article thumbnail

Birding Hongbenghe, Yunnan (Part 1)

10,000 Birds

Given that according to the HBW, the species prefers dense primary and secondary montane forests, the note that the bird also forages among kitchen waste (in the same HBW entry) seems somewhat incongruous. Some like Charles Vaurie have considered it so unreliable that they even suggested the destruction of his egg collection.”

Burma 209
article thumbnail

Birding Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo

10,000 Birds

When not climbing, he collected species, and thus a number of birds are named after him. Three of them can be found on Mount Kinabalu, and local bird guides speak admiringly of colleagues who have seen all three of them on one day (we only managed two). This is particularly acute in Indonesia ( source ).

Birds 232
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

“The (Big) Year that Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record”

10,000 Birds

The (Big) Year that Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record – which is the book’s full title, or Arjan Dwarshuis’s Big Year, as I prefer to call it shortly, is a highly anticipated and a long awaited travelogue of the author’s 2016 race against time across 40 countries in his attempt to break the world birding record.

article thumbnail

Birding the Wolongshan area in June 2023

10,000 Birds

For birders, the Wolongshan area is like a poorer cousin of Balangshan – due to the lower elevation, the bird species here are more common and thus less interesting. I can confirm that the Indian Blue Robin – as stated by the HBW – tends to sing from deep cover – not ideal behavior for a bird photographer.

article thumbnail

Birding Tabin, Sabah, Borneo

10,000 Birds

You know there is probably some evil backstory if Wikipedia talks of a “complex” legacy of Raffles – further detailing that “he was ultimately an imperialist benefiting at the expense of the indigenous peoples” So, I guess this is another bird name that should be changed eventually.

article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in April 2023

10,000 Birds

The person who named this bird apparently cleverly chose the name Yellow-rumped Flycatcher to distinguish the bird from the Narcissus Flycatcher, which is also yellow-rumped. In Chinese, this bird is called White-browed Flycatcher, which introduces some (possibly undesirable) logic into the world of bird names.

Monkeys 147
article thumbnail

“Peacocks and Picathartes: Reflections on Africa’s Birdlife”

10,000 Birds

This book is essentially about those birds that breed on the continent south of the Sahara, a topic few birders are familiar with. A few years ago, in the American Birding Association FB group I posted a question: Where would you go if funds weren’t a problem? Some are incredibly rare and hard to find.

Congo 264