10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 12, 2015

Cover photo: Yellow-legged (left), Caspian Gull (right) – Courtesy of cro-ringing.blogspot.com. How to count tens of thousands of birds that are all white below and grey above? I mean, it is easy to count them all, but what I want are numbers of individual species within such flocks and not just numbers of them all together. I am an experienced bird counter, but until a few years ago, I was mostly counting waterfowl, where you can easily tell the species apart, even in large mixed flocks.

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Serbia 2015 Species Birds 248

4 The Love Of Animals

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Buy a treat and a dog in need gets one for free. It’s a simple, powerful message that is the driving force behind DOG for DOG; an all-natural line of dog food created right here in the USA. We are … Continue reading → The post DOG for DOG dog treats giveaway appeared first on 4 The Love of Animals.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 28, 2015

This blog is 12 years old today. Here is the first post. There have been 296,367 visits, which is an average of 24,697.2 visits per year, 67.6 visits per day, and 473.3 visits per week.

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Most birders in the northern hemisphere are familiar with the Marsh Hawk , an expected denizen of marshes, tundra, and grasslands across a huge swathe of the globe. Otherwise known as the Northern Harrier (in the Americas) or the Hen Harrier (in the English-speaking Old World), Circus cyaneus brings terror to voles and other small mammals as it courses low over open country, ready to plunge, talons-first, at the first sign of movement.

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Sparrows New York Mammals Owls 238

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

Cuba is on my mind. It’s probably on your mind too, especially if you live in the United States. 26 endemics! Bee Hummingbird, the smallest hummingbird in the world! Cuban Black Hawk, split in 2007 from Common Black Hawk! Fernandina’s Flicker, a tongue-twisting alliterative name for one of the most endangered woodpeckers in the world! Cuban Trogon, the national bird who wears the colors of the Cuban flag!

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 26, 2015

I think I was 19 when I made my first bucket list of things I’d like to do, from horse-back riding to sailing, rafting, caving, climbing… all sort of things Willie Garvin was good at (minus the knife throwing). Somewhere at the very back of the list was birdwatching. Why at the back? I knew nothing of it – but the fact that it had a geriatric image.

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Serbia Bosnia Research Lions 189

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

Taking up the pertinent question of how the newest form of recreational aviation technology affects avians is Liz Greene, who hails from the beautiful city of trees, Boise, Idaho. She’s a lover of all things geek and is happiest when cuddling with her dogs and catching up on the latest Marvel movies. You can follow her on Twitter @LizVGreene or dig deeper into her internal musings on InstantLo.

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

Created by Congress in 1965, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) was a bipartisan commitment to safeguard natural areas, water resources and our cultural heritage, and to provide recreation opportunities to all Americans. National parks like Rocky Mountain, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as national wildlife refuges, national forests, rivers and lakes, community parks, trails, and ball fields in every one of our 50 states were set aside for Americans to enjoy th

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Legislation Montana America Wyoming 173

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 28, 2015

Thanksgiving was celebrated a couple of days ago across the USA. In other words, millions of people got together with family and friends for a cozy day of mashed potatoes, gravy, apple pie, naps, football, and some serious turkeyliciousness. That last little bit is also why we call it “Turkey Day”! In Costa Rica, although I did spend a memorable one years ago in the Osa Peninsula where flocks of parrots flew into the mangroves while we feasted on turkey, pie, and the works, we have n

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Costa Rica Turkey Ecuador Hunting 169

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2015

You’d think that dressing in green to hide from predators inside a dense rainforest is as a strategy as plain as day, yet only a surprisingly limited number of bird species on Borneo have ventured down that evolutionary road. In fact, flipping through your field guide of choice will reveal a dominance of browns and an abundance of blues, but a bright green is hard to come by.

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Indonesia Birds Asia Groups 165

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

As I always do on the way home, following a short visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, I take in at least one of the National Wildlife Refuges (NWR) found in the Sacramento Valley. I usually stop at the two refuges that have easily accessed auto tour routes, the Sacramento NWR and Colusa NWR. California is blessed with 51 NWRs and Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), second only to North Dakota with 77.

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Wildlife San Francisco Sacramento North Dakota 158

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2015

Wood Sandpipers- Tringa glareola are a shorebird species that are found on inland fresh water rather than along the coast. At our local ephemeral lakes the Wood Sandpipers spread themselves around the muddy edges and feed when they return from the north each year. The number of Wood Sandpipers can reach close to one hundred when all the lakes are drying out and there is little choice over habitation.

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Australia Breeding Species Rights 155

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2015

The Andean Flamingo ( Phoenicopterus andinus ) is one of the three flamingos occurring in the high Andes of South America. It is the largest and easiest to identify in all age stages. It is also the rarest of the flamingos of living in the high Andean. In fact, the Andean Flamingo is regarded as the world’s rarest flamingo. The largest of the Andean flamingos is native to the wetlands and shallow alkaline lakes of the high Andes mountain range, from southern Perú to northwestern Argentina and no

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Chile Endangered Species Eggs Argentina 154

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 13, 2015

As my faithful readers know, I have a long-standing fascination with helping (and, at times, inadvertently confusing) interested non-birders – those who are entering the admittedly weird and wild world of birding for the first time. Lately this fascination has increased, not only because of my book project but because I’ve been invited by one group and another to speak to various audiences, from sixth-graders to adult learners, about getting started with birding.

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Owls Groups Birds 154

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 20, 2015

Question: What’s one of the best things about being a wildlife rehabilitator? Answer: The presents you get from friends who are trying to distract you from all the stress in your life. Case in point: Vino Vodka Vulture. My friend Jon Walsh is a lawyer, writer, sailor, hiker, and fix-it guy. Depending on the circumstances, he can either repair things or tear them down.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Wildlife Rights Birds 153

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

As an exercise in futility, few chores can rival deleting photographs to gain a bit of space on your hard drive. With memory so cheap these days it is a pursuit that will never repay you the time that might otherwise have been spent outdoors. However, the nights are closing in. My family have already grown bored of my presence this week and are asking when I will be going back to work.

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Blackbirds Hunting Raised Fish 153

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

If a bird were to sing “What I Did for Love,” from A Chorus Line , it wouldn’t warble about devoting itself to theater and dance. Although both of those talents come into play in avian mating. Which leads us to what some birds would do for love. Great T**s would likely boast about their loyalty. A new study out of Oxford University found that these birds will stick close with their mates, even if that means going hungry.

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Lovebirds Research Humane Species 150

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

I started birding in what must have been 1978. At the time, I didn’t really take note of the year because I was seven. Since then, I have pretty much lived for lifers. Each new bird has been and still is a major personal achievement, another goal made, and always cause for unquestionable personal celebration. It was that way for my first Indigo Bunting (a male that absorbed all light and sang in morning wet forests of northeastern Pennsylvania in 1979), and my first Brown Noddy seen from a

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Costa Rica Birds Pennsylvania North America 150

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 12, 2015

Is 10,000 Birds your favorite bird blog? We certainly hope so, not that we are insecure or anything. It’s just that Birdwatch Magazine is running its Birders’ Choice Awards 2015 and we are–for the first time in our 12-year history–on the ballot for Blog of the Year. The deadline for voting is coming quickly, so the time for action is now!

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2015 Birds Species 150

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 20, 2015

We’re getting close to Turkey Day here in the United States, but the birds you should focus on this weekend are wild and free. Yes, Wild Turkeys count, but that bottle of Wild Turkey on your shelf doesn’t! I’m hoping one of those Cave Swallows or Franklin’s Gulls invading New York cross my air space this weekend, as I won’t have time to seek them out.

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Turkey United States 2015 New York 146

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

I was laid out with a bad back last week, which didn’t really affect my birding as I wasn’t planning any at the time. But what happens when you’re on a trip and you can’t get out? I found out on my second day in Mkuze, a great game reserve in South Africa, earlier this year when on my first dark night, poor visibility, uneven ground and unsteady footing resulted in a twisted ankle and a day in camp keeping weight off it.

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South Africa Tortoises Woodpeckers Birds 145

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 17, 2015

Storms can be fierce on the barrier Islands along the Florida Panhandle. Hurricanes are a very real possibility, but even without events of that magnitude squalls and thunderstorms kick up high winds and waves that batter the shoreline. I’ve always wondered what the peeps and small shorebirds do during inclement weather, and in the last part of October I was able to see for myself.

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Florida Birds 145

Speaker: Steve Romanco

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2015

Every week, the winds carry the unexpected hither and yon. Were you hither? Were you yon? If so, we’d love to hear what you found there. Alas, the winds blew nothing exceptional my way. In fact, my weekend avifauna was so prosaic that a lone House Finch stood out as the most interesting sighting. Corey’s Best Bird of the Weekend was any of the four Cave Swallows he saw in Queens, part of an amazing invasion of the northeast by this species after sustained southwest winds for nearly a

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2015 ALA Birds Experience 145

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

Did you see any shorebirds on this fine November weekend? If so, be sure to submit your list for Wader Conservation World Watch ! I saw some shorebirds at Montezuma NWR on Saturday, but the refuge this time of year is all about waterfowl; I’ve never seen as many Northern Pintail in my life, not just at one time but literally in my entire life.

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2015 Birds Experience Experiments 145

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2015

Looking for reason to get out and look at birds this weekend? Why don’t you kick off Wader Conservation November with this weekend’s Wader Conservation World Watch ? Last year, more than 70 wader watchers from 19 countries submitted 58 lists tallying 118 species of waders and shorebirds, which represents about 50% of the world’s species.

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2015 Birds Species 145

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Most people I know focused this weekend on costumes, candy, and celebration of things dark, dead, or weird. Some folks, though, were able to balance the lure of the night with call of the wild. At least around here, nature lovers were rewarded by gorgeous fall weather. I couldn’t help but foray out to search out new arrivals. Looks like American Tree Sparrows , among my favorite winter birds, have returned!

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2015 New York Birds Sparrows 145

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

Back in August this year I let you all know of the current situation in regards to Pied Oystercatchers nesting along the 23 kilometres of beach that we monitor each year. We have continued to monitor the nest sites and the pairs of Pied Oystercatchers over the past few months and the birds are really having a tough year this year. Egg loss to predation has been extraordinarily bad this year and all of the nests mentioned in the last post were lost and all of the pairs of Pied Oystercatchers l

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

There’s a time, when you’ve been standing in the rain in the middle of a cow pasture in western North Carolina, amongst mud and cow dung and the unholy combination of the two, staring for the better part of an hour at an impossibly dense stand of brambles and shrub for a smallish streaky brown bird, that you begin to question your dedication to this birding thing.

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North Carolina Cows Collecting Birds 119

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 24, 2015

Though I have been birding for a few years now, I had only birded west of the Mississippi once before my recent trip to Austin, Texas. Given how far west I found myself, I was hoping for at least a handful of new birds. I didn’t realize how many new species I would see within the city itself! Austin is growing rapidly, someone on the plane telling me the city added over a hundred people every day.

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Austin Texas Birds Non Human 109

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

It is quite possible that I might have overlooked the White-tufted Grebe on my first sighting if I had not been primed to look for it. In silhouette it is very similar to the more familiar Eared Grebe. It rides high in the water and sports fluffy undertail coverts as well as the obvious “ear tufts”, but the Eared Grebe has golden yellow (not white) tufts and a slightly longer, thinner bill to distinguish between them.

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Argentina South America America Birds 102

Speaker: cha cha dwyer

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