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ZimZelen’s Almanac of Wild Things

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The Northern Gannet Colony, France’s Feathered Treasure

Fun fact: do you know the national bird of Morocco ?

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“The Emu War” — When Australia Went to War with Big Birds

Once upon a very real time — in 1932, in the sun-scorched belly of Western Australia — the army was sent to war. Against emus. Yes, emus. Tall, beady-eyed, feather-ruffled emus. Like dinosaurs who gave up flight but kept the attitude. About the Emu: The Dromaius novaehollandiae, or emu, is Australia’s largest bird and the second largest in the world (after the ostrich). Flightless but far from helpless, emus can sprint up to 50 km/h, leap over fences, and run for long distances like marathoners with bad hair. They are curious, stubborn, and oddly majestic — like the sort of creature that wouldn’t just survive an apocalypse but critique its staging. They mate for a season, the male incubates the eggs (yes, he does the sitting), and they’ve been part of Aboriginal stories for tens of thousands of years. Here’s how the war against emus started: Farmers, struggling after war and drought, were trying to coax wheat from reluctant soil. Then came the birds. Twenty thousand of them. March...

The Puffins of Rouzic: A Tale of the Seven Islands

For those who wonder what it takes to lose something and what it takes to bring it back The Time of Shared Winds Long before the postcards and the train tracks, the cliffs of the Seven Islands belonged to the wind — and to those who knew how to listen to it. Back then, puffins filled the skies. Bright-beaked and ridiculous in the best way, they dived and darted over the sea like clumsy torpedoes with wings. They nested in burrows on grassy slopes, returned with beaks full of tiny fish, and filled the air with their strange, cat-like calls. Guillemots lined up on ledges like sharp-dressed question marks, and seals rolled in kelp beds, humming secrets only the ocean understood. Humans lived nearby. They came in season, when the wind was right and the sea allowed. They took what they needed — eggs, feathers, seals. Not for sport. Not for spectacle. But out of necessity, with a quiet understanding that taking too much would mean having nothing the year after. It wasn’t perfect. B...

The Loudest Beak in the Swamp

As long as a crow and bold as a legend, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker once ruled the swamps of the American South. With a flashing white bill and wings that cut through the mist, it was too big to miss — until it vanished. Some say it’s gone. Others still listen for its echo in the trees. In the deep, shadowed swamps of the American South — where cypress knees rise from black water and Spanish moss hangs like ghosts from the trees — there once lived a bird so bold that people cried out, “Lord God!” the moment they saw it. That’s how it got its nickname: the Lord God Bird . The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker wasn’t just another forest creature. It was striking — nearly half a metre long, with inky black feathers slashed with white, a ghostly pale bill that gleamed like ivory, and (if it was a male) a crown of blazing red feathers like a punk-rock prince of the swamp. But it wasn’t just for show. This bird had a purpose. It searched out the dead and dying trees — the ones others...

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