10,000 Birds

JANUARY 28, 2023

One need not ponder whether Birds: Poetry in the Sky is more a bird book or an art book: it fits each category. But whatever shelf it belongs on is really irrelevant – it’s enough to say that the book is magnificent. The multi-award-winning photographer Christian Spencer, an Australian native, has lived in Brazil for many years; the birds of both countries are represented here.

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Birds South America Brazil 2011 222

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 1, 2023

Way back in 2014, when I saw my first Chestnut-sided Shrike-Vireo near the little town of Pino Real, and shared the sighting on a birders’ chat group, it took just over a month for the first biologist/ornithologist to visit me. It seems he had looked long and wide for this species. Happily, I was able to show him three individuals that day. And after all, who wouldn’t want to see this beauty?

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Mexico Cuba Species 2014 224

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 1, 2023

Our Christmas Day in Broome was much like any other Christmas day in that we did a bird list for the day. We usually expect to see over one hundred bird species around the local area during the day and this year was no different. However, we had a beautiful surprise put on by Mother Nature, which really started our day off well. We had a walk around our local area to start our list after putting a few bird species on from our garden whilst we had a coffee.

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Raised Species Rights Birds 168

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Apparently, historically there never was such a thing as a “Ius Primae Noctis” – one myth about the Middle Ages that can be safely discarded, though other unpleasant aspects of that period such as the very low level of dental hygiene and the occasional peer pressure to participate in a crusade are still valid. The closest the poor writer of a blog has to a “Ius Primae Noctis” is the right to discuss things that are totally irrelevant to the supposed topic of the blo

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Bangladesh Birds China India 182

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Australia has a lot of birds. The “ Working List of Australian Birds, v.4 ,” published by BirdLife Australia lists 2,016 birds, but that includes subspecies (add extinct, domestic, failed introduced & non-confirmed birds and you have 2,106). The latest edition of the Clements Checklist that I could find, last modified in August 2022, lists 965 species (a little more manageable!

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Australia Birds 2017 Groups 255

10,000 Birds

JULY 14, 2022

After testing both Swarovski NL Pure 10×42 and 12×42, I – a self-confessed lover of smallish full-size binoculars, felt the urge to try the latest 32 mm NLs. For most of my birding life, I birded with 8s, and with NLs and their extreme wide-angle field of view I found myself in a dilemma: should I stick to 8s and gain a 20% wider FOV, or should I keep the FOV I am used to and am happy with, but gain some extra magnification?

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Indiana Game Woodpeckers Experience 230

10,000 Birds

JUNE 23, 2022

Hongbenghe is a very small village in Yunnan, right next to the border with Myanmar. One road simply ends here, giving the place a real end-of-the-world feeling. Even better, there is a wooden, unguarded, slowly decaying bridge over to Myanmar – so while I do not have the passport stamp to prove it, I can honestly say that I have been to that country as well.

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Birds Myanmar China Chicago 147

10,000 Birds

JUNE 11, 2022

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 21, 2022

With more than 950 bird species, including over 350 endemics, Australia is an impressive birding country… or a birding continent. Or both. Infrastructure is well-developed, prices reasonable – just rent a car (even better a 4×4) and head into your own adventure. Next to your bird guide, you may also use an adventure guide: The 100 Best Birdwatching Sites in Australia by Sue Taylor.

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Australia Experience Experiments Species 222

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Every year, Ducks Unlimited of Mexico, A.C. (DUMAC) surveys the populations of waterfowl and shorebirds in a good number of major wetlands here in Mexico. This year, they decided to do their annual survey if Lake Cuitzeo, half an hour north of Morelia, on a Monday. Since I go birding every Monday, I decided that perhaps it was a sign, and asked if I could participate.

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Pelicans Blackbirds Ducks Hunting 233

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Two Fridays ago, my wife and I packed most of our stuff into a couple vehicles and boarded the inter-island ferry to Tobago. Having been marooned on Trinidad for the last two years, my body was aching for a change. Pre-pandemic, we’d routinely be in Tobago – birding, guiding, and generally having a blast on the smaller island. This time, the shift happens to be of a slightly longer-term nature, I’m typing this from my new home-office at a place I’ve written about before.

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Trinidad Woodpeckers Species Humane 216

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 10, 2021

Last week’s excellent 10,000 Birds holiday gift guide compiled by Mark made me realize that we’ve gone through nearly all of 2021 without reviewing a single distilled spirit here at Birds and Booze. We’ve had plenty of beer and wine this year, but no liquor. Well, with half a month to go before 2022, we’re not about to dip on spirits for the year if I can help it.

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Chile South America Peru Bolivia 240

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 17, 2021

The Great Bowerbird bowers around Broome don’t last forever despite their solid construction. We have extreme weather during our wet season with cyclonic winds and torrential rain. Sometimes the Great Bowerbirds just appear to want a slightly different location and move the items to a new bower. Several male birds will work together to build the perfect bower to attract females.

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Abandon Abandoning Abandonment Humane 257

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 2, 2021

With my favorite Shanghai birding place at Nanhui getting gradually destroyed under the watchful eyes of the local government favoring Tesla over terns, I have been searching for some alternative Shanghai locations with less ongoing construction, fewer people, and hopefully more birds. Fengxian is one of these places – geographically not as good as it is a bit away from the most straightforward coastal migration part, but indeed a bit less disturbed for now.

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Cats Birds Kittens Transported 235

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2021

Snowy Egrets like to keep their distance. Normally the slender, fairy-feathered shorebirds are shy and avoid the humans who encroach on their territory. But a small colony of them have made an exception for Elton Reed, who has fished off Chincoteague Island, Virginia for almost five decades. Initially wary, the birds came to accept his quiet presence as he checked his traps and floats.

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Virginia Wildlife Transported Fish 264

10,000 Birds

JUNE 9, 2021

Last year there was a spate of books specifically about bird “behavior” – though one might well say that every book about birds, from field guides on up, is about behavior in some way or another. It’s the behavior that makes them fascinating to us. (Well, purely physical attributes play a part, too: they’re pretty good looking.). You can’t say the same about migration: you can’t say that every book about birds is necessarily about migration, for the simple reason that only about 4,000 bird s

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Alaska Breeding Kenya Africa 224

10,000 Birds

MARCH 28, 2021

The last weekend of March offers much, both in terms of new additions to your current suite of avifauna and the promise of more to come. Even better, April means more of the same. I found the opportunity to chip away at my county list this weekend, filling an odd Blue-winged Teal -shaped hole while enjoying an array of snappy waterfowl. Corey had his hands full this weekend with more pressing concerns than adding Black Vulture to his county list for the year, so we’ll give him a consolatio

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Birds Experience Experiments 170

10,000 Birds

MARCH 12, 2021

I didn’t plan on taking such a long break away from the Birds and Booze beat, but life got in the way the last several weeks, mostly on account of moving into a new home. After so much time away, I knew I’d need to come back with a really good find. And what could be better than a new bird-themed brewery opening up less than two miles down the road from me?

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New York Boston 2019 Collecting 264

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Those who read my posts each week (and I know you’re out there, a few of you have said so) know that 2021 is shaping up to be a decidedly bipolar birding year for me here in Michoacán. It has been, in fact, the opposite of what they say about the Star Trek movies: to date, my odd-numbered outings have been much better than the even-numbered ones.

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Woodpeckers Nashville Mexico ALA 205

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

10,000 Birds is running a series of articles by and about tour guides, tour companies, eco-lodges, and other birding travel organizations. We want to help the birding tourism industry come back strong from the COVID pandemic. Please consider using the services described in this post or any of the other posts we are sharing this February. Hello all from Las Terrazas de Dana Boutique Lodge & Spa in Mindo Cloud Forest, Ecuador.

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Ecuador Spain Experience Experiments 193

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2020

We’ve entered that most wonderful time of the year… that’s right, it’s Christmas Bird Count season! Whether you celebrate with others or observe in spiritual solitude, we hope you have a plan to enjoy holiday cheer the way only birders can. After dipping twice on the errant Black-legged Kittiwake that’s been this week’s bird de jour in Rochester, I’ll designate Red-throated Loon my best of a beautiful but unsurprising bunch of birds.

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2020 United States Birds Experience 262

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

November doesn’t fit any of the conventional narratives of birding seasons. This month doesn’t really resemble the migratory months or the more staid and settled spans of summer and winter. Nonetheless, November can really cook when the birding conditions are just right. My part of the world in the midst of a glorious winter finch irruption, which meant that Red Crossbill was the star of the show this weekend.

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2020 Cooking Birds Experience 212

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

Western Australia is a very large state and often there are vast distances between towns. The closest town to Broome if we head south towards Perth is around 600kms. Derby lies around 200kms to the north. The capital city, Perth, is over 2000kms away. Darwin is actually closer, but we still have a hard border, so we can’t leave Western Australia.

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Australia Zebras Eagles Species 181

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 22, 2020

I was lucky to visit India several times, but as a keen birder I carried along only a bird book, and even upgraded it to a new edition between the trips. Ahead of the first trip, I wasn’t thinking much about mammals, and yet, you cannot miss them, from Nilgais near villages to Indian Flying Foxes in town centres, not to mention those ubiquitous and irresistibly cute Palm Squirrels eating seeds left for parakeets.

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Asia Mammals Sri Lanka Bhutan 182

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 27, 2020

The end of September doesn’t necessarily mean the end of what you might enjoy about September birding but it definitely signals the beginning of what you love about October. Hopefully, you’re looking forward to the month ahead! I was shocked to still find a number of shorebird species up at Braddock Bay, perhaps because of how much productive mud the dropping lake levels have exposed.

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2020 Connecticut Virginia New York 225

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

“Look around, look around…” The refrain is from Hamilton , a demand and a plea to look with the brain and the heart and then to look again. Listening to them, I thought the words could also be applied to one of the more positive phenomena of the past few months, though in a very different context. People stayed home and looked around.

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2020 Birds Groups North America 264

10,000 Birds

JUNE 28, 2020

Last Friday, June 19th, we went to the Derby Poo Ponds. We were sitting in the new hut having lunch. There were not many birds to observe due to the bad state of the wetland, but there was a breeze and as usual there was nobody else around. There had not been many birds in the settling ponds either, but there were some Royal Spoonbills and White Ibis.

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Cattle Breeding Australia Birds 257

10,000 Birds

JUNE 9, 2020

Birders who submit their checklists to eBird likely know that their data may be used to conduct research on avian migration, range, or population. But eBird data is not just for ecologists and ornithologists. It has also been used by researchers from other fields, such as economists. Recently, an interdisciplinary group published a paper using eBird data in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

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Chicago Research Illinois Michigan 286

10,000 Birds

APRIL 25, 2020

Spring migration! The annual parade of birds is happening and the feathered participants are dressed in their best breeding suits. Now is the special time that birders look forward to all year long. Now is when we can venture into the closest park and see birds of the deep woods, species that breed far from town. Blackburnian Warblers and Scarlet Tanagers might be present and every day brings another chance at connecting with rare, unexpected aspects of the avian kind.

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Costa Rica 2020 Spain Panama 224

10,000 Birds

MARCH 21, 2020

Kasia Rinkai Park on Tokyo Bay will host the slalom canoeing events for the upcoming (correct at time of writing) Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020. In the meantime, it played host to my target bird for the trip. The Brown-headed Thrush , Turdus chrysolaus , is a very typical thrush and you may wonder why anyone would get excited about such an indistinguished bird.

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Feral Cats Japan Feral 2020 168

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

“One for the rook, one for the crow, one to wither, and one to grow.” There are many variations on this traditional farmer’s adage about sowing, which instructs the planter to scatter four seeds for every plant one hopes to harvest, so as to account for inevitable losses to birds and other hungry animals scouring the fields. Doubtless it’s a very old saying and the details can vary according to time and place: sometimes one of the larcenous birds is a blackbird rather tha

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2017 Nevada California Italy 163

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 10, 2019

Last year, I compiled a subjective list of the Top 25 National Wildlife Refuges for Birding. Based on comments from other birders, I added ten “Honorable Mention” sites for a total of 35 locations. Since then, I’ve had a long-term goal of visiting the ones I have never visited. (I have been to 22 of 35.) I recently traveled to Texas and made a trip to Hagerman NWR (an “Honorable Mention”), which is north of Dallas.

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Oklahoma Texas Dallas Wildlife 138

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 5, 2019

The Species per Square Mile Approach. While Colombia may have almost 2000 bird species, it is a huge country with, still, complicated long-distance travel logistics. On the other hand, small countries with relatively long bird lists offer higher species densities per square mile. And small country often equals short distances and easy traveling. The mongabay.com portal has compared data on a unit of area basis of the percentage of the total global number of species of birds, amphibians, mammals,

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Gambia Equatorial Guinea Species Rwanda 244

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

Next Thursday is the American Thanksgiving holiday – which means it’s time to trot out that old legend concerning Benjamin Franklin’s opinions on two iconic American birds: The Wild Turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo ) and the Bald Eagle ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus ). As every American schoolchild knows , the story goes something like this: The Founding Father was a staunch advocate for the adoption of the gobbler as the national bird of the young nation, and bristled at the final selection of the Bald

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2017 Bald Eagle United States Turkey 153

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

As birders, we face a particular set of challenges. Where can a birder find the best prices for quality optics? Which field guides to use, digital, paper, or both? How to get yourself out of bed on cold, dark, pre-dawn winter mornings, where to find the nearest landfill, how to convince officers of the law that you aren’t doing anything more than watching birds.

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Costa Rica Birds Feral Laws 174

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

As I mentioned last week, my wife, son, and daughter-in-law spent much of the month of October in Europe. Visiting the continent after the end of most of the autumn migration meant that the number of bird species I could see in northern France, Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria was much reduced. But when it comes to waterfowl, the non-reproductive season offers some great opportunities in central Europe, as many species move south from their Arctic breeding grounds.

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Austria Switzerland Europe Geese 129

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 11, 2019

Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere can congratulate ourselves on experiencing another August weekend. While experiences vary all the way along the spectrum from abysmal to divine, we all get a head start on superior when the weather is amazing. I hope most of you got the boost we did. Ivy and I have been lucking out on a small pond–really a flooded field–that seems to attract the widest array of shorebirds in Monroe County, NY.

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2019 New York Birds Experience 122