You are browsing the archives of 2006 November.

The UN has been holding discussions on H5N1 poultry flu (or avian flu as some would have it) in China, and have announced that - as Nial Moores and Martin Williams were saying months ago - migratory birds are not the main causes of transmission: it’s our demand for poultry and the appalling way we [...]

I’d be remiss if I didn’t publicly celebrate that Richard Pombo, that tainted foe of all environmental causes, has finally lost his congressional seat. So long, sucker!

Crested Francolin Francolinus sephaena
South Africa, November 2006

The Crested Francolin is a widespread and common African species found from southern Sudan, Ethiopia and western Somalia, south through Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania (excluding western regions) to Mozambique, Angola and NE South Africa. It is typically found in dense bush and dry woodland - these two birds were in [...]

The warm weather this weekend put me in the mood to go birding. The sleek Sharp-shinned Hawk that flew over my building motivated me to act on that mood. So Mason and I stopped at Crestwood Lake while running errands. This site is always good for freshwater ducks in season, and if my mounting anxiety [...]

Blogging is terrific fun. Everybody’s doing it and earning their whopping $2.00 a year from Adsense while they’re at it. At the current rate of blogosphere growth, something like a million new blogs every second, pretty soon every man, woman, and child on this planet will have one. Too bad most of them will be [...]

of science is served up in issue #66 of the Tangled Bank with extra segues over at easternblot.net.

to save the albatross from extinction. Estimates suggest that 100,000 albatrosses are inadvertently killed each year by long-line fishing boats.

Patrick of The Hawk Owl’s Nest put together a scintillating Birder Survey, one that I’ve been remiss in completing. Time to rectify that now…
What state (or country) do you live in? New York
How long have you been birding? 4 years
Are you a “lister”? Oh yeah!
ABA Life List: 343
Overall Life List: 443
3 Favorite Birding Spots: Jamaica [...]

Dusky Turtle Dove Streptopelia lugens
Nairobi, Kenya, November 2006

 
All photos copyright Charlie Moores
 

On a day as fraught with peril and opportunity as this, one likes to trot out George Bernard Shaw’s old chestnut that “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Well, I respectfully disagree. The American people have yet another chance to break the stranglehold of the most [...]