4 The Love Of Animals
FEBRUARY 22, 2017
Written by Suzanne Redfearn for Nat Geo WILD and USA Today Article originally appeared in a special edition of USA Today for Nat Geo WILD Did you know that there are very few differences between your house cat and endangered … Continue reading →
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 16, 2017
January is sort of a birding sprint – you start fresh and, all of a sudden, head for them all. In a typical birding year, no other month will bring you that many new species as January. The other advantage of this month is that the International Waterbird Census has been organized in mid-winter for more than 50 years, so most of your observations can be put to a very good use.
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Animal Ethics
FEBRUARY 18, 2017
Yesterday, the world lost its most powerful voice for animal rights, Tom Regan. Regan devoted his professional life to defending animal rights in his numerous books (including: T he Case for Animal Rights ; The Animal Rights Debate ; Animal Rights, Human Wrongs ; and Empty Cages ), in his countless articles and public lectures, and in his testimony before Congress.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
One of the things that I have always considered a positive about living on a sailboat, besides the obvious, is the complete lack of yard work that is required. No lawn to mow, no shrubs or trees to tend to. The down side is that I also don’t get to enjoy the kinds of birds that would be found in a typical backyard. Over the last weekend, my wife and I made a whirl-wind trip from Mexico, up to the Pacific Northwest, the Seattle area, where we stayed with the in-laws.
Speaker: Steve Romanco
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10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
Yesterday, a small gang of Common Grackles rolled up to my bird feeder. For the rest of the day, everywhere I looked, grackles flew from tree to tree, strutting arrogantly with baleful eyes and mechanical whistles. Grackles are, of course, always a treat to observe in their stylish Stygian plumage, but the import of their presence won’t be lost on anyone in the temperate zones struggling through an intemperate season.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 14, 2017
Everyone knows what a male Mallard looks like. The drake of this extremely common, sexually dimorphic species ( Anas platyrhynchos ) cuts a fine form with his iridescent emerald dome and chestnut breast. A female mallard possesses plumage as dull as her partner’s is bold, a frock of forgettable grays, browns, and blacks. Yet you would be wise to take a second look at that mallard hen.
Animal Rights Zone brings together the best content for animal advocates and activists from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 3, 2017
It is now the month of love, and there are few birds I love more than the alcids. Thus, a day of murrelets and their names. According to Reedman , murre is the old Cornish world for a Razorbill , and eventually became a vernacular term for alcids more broadly; murrelet, then, makes simple sense as a name for the smaller members of the family. Some murrelets are named for their styling.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 2, 2017
I can imagine how you hate to see a Bald Eagle in a movie and hear the Red-tailed Hawk screech. Yet, at least, the two of them can be found at the same place. Hence, it is not impossible to see one and hear the other at the same time. But try to imagine my surprise when I discovered that Red-tailed Hawks may be found in the Balkans! The other day I watched a TV ad for a local mobile network provider showing a bright young free climber Stasha scaling a wall somewhere in the hilly heart of Serbia
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 8, 2017
The last weekend of January found me in the frosty Pacific Northwest, meeting some long over due work and family obligations. This is not to say that there wasn’t a little birding time snuck in here and there. I did manage to spend a chilly Saturday morning at the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. This wonderful piece of birding real estate can be found 8 miles east of Olympia, and an hour’s drive south of Seattle Washington, right along the I-5 corridor.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
Birders from North America who have tried to find Mangrove Cuckoos in south Florida know how frustratingly elusive the secretive species can be. They are hard to find, difficult to see well, and seem to have a sixth sense about avoiding the camera. It is unclear why, exactly, this is so. In other locations Mangrove Cuckoos can be abundant and not at all secretive.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 6, 2017
Another Super Bowl has passed and, as predicted , the feathered team fell short. Birds are amazing for a host of reasons, but bringing luck to sports teams may not be their strong suit. My weekend was rather prosaic from a birding perspective, but I took time to appreciate some local Mourning Doves , distinctive not just for their early sunrise plumage but for their species success; I found these doves as plentiful in lush Caribbean forests as they are in Rochester’s inclement winterscape.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 19, 2017
Over the years that we have birded we have observed some variation in the plumage of birds including a Crimson Finch that wasn’t crimson, but orange. Among shorebirds we have observed a white Red Knot , which was completely white and really stood out on the beach. We are also very much in tune with the local beaches and the tides and which species you can expect at different locations on different tides.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 12, 2017
When we get days on end of trying to bird under a stormy sky we sometimes have to admit defeat and stay home! When even the bitumen roads are being closed due to flooding then you know you just have to wait it out and the birding will be greatly improved once the tropical lows pass through. It doesn’t mean you have to entirely give up on looking at birds and using your observation skills, though.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 16, 2017
Many people I know are taking vacations this week, partially because schools in my area observe Winter Recess and partially because getting away after months of winter feels like a well-earned reward. Whether you’re home or away this weekend, reward yourself with some birds! I’m only getting away for a night in rural Pennsylvania, but hope that the feeders at my mother-in-law’s place are buzzing with activity.
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10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 11, 2017
Each time I see a rail, it confounds the conventional wisdom that these are secretive, crepuscular birds. During a recent walk, I brought along my wife instead of my binoculars and camera. This proved to be a mistake in so many ways. The Lady Gannet is given to chat and can be quite distracting with her monologues on kitchen flooring and the virtues of eggshell paint.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
Northern Cardinals are known for their plumage. Bold red or subtle pink and brown, on a background of snow or new leaves, their beauty is for the eye. Their song which is penetrating and distinctive and sort of resembles a less-obnoxious car alarm, is not as often remarked upon. Right now, though, I’m excited about cardinal song. Because they’ve started singing right on cue and the days grow longer.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
While much of the attention that Africa’s tourism industry gets is for its (deservedly) popular national parks and game reserves, a lot of wildlife viewing is possible away from the big name places. Many countries have private reserves and concessions, run for tourism or hunting, that provide outstanding wildlife watching opportunities. I had the amazing opportunity to visit one last year as the guest of a friend of mine who is a shareholder (not what you know but who!).
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 7, 2017
“Well, darn it,” I thought to myself as I stepped out of the office to face a line of traffic. I had big plans to go to the gym before meeting my husband for dinner, and a car accident promised a long wait if I dared get into my car (trust me, I had more sympathy for those in the accident than I did for my schedule). Exercise-wise, I had other options as I work right next to the beach, and I slipped on my walking shoes to take a stroll down the sand.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 27, 2017
Another weekend, another opportunity to advance your causes, goals, and bird lists. How did that work out for you this weekend? With winter on the wane, my chance to visit with our local Short-eared Owls seemed to be slipping away, so I rectified that with a quick sundown sojourn. Corey spent Saturday journeying back to New York from the Bahamas and most of Sunday recovering.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 26, 2017
During our visit to the UK last year we were able to make two visits to Spurn National Nature Reserve and this area is only 27km (16.8 miles) from my parents’ home in a straight line, but due to the Humber River flowing in between it does take about 90 minutes to get there via the Humber Bridge and then travelling through Hull and numerous small villages to get there.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 25, 2017
The Western Reef-Heron , Egretta gularis, sits neatly between Little Egret and Snowy Egret in Clements taxanomic checklist. The slim, elegant, white egrets are very similar and operate in similar niches, but in opposite hemispheres. The Reef-Heron is chunkier and di-morphic, so it was unexpected to find it separating the two close cousins. There is a dark and light morph.
4 The Love Of Animals
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
Petplan’s Pup-nosticators are back at it. After having a successful run during the NFL playoffs, when they went 7-4 in game predictions and more importantly all puppies were adopted, they are now tackling this weekend’s Academy Awards (Sunday, February 26).
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 22, 2017
Last Sunday was my lovely wife’s birthday, so the decision on what to do for the day was entirely up to her. Her decision was to go for a ride, explore some of the remote desert roads that we had not traveled yet. She even mentioned that we might be able to find a new birding hot spot or two. Now you have to understand, Jeanne has been relegated to being “A Birders Wife” Not that she has a problem with the amount of time that I dedicate to birding, which has become quite consid
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 18, 2017
Costa Rica is known for its quetzales, many hummingbirds, beautiful tanagers, and a host of other tropical birdies not found back at the home patch. That’s of course why most birders visit Costa Rica and rightly so. However, for a local birder who can’t help but take part in a permanent hustle to boost the year list, you gotta look for more than the resident eye candy species.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
There’s lots of disheartening stuff going on in the bird world this week, so let’s start with some love in the air, in honor of Valentine’s Day: An avian version of “The Dating Game” at a Chicago-area zoo aims to reveal how best to manage mating in captivity. New research in The Auk suggests that small drones may be a good way to count songbirds. Bad news: The massive Common Murre die-off along the U.S. and Canadian West Coasts last year appears to be caused by warmer-than-usual water which de
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Now that we have returned to our adopted home of La Paz, Mexico, our bones are starting to thaw out from the trip to chilly Seattle. Last Saturday, I was walking around the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, on a cloudy, gray 28F morning. One week later, I am strolling thru the Baja Sur Cactus Sanctuary, with a much more comfortable, sunny 86 degrees.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 12, 2017
The second weekend of February offers much to bird lovers and love birds alike. Hope you made the best of it! We birders tend to be excellent at making the best of what others might consider bad situations. For example, when life gives me hundreds of boring gulls, I try to make at least one of them a less boring gull. I thought I’d have to settle for a surprising number of Great Black-backed Gulls amidst flocks of Ring-billed , but for once in a very, very long time, I pulled a white-winge
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 8, 2017
Let us no more speak of this week’s extraordinary failure by a cast of Falcons to finish off their prey. Instead, we’ve got other bird news to cheer us up (or at least take our minds off avian’s inexplicable inability to capture U.S. sports championships ). Breeding bird surveys appears to show the resplendent Allen’s Hummingbird (like Corey’s capture, above) in decline—but not in Southern California, where examination of eBird data reveals that members of a residential population appear to
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 5, 2017
Yes, here it is, another attempt at keeping a year list. I started keeping year lists – not just blogging about them but really keeping track of what I see each year – as late as 2012, roughly 30 years into my birding career. Back then, in 2012, the motivation was to have something nice to blog about and to show Corey how the cow eats the cabbage since he was seeing too many good species too easily.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 4, 2017
I reside in Costa Rica, the country is roughly the same size as West Virginia, but I rarely make it to some parts of this birdy nation. In large part, my lack of full birding national coverage stems from another feature shared with the state that harbors the New River gorge, and one that helped create conditions that can result in mega diversity. Although points between A and B might be a short distance, the near constant range of ravines, gorges, ridges, and mountains tend to turn those travel
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