that as it had lost the advantage of surprise, […]