10,000 Birds

MAY 26, 2015

Timothy Barksdale is a birder/biologist turned filmmaker , passionately pursuing birds with a television camera for the last 24 years. His work is the foundation of the Macaulay Library video collection. Tim’s involvement with birds began very early and has led him to his passion for conservation through television. “No matter how many birds you see, unless your story is about how we are going to save habitat & birds, everything else is irrelevant.

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4 The Love Of Animals

MAY 28, 2015

This weekend is the 2015 Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Western Regionals. The event features amazing athletic dogs from all backgrounds and breeds competing for the title of Purina Pro Plan IDC Champion. The dogs compete in several canine … Continue reading → The post 2015 Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Western Regionals appeared first on 4 The Love of Animals.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 1, 2015

This blog had 1,572 visits during April, which is an average of 52.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 57.3.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 22, 2015

What do you do when you – a citizen whose rights are protected by the U.S. government – are threatened with harm and/or death by armed criminals, and their apprehension is beyond the scope of the local police? You call the SWAT team. This is what we need for birds, whose rights as government-protected species are violated every day by free-roaming cats.

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Speaker: Steve Romanco

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10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2015

Dear Outdoor Cat Owners/Feral Cat Supporters, Does the photo above sicken you? It sickens me. I have been rescuing animals, both wild and domestic, since I was a child. I’ve rescued field mice to horses, and everything in between. I’m allergic to cats, but in my lifetime I’ve rescued five of them. The last one, who took up residence under my house on a frigid January afternoon, is now a friend’s happy, healthy indoor cat.

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Feral Cats Feral Cats Rescue 255

10,000 Birds

MAY 28, 2015

What do you think makes for a good bird hide? I have asked myself that same question many times over the last six months, until last week, when I was involved in an opening ceremony of five new bird hides at the Palic Lake, by the town of Subotica in the very north of Serbia, along the border with Hungary (all photos are from that area). As one of the consultants, I was part of the project from the beginning, so this was an icing on the cake – let’s see the final results.

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Serbia Birds Spain Hungary 243

10,000 Birds

MAY 10, 2015

Bird blogging in May always gives me the creeps. This ridiculous focus of the Birding Internet on North American wood-warblers is boring on a quiet day and highly annoying during peak migration. Birders in the Americas may not be aware of it, but from the higher ground of a European perspective the American “warblers” are intensely overrated.

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Sparrows Italy Asia Austria 215

10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2015

Birds are a subset of dinosaurs (See: Honey, I Shrunk the Dinosaurs. Prior to the extinction of all of the other dinosaurs, resulting from a cosmic impact event about 65 million years ago, the ancestors of modern birds were different from modern birds in many ways, but also similar in many ways. Many of those similarities were features that were actually found among many different dinosaurs, and used in ways that modern birds probably don’t use them (see: Birdish adaptations in dinosaurs: Aerost

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Alligators Chickens Research Birds 213

10,000 Birds

MAY 23, 2015

Singapore is sweltering its way through the monsoon. Heat and rain! Western Palearctic constitutions were not designed for these conditions, but here be Pink-necked Green Pigeons! The forest of theCentral Catchement Area is always a good place to find them, but they are common wherever there are fruiting trees. Now simply seeing green pigeons should be enough for anyone and if only the females show, then that is what you get, but the males include a pink neck and orange belly in their plumage to

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10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2015

It was birdy this morning on the banks of the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. I’d seen nine warbler species, Baltimore Orioles , a brilliant Scarlet Tanager , and what seemed like dozens of catbirds when an odd warbler caught my eye. The mystery bird looked something like a male Blackpoll Warbler in alternate (breeding) plumage, but it was yellow and black instead of black and white.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 30, 2015

There are lots of great birding sites in Costa Rica. In fact, go anywhere with a good amount of natural forest and the birding is gonna be good. Although most birders visiting Costa Rica hit pretty much the same sites, you could just as well go to a bunch of other, lesser known places with the same type of habitat and see most of the same birds. However, there are a few stand out sites here and there that are significantly better for species like Jabiru, Lance-tailed Manakin, and Nicaraguan Grac

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10,000 Birds

MAY 13, 2015

It can’t have escaped your notice lately that the blog has been overrun with articles about North America’s pseudo-warblers (or wood warblers, as some people, apparently unaware the name is taken by a proper European species, call them), and, even worse, no small amount of poetry. Thanks to a relatively feral childhood I have been left immune to the power of poetry, so I shall dismiss the poetry (a form of art comparable at best to interpretive dance) with a simple dismissive wave of

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10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2015

Tropical Storm Ana is the second earliest tropical storm to ever hit the Outer Banks. That’s interesting from a weather point of view, but not so good when it coincided with my graduation birding trip. Yes, I had officially graduated from the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment, and I was not going to let a little rain keep me from birding!

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10,000 Birds

MAY 5, 2015

There is GISS and there is Birding by Impression and they are not the same. GISS—general impression, size, shape—is intuitive, the result of an unconscious cognitive process derived from experience in the field. Birding by Impression is a conscious, deliberate method of identifying and recognizing birds based on the study and evaluation of “distinctive structural features and behavioral movements” and comparison with nearby and similar species.

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Experience

10,000 Birds

MAY 2, 2015

Birding opens numerous portals to knowledge. For example, if we had never been bitten by the birding bug, why on Earth would any of us try to figure out how to use our phones to take pictures through a telescope? Why would we bother learning about molt patterns? And why would we become amateur metreologists to predict where and when migrants birds would appear?

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10,000 Birds

MAY 9, 2015

I was flummoxed during a recent trip to Dallas as my company had changed our hotel and I had no idea where I was. Public transport from that part of town went nowhere near anywhere I wanted to be, so I slept in and took a mid-morning stroll around the neighbourhood. A pair of nesting Downy Woodpeckers were the highlight of the walk and I wanted to share them with you.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 20, 2015

Kingbirds are named for their aggressive nature. A Kingbird will defend its territory and nest against all predators, even to the point of “riding” the back of a flying hawk or crow, all the time pecking the back of its head 1. I witnessed this myself as a Western Kingbird ( Tyrannus verticalis ) that was possibly nesting in the bottom of an Osprey nest atop a soccer field light stand, took off after one of the Osprey nestlings on its maiden flight out of the nest.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 22, 2015

I have repeatedly declared my love for the Black-throated Blue Warbler. The Cape May Warbler , which I have added to my life list just this spring, is a stunning bird. Speaking of stunning, one of my best bird memories will always be the moment when I spotted a bright male Blackburnian Warbler glowing in the trees above a small pond on my parents’ farm, and another is my first childhood American Redstart flitting out to hawk insects above a stream.

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Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

10,000 Birds

MAY 31, 2015

Germany is currently experiencing something for which the English have no nice expression. We call it a “mouse gradation year” I was not able to find a catchy English term for “gradation year” – it’s what happens when a certain species showing population cycles reaches a peak year. On the other side, and to even the score, the German term “mouse” is rather unspecific compared to the repertoire the English-speakes have at their service.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2015

The splendors of spring migration, much like any inundation of sheer bliss, cannot be enjoyed without reservations. No matter how happy, how breathless, how driven we are to live these special moments to the hilt, one part of our perverse brains refuses to give over to ecstasy. Instead, it antagonizes us with petty worries. The biggest offender right now, even as you stand knee high in splendiferous songbirds, is likely this one depressing thought: migration may almost be over… Corey’

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10,000 Birds

MAY 6, 2015

From the 1913 USDA Farmers Bulletin #513, Fifty Common Birds of Farm and Orchard: “The bluebird is one of the most familiar tenants of the farm and dooryard. Its favorite nesting sites are crannies in the farm buildings or boxes made for its use or natural cavities in old apple trees. For rent the bird pays amply by destroying insects, and takes no toll from the farms crop.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 22, 2015

Memorial Day weekend offers Americans the best of two splendid seasons: an unofficial start to summer while spring migration is still flying. And we get three days in our weekend to celebrate. Live it up! Of course, some of us work on weekends, which means I can’t go as far afield as I’d like. Corey, on the other hand, is leaving all his professional cares behind as he takes to the Delaware coast.

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Delaware 2015 Birds 160

Speaker: Steve Romanco

10,000 Birds

MAY 12, 2015

Eastern Bluebird about to be banded. New York, I can say with certainty that you have chosen the perfect bird to represent your state. Though it took you until 1970 to designate your state bird – the last in the United States to do so – the Eastern Bluebird is beautiful, has a distinctive song, and is a great example of an environmental success story.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 5, 2015

The reservoir is huge. As we stood atop New Croton Dam, the calm water stretched endlessly in front of us, reflecting the blue sky and white clouds above. Only permitted rowboats are allowed in the reservoir’s waters, and Saturday afternoon nothing stirred to break the surface. That’s what we thought anyway, until the shiny heads of half-a-dozen Double-crested Cormorants emerged from the depths.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 11, 2015

Mid-May is one of those times of year where everything needs to take a backseat to birding. Are new migrants flooding your area? If so, we hope you’re getting out there to greet them! Corey saw 115 species of bird on Saturday alone so he had lots of to choose from in picking his Best Bird of the Weekend. And it was an easy choice because he had one standout bird, a Dickcissel that he found at Fort Tilden, a very unusual bird on the east coast in spring!

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10,000 Birds

MAY 26, 2015

After spending the weekend along the South Carolina coast, I can say with confidence that I saw dozens and dozens of South Carolina’s state bird: both the original and the current version. Though South Carolina first chose the Northern Mockingbird as its state bird, in 1948 the general assembly changed its mind. It turns out that the women’s clubs had already chosen the wren , but the legislature disagreed.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 24, 2015

Every May weekend means so much in the temperate climes. What makes this one so excellent is that the weekend technically hasn’t ended yet, at least in the U.S.! If you’re free of obligations today, make your Monday a fun day. I couldn’t explore nature as much as I’d have liked this weekend, but the Tree Swallows grooving to the great smells and sounds wafting from the Roc City Rib Fest were a treat to watch.

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Delaware 2015 Birds Experience 157

10,000 Birds

MAY 6, 2015

One of the joys of going home to my parent’s house in the UK is the array of bird feeders outside their kitchen. Standing with a mug of tea you can spend ours watching a continuous stream of woodpeckers, sparrows, buntings, finches, robins, thrushes, come and go as they grab beakfulls of seed, nuts, fat and insects. Being the only house in quite a large area gives them a great catchment area to draw birds from, and turns up more than the occasional rarity.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 3, 2015

I don’t know how the first weekend of May feels to those of you on the southern side of the equator, but round these parts, it felt like SPRING! Now all we need are a bevy of brightly colored songbirds… I made it up to the Braddock Bay hawkwatch platform at a time when the winds were not right for raptor migration. No worries though, since I spied a resident Northern Harrier working the reeds for prey.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 3, 2015

I’ve had a great time at Space Coast when I made the trip there three of the last four years and I am looking forward to the 19th Annual event, to be held 20-25 January, 2016. And now I’m looking forward to it even more with the keynote speakers who have been announced. Who wouldn’t want to hear Steve N. G. Howell, Greg Miller, Kevin Karlson, and Adam and Gina Kent?

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Speaker: cha cha dwyer

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