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Saturday, September 27, 2025

Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Half 3)


This submit begins like each birding weblog submit ought to begin – by showcasing some bulbul species.

(Sure, I’m joking. In keeping with the extremely profitable e book ” 7 Habits of Extremely Profitable Birding Weblog Put up Writers”, solely about 50% of birding weblog posts ought to begin with bulbuls).

And naturally, provided that black is the brand new black (sure, I do know – not a really authentic phrase), it ought to begin with a Black Bulbul.

 

If you’re extra of a part-time lover of the colour black, the Black-crested Bulbul could also be a better option. Although you need to surrender on the great pink invoice.

However you acquire a crest.

I could have written this earlier than (at my age, repeating your self is just about the one factor that retains you alive), however the flavescent within the Flavescent Bulbul – although it sounds fairly grand to me – merely means yellowish.

 

The eyes of the Gray-eyed Bulbul make it look completely barely depressed – or am I simply projecting? Anyway, I as soon as discovered a field of Prozac subsequent to certainly one of its nests, which appears to assist my concept.

 

Some joggers put on very brightly neon-colored shorts, both to point that they’re colorblind or to draw consideration to their rear areas. The Pink-vented Bulbul is their soulmate.

 

Whereas the pink vent of that bulbul could be very attribute, the white throat of the White-throated Bulbul is far much less conspicuous – my guess is the ornithologists merely ran out of appropriate names and thus had to make use of a relatively secondary characteristic of the fowl to call it.

 

Absolute newcomers within the space of fowl pictures may be inclined to make use of red-eye correction after taking images of the Ashy Drongo. However no, the attention shade is actual, higher depart it alone.

 

What if every little thing you ever knew seems to be mistaken? It is a discovering offered in a paper on the Larger Racket-tailed Drongo.

Particularly, the thought-provoking and revolutionary discovering is that this:

“Overturning greater than a century of mistaken notions on the plumage of subadult
Larger Racket-tailed Drongo Dicrurus paradiseus”

Many misidentified subadult drongos will likely be very glad to listen to this.

They may even be joyful to be alive within the first place after studying this horror story about Larger Racket Tailed Drongo chicks being eaten by gibbons.

“She [the female gibbon] was busy consuming the flesh of the chick, unconcerned by the sturdy mobbing of the drongos. After ending the primary chick she took the second chick from the nest. The chick was calling and waving its legs repeatedly to flee. The feminine Hoolock [gibbon] inspected the chick for a while, holding it the wrong way up in entrance of her face, and shaking it a few instances while wanting round her, inflicting the sufferer’s dad and mom to develop into frantic of their mobbing. She shifted to a different department and once more held the chick the wrong way up whereas it opened its gape to its widest extent. After some time, she bit off the chick’s head, ate it, after which began consuming the physique.”

If that isn’t terrifying sufficient for you, go to the supply paper for images.

Lesser Racket-tailed Drongos in all probability will hope that the gibbons are very particular of their meal choice – however that’s unlikely because the paper describes the gibbons as “primarily omnivorous” (although that expression strikes me as barely bizarre – as if describing some individual’s meals preferences by stating that he/she eats largely every little thing).

Bianchi’s Warbler (if certainly that is what my picture exhibits) is what eBird calls – in a tone not precisely encouraging future generations of birdwatchers – “One among quite a lot of mind-numbingly comparable Seicercus warblers”.

For some cause, it is vital for eBird to level out that the Blue-bearded Bee-eater doesn’t look sleek in flight. A Blue-bearded Bee-eater I requested about this identified that almost all eBird writers don’t look very sleek cramped of their Economic system seats both. More than likely, each events are proper.

The band Van Halen famously banned brown M&Ms from the issues served to them at live performance venues – an attention-grabbing article discusses this in some element.

Blue-throated Barbets apparently even have shade preferences associated to their meals. In keeping with the HBW, captive wild-caught juveniles from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Backyard in China are likely to want black and pink fruits over yellow, inexperienced or blue fruits.

The researchers speculate that that is due to the distinction in opposition to the inexperienced cover background – an evidence that appears a bit spurious to me if utilized to captive birds.

If Blue-winged Minlas gave concert events, they’d in all probability ask for some good bathing services.

They’d in all probability additionally ask for many towels, which weren’t supplied right here.

The Brown-cheeked Fulvetta is one other fowl thrashed by eBird, which calls it an “unapologetically drab and unmarked fulvetta” with calls that “embrace loud sputtery chattering and rattling.”

Possibly a protection mechanism to keep away from ending up as a cage fowl?

The HBW entry on the Collared Scops Owl is disappointingly brief, provided that that is a particularly cute and enticing fowl and that the entry is attributed to 9 (!) authors. Presumably, every of them wrote just one or two sentences.

Given the small dimension of the owl (23-25 cm), the eBird characterization as a medium-sized owl can be a bit unusual. Certainly, Wikipedia states that the collared scops owl is a small owl.

These variations are rationalization for the sceptical look of the owl in these images.

The Collared Treepie is a member of the Corvid household, which options in a paper within the Journal of Social Work and Social Improvement titled “Finding Crow in Agricultural and Domesticated Waste Administration – Understanding Distribution, Mythology and Utility”.

Wherein the authors state that “a world with out crows could be a pile of garbage, useless animals, and different perishable issues that will upset the steadiness of the atmosphere”.

That is the sort of speak that instantly makes me consider an amazing e book title, “Hyperbole and a Half“.

In fact, not each reader of 10,000 Birds is excited by birds. Due to this fact, authors are inspired to sort out crossover matters that mix ornithology with different areas of scientific curiosity. A great instance of this method is me mentioning a paper on “Three Species of Chewing Lice (Mallophaga: Ischnocera) from the Frequent Emerald Dove“.

Presumably, this can be a male …

… and this a feminine (HBW: comparable, however rufous or chestnut-brown the place male is purplish; lacks white shoulder patch; white and gray on head restricted to entrance of brow and stripe over eye).

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