The Datang space stretches North from Tengchong, with principally only one street (G219) having much less and fewer visitors earlier than it will definitely peters out in a collection of curves about 10 kilometers earlier than reaching the border to Myanmar.
Sadly, this makes it sound a bit extra fascinating for birding than it turned out for me – although admittedly, I spent lower than a day there. And the world was advisable to me, so almost certainly my restricted birding abilities are in charge, relatively than the birds themselves.
That stated, there have been a number of fascinating birds, such because the Bar-throated Minla.
Considerably surprisingly, the HBW calls it a “small gray to yellow babbler” – whereas the species certainly has some gray components, that isn’t the colour that sticks to thoughts when seeing or remembering the chicken.
Aside from some restricted description within the HBW, there may be once more relatively restricted data out there on the species, maybe as a result of it doesn’t often reside on college campuses and thus will not be a most popular goal for ornithologists.
An Indian paper mocks the Stunning Sibia when discussing the range-restricted species that may be seen at an Indian birding spot, the Eaglenest Sanctuary: “… the ever-present Stunning Sibia Heterophasia pulchella, a colorless ashy-grey chicken titled stunning!”
That appears a bit unfair to me. I often limit my unfair jokes to people.
Plus the sibia apparently performs an essential function within the pollination of 1 endangered rhododendron species (supply).
When trying to find data on the Black-headed Sibia, I stumbled throughout a promising-sounding internet web page titled “Uncovering the Fascinating Behaviors of the Black-headed Sibia“.
Nevertheless, the article itself disappoints. The fascinating habits primarily appears to be that the members of the species “seek for bugs and larvae in bushes”. And the outline of the distinctive look of the species is adopted by what feels like a disclaimer, specifically that whereas “… the Black-headed Sibia has distinctive options, it may be confused with different chicken species”.
If that was not boring sufficient, anyone additionally analyzed the entire mitochondrial genome of the species.
Seeing Blyth’s Shrike-babbler (or White-browed Shrike-babbler) permits me to say certainly one of my favourite bands, the UK-based Blyth Energy (named after a locomotive, not named after the ornithologist Edward Blyth – by some means I believe that the shrike-babbler is called after the latter although I type of hope to be unsuitable).
Blyth Energy songs that may be accessed on-line and include my very own advice embody “Animal Farm“, “Weapons of Citadel Cary” “Alnwick & Tyne” and “Higher to bat“. Recommendation to chicken species that need to get featured on this weblog: Don’t select names which are too just like names of my favourite bands. For instance, a hypothetical Nationwide Bulbul would haven’t any probability to get any protection right here.
That is in distinction to the Brown-chested Bulbul. This chicken might in some unspecified time in the future might have didn’t pay its membership charges to eBird – not less than judging from the relatively hostile description of the species as a “giant uninteresting bulbul of scrubby forest edges, farmland, and parks”. Makes the species nearly sound a bit apocalyptic.
A paper on the species asks the essential query “Does nest sanitation elicit egg rejection in an open-cup nesting cuckoo host rejecter?”
To rephrase: should you put some trash right into a nest of a chicken together with a cuckoo egg, does that enhance the prospect that the cuckoo egg will probably be kicked out?
Tips on how to discover out? Here’s what the paper says: “Within the first group, we added a blue, non-mimetic egg to the nest of the host, whereas within the second group we added a blue, non-mimetic egg and a peanut half-shell.” So, both only a faux egg or a faux egg and trash (a peanut shell).
And the consequence: all peanut shells had been expelled, however the ejection price of the faux eggs was the identical in each teams and (I feel) fairly low at about 53%. So, probably loads of cuckoo chicks would have been raised by the bulbuls. Poor bulbuls, however then once more, they’re giant uninteresting birds anyway, in response to eBird.
Scientifically talking, the result’s this: “Our examine indicated that nest sanitation habits of Brown-breasted Bulbuls didn’t affect their egg recognition and that egg discrimination means of Brown-breasted Bulbuls was indirectly associated to nest sanitation habits.”
My guess is that that is an Jap Buzzard. However be happy to disagree.
Whereas there are numerous explanations for the way new species may develop, I nonetheless discover a number of the urged mechanisms a bit implausible. The Jap Buzzard is an instance of how this may occur in actuality (supply). Aparently, there are two subspecies, one on the Japanese islands and one on the Asian mainland. Whereas they winter collectively on a number of the Western islands of Japan, they then migrate alongside very totally different pathways, one on the mainland and one alongside the string of Japanese islands. Because the Sea of Japan is in between these two pathways (and buzzards neither wish to swim nor to fly lengthy distances over water as a result of lack of thermals), these pathways appear to be fairly separate from one another, and certainly the 2 subspecies have been genetically separate for about 0.8 million years (which is a very long time for instance when watching a boring film, however not a really lengthy interval by the beneficiant requirements of evolution).
Inexperienced-backed Tits appear to have been studied pretty extensively by ornithologists, which makes me ponder whether the species prefers nesting on college campuses or close to good but reasonably priced accommodations.
For instance, one examine discovered that male tit mother and father favor to feed giant and medium-sized chicks whereas feminine tits make no such distinction. Judging from my expertise within the human world, a really predictable consequence.
One other examine had a equally predictable consequence: Inexperienced-backed Tits are in a position to discriminate towards eggs of the unsuitable coloration (for instance, added by a cuckoo) except it’s too darkish.
(Beneath strain, I’d admit that the precise findings of the examine are a bit extra subtle, however that would cut back the humorous worth of introducing them to my readers. Anyway …)
This Leaf Warbler is a bit embarrassed about its boring look and similiarity to many different species, and would subsequently favor that its species identify will not be talked about right here. Most birders will perceive.
Purple-tailed Minlas keep slim by solely consuming very small bugs which are arduous to succeed in. A weight reduction technique additionally advisable for people.
The Mandarin Chinese language identify Huo Wei Xi Mei (fire-tailed babbler) is a little more fascinating than the English identify, and higher aligned with the scientific identify ignotincta.
Sure, generally I’ve extra images that I need to present than helpful data.
One Indian examine discovered that Plumbeous Water Redstarts (and lots of different birds) appear to keep away from the proximity of cell phone towers. Sadly, I can’t decide in any respect how stable the science of this paper is (instinctively – being a chemist who has sturdy publicity to every kind of poisonous chemical substances within the lab – I have a tendency to think about such research as seemingly coming from folks completely sporting aluminum foil hats, however I could be completely unsuitable).
In the event you consider learning ornithology however dislike maths, you may need to learn this excerpt of an summary on the presence of Plumbeous Water Redstart at some Himalayan rivers first:
“We then in contrast the efficiency of a number of discriminant evaluation (MDA), logistic regression (LR), and synthetic neural networks (ANN) in predicting this species’ presence or absence from 32 variables describing stream altitude, slope, habitat construction, chemistry, and invertebrate abundance. Utilizing your entire information (=coaching set) and a threshold for accepting presence in ANN and LR set to P?0.5, ANN accurately categorised marginally extra instances (88%) than both LR (83%) or MDA (84%). Mannequin efficiency was assessed from two strategies of information partitioning. In a ‘leave-one-out’ strategy, LR accurately predicted extra instances (82%) than MDA (73%) or ANN (69%). Nevertheless, in a holdout process, all of the strategies carried out equally (73–75%). All strategies predicted true absence (i.e. specificity in holdout: 81–85%) higher than true presence (i.e. sensitivity: 57–60%). “
Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
I’ve to admit I don’t fairly know what the “whiskered” within the Whiskered Yuhina identify refers to. I can’t simply spot any whiskers.
The Chinese language identify (yellow-necked babbler) and the scientific identify flavicollis (“golden-necked”) make way more sense to me.
Anyway, one other chicken species with out a lot scientific data on it – an appropriately lame ending to a lame publish.
