Initiated by long-time shorebird conservationist Gyorgy Szimuly, the World Shorebird Day is becoming a reality. Gyorgy relates this information to all birders with a soft spot towards shore birds. I kindly ask you to look at our blog, which is just launched, to get an idea what it is about: World Shorebirds Day Blog I […]
The fact that the little owl is useful to peasants in ridding their grain fields of mice, which often bring famines by a sudden vast increase numbers, only confirmed the owl as a symbol of the Immortal Maid. These little screech-owls may have protected other crops from mice beside grain, the olive for instance, which […]
The notion that cuckoos do not retire to the south but hibernate in hollow trees is an old belief with the peasantry. Cuckoos, to do not flock together, like swallows, storks and cranes, just before migrating to warmer lands. After ceasing to call, they still lurk about, and are gradually missed. This mystery was solved […]
[text by Steve Boyes, National Geographic Newswatch] Up until this year, an estimated 120,000 – 140,000 Amur falcons (Falco amurensis) were being slaughtered in a remote part of north-eastern India at this exact time each year. In 2012, Shashank Dalvi and Ramki Sreenivasan documented this shocking massacre as tens of thousands of migrating falcons congregate […]
White-winged Flufftail Sarothrura ayresi, a secretive and unobtrusive sub-Saharan bird, is the latest species to join the growing list of those on the very edge of extinction. Destruction and degradation of its high altitude wet grassland habitat, including wetland drainage, conversion for agriculture, water abstraction, overgrazing by livestock and cutting of marsh vegetation, have driven […]
The number of bird species listed as Critically Endangered has reached an all-time high with the release of this year’s Red List for birds by BirdLife International. White-winged Flufftail Sarothrura ayresi, a secretive and unobtrusive sub-Saharan bird, is the latest species to join the growing list of those on the very edge of extinction. Destruction […]
A man was once ploughing his field. In the midst of it a lark had made her nest and was hatching her young. When the cock lark saw what the man was doing, and that he was coming nearer and nearer with the plough, he feared that the nest would be destroyed. So he turned […]
A partridge once built her nest in the furrows of a newly ploughed cornfield, and hatched her young when the stalks of the corn had grown tall and the corn began to ripen. There was food in plenty and safety enough for them to play and to frolic about without fear of any danger. But […]
Once upon a time there was a partridge, and that partridge was sorely troubled, for no one in this world is safe from trouble and worry. Her trouble was that for some time back she was not able to rear her young, because of AUNTIE FOX, who made a royal feast of the young brood. […]
A funny story about the hoopoe and the cuckoo is told by the Rumanians at the expense of the Armenians. It is said that in olden times the forefather of the Armenians had to flee for his life. So, taking all his belongings with him, and mounting on a horse, he rode away as fast […]