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Somali Fiscal
The Somali fiscal (''Lanius somalicus'') is a species of bird in the family Laniidae. Other common names include the Karoli fiscal, the Somali fiscal shrike and the Somali shrike. The bird is found in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa, as well as in Kenya in the African Great Lakes region. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry shrubland. Distribution and habitat The Somali fiscal Is found in East Africa, its range including much of Somalia, southern Djibouti, eastern and southern Ethiopia, southeastern South Sudan and northern Kenya. It is mainly found in open grassy habitats and semi-desert areas with some scrub. Where its range overlaps that of the Taita fiscal (''Lanius dorsalis''), that bird usually inhabits more densely-vegetated and less arid habitats. Ecology Like other shrikes, the Somali fiscal perches in a position where it has a good view all round and pounces on any suitable prey it observes. It feeds mostly on large insects such as gr ...
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Gustav Hartlaub
Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub (8 November 1814 – 29 November 1900) was a German physician and ornithologist. Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and collect exotic birds, which he donated to the Bremen Natural History Museum. He described some of these species for the first time. In 1852, he set up a new journal with Jean Cabanis, the ''Journal für Ornithologie''. He wrote with Otto Finsch, ''Beitrag zur Fauna Centralpolynesiens: Ornithologie der Viti-, Samoa und Tonga- Inseln''. Halle, H. Schmidt. This 1867 work which has handcoloured lithographs was based on bird specimens collected by Eduard Heinrich Graeffe for Museum Godeffroy The Museum Godeffroy was a museum in Hamburg, Germany, which existed from 1861 to 1885. The collection was founded by Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy, who became a wealthy shipping magnate a few years after the expansion of the trade towards Aust .... A n ...
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Subtropical Or Tropical Dry Shrubland
Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands is a terrestrial biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is dominated by grass and/or shrubs located in semi-arid to semi-humid climate regions of subtropical and tropical latitudes. Description Grassland is dominated by grass and other herbaceous plants. Savanna is grassland with scattered trees. Shrubland is dominated by woody or herbaceous shrubs. Large expanses of land in the tropics do not receive enough rainfall to support extensive tree cover. The tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are characterized by rainfall levels between per year. Rainfall can be highly seasonal, with the entire year's rainfall sometimes occurring within a couple of weeks. African savannas occur between forest or woodland regions and grassland regions. Flora includes acacia and baobab trees, grass, and low shrubs. Acacia trees lose their leaves in the dry season to conserve moisture, while ...
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Birds Of The Horn Of Africa
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. ...
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Lanius
''Lanius'', the typical shrikes, are a genus of passerine birds in the shrike family Laniidae. The majority of the family's species are placed in this genus. The genus name, ''Lanius'', is derived from the Latin word for "butcher", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits. The common English name "shrike" is from Old English ''scríc'', "shriek", referring to the shrill call. African species are known as fiscals. That name comes from the Afrikaans word ''fiskaal'' ("public official", especially a hangman), because they hang their prey on thorns for storage. Most ''Lanius'' species occur in Eurasia and Africa, but the great grey shrike has a circumpolar distribution, and the loggerhead shrike is confined to North America. There are no members of this genus or the shrike family in South America or Australia. ''Lanius'' shrikes are birds of open habitats typically seen perched upright on a prominent perch like a treetop or a teleph ...
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Least-concern Species
A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. They do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, or (before 2001) conservation dependent. Species cannot be assigned the "Least Concern" category unless they have had their population status evaluated. That is, adequate information is needed to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution or population status. Evaluation Since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation "LC", following the IUCN 2001 Categories & Criteria (version 3.1). Before 2001 "least concern" was a subcategory of the "Lower Risk" category and assigned the code "LR/lc" or lc. Around 20% of least concern taxa (3261 of 15636) in the IUCN database still use the code "LR/lc", which indicates they have not been re-evalu ...
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International Union For Conservation Of Nature
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable". Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to sustainable development in its projects. IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation. It tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice and through building partnerships. The organization is best known to the wider p ...
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Raven
A raven is any of several larger-bodied bird species of the genus ''Corvus''. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", common names which are assigned to different species chiefly on the basis of their size. The largest raven species are the common raven and the thick-billed raven. Etymology The term "raven" originally referred to the common raven (''Corvus corax''), the type species of the genus ''Corvus'', which has a larger distribution than any other species of ''Corvus'', ranging over much of the Northern Hemisphere. The modern English word ''raven'' has cognates in all other Germanic languages, including Old Norse (and subsequently modern Icelandic) and Old High German , all of which descend from Proto-Germanic . Collective nouns for a group of ravens (or at least the common raven) include "rave", "treachery", "unkindness" and "conspiracy". In practice, most people use the ...
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Predation
Predation is a biological interaction In ecology, a biological interaction is the effect that a pair of organisms living together in a community have on each other. They can be either of the same species (intraspecific interactions), or of different species ( interspecific interactio ... where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually). It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators. Predators may actively search for or pursue prey or wait for it, often concealed. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush predation, ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack ...
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Taita Fiscal
The Taita fiscal or Teita fiscal (''Lanius dorsalis'') is a member of the shrike family found in east Africa from southeastern South Sudan, southern Ethiopia, and western Somalia to northeastern Tanzania.BirdLife International and Natureserve (2011) "Bird species distribution maps of the world." 2009. Lanius dorsalis'. In: IUCN 2011. ''IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.'' Version 2011.2. Accessed 2012-06-11. Its habitat is dry open thornbush and acacia and other dry open woodland. Description This is a fairly distinctive -long passerine with white underparts and a black crown, hindneck and wings. The back is grey with a characteristic white 'V' and the rump is white. The tail is relatively long and black with white outer feathers. There is a small white patch on the wings. The bill, eyes and legs are black. The adult male and female Taita fiscal have similar plumage except for a rufous lower flank of the female which is usually hidden by the wing. The juvenile is mainly brown� ...
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Habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors will include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, with habitat generalist species able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species requiring a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior ...
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Heuglin
Martin Theodor von Heuglin (20 March 1824, Hirschlanden, Württemberg5 November 1876), was a German explorer and ornithologist. Biography Heuglin was born in Hirschlanden (now part of Ditzingen) in Württemberg. His father was a Protestant pastor, and he was trained to be a mining engineer. He was ambitious, however, to become a scientific investigator of unknown regions, and with that object studied the natural sciences, especially zoology. In 1850 he went to Egypt where he learnt Arabic, and visited the Red Sea and Sinai. In 1852 he accompanied Dr. Christian Reitz, Austrian consul at Khartoum, on a journey to Ethiopia, and after Reitz's death was appointed his successor in the consulate. While he held this post he travelled in Ethiopia and Kordofan, making a valuable collection of natural history specimens. In 1857 he journeyed through the coast lands of the African side of the Red Sea, and along the Somali coast. In 1860 he was chosen as leader of an expedition to search fo ...
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African Great Lakes
The African Great Lakes ( sw, Maziwa Makuu; rw, Ibiyaga bigari) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. They include Lake Victoria, the second-largest fresh water lake in the world by area, Lake Tanganyika, the world's second-largest freshwater lake by volume and depth, and Lake Malawi, the world's eighth-largest fresh water lake by area. Collectively, they contain 31,000 km3 (7400 cu mi) of water, which is more than either Lake Baikal or the North American Great Lakes. This total constitutes about 25% of the planet's unfrozen surface fresh water. The large rift lakes of Africa are the ancient home of great biodiversity, and 10% of the world's fish species live in this region. Riparian countries in the African Great Lakes region include: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Lakes and drainage basins The followi ...
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