10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2014

The wood stork occurs and breeds in Central and South America. I have seen them foraging on sandy shores of rivers deep in the Amazon, enjoyed them in their raucous breeding colonies in the Everglades, flushed them out of canals during walks around my house, and perhaps more importantly contribute to their recovery.

North Carolina 190

North Carolina Bald Eagle South Carolina Florida 190

10,000 Birds

JULY 15, 2014

Every spring, billions of migratory songbirds in Europe fly north to their breeding grounds. And third, related to next week’s post, there is an interesting project being started in North Carolina in which little monitoring devices are being attached to cats to see what they do when running around wild.

Los Angeles 172

Los Angeles Bats Feral Cats New York City 172

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2012

a miniature version of that well-established national citizen science project the Breeding Bird Survey. Now that the data is being entered into eBird regularly even this extremely local look at breeding birds will have some value beyond sitting in a folder on a professor’s desktop. Hardwood forest, some openings.

North Carolina 156

North Carolina Transported Morals Science 156

10,000 Birds

APRIL 3, 2012

Identification of abnormal birds such as this one is not an exact science, but this one seems to break down as one half White-throated Sparrow and one half Dark-eyed Junco. It should be enough to send birders to their feeding stations and hedgerows to look for these unusual birds, because they’re out there.

New Jersey 214

New Jersey North Carolina Sparrows Connecticut 214

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2014

Erika is a first year graduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Conservation at Duke. There were ten students in total that had signed up for the spring break “Seabirds” course in Dry Tortugas National Park, and after long drives down from North Carolina we had all made it right on time. Lots and lots of birds.

Birds 174

Birds Florida Groups Breeding 174

10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2012

What I didn’t know was how this relationship actually works: the mechanics of Red Knot migration, the reduced digestive systems necessary for their long flighta, the need to fatten up quickly so they can fly to the Arctic and breed, how they compete with other shorebirds and gulls and, it turns out, humans, for horseshoe crab eggs.

Delaware 176

Delaware New Jersey Research Eggs 176