10,000 Birds

APRIL 22, 2024

The proximity to the Myanmar border is reflected in the presence of Burmese Shrikes here – on the wrong side of the border, but it is well known that this species has never been particularly good at geography. This photo explains the scientific species name haemacephalus (bloodheaded).

Myanmar 190

Myanmar Sri Lanka Nepal Birds 190

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 3, 2023

An impressive combination of research and artwork, combined with a pragmatic organization aimed towards quick identification, and education, Baby Bird Identification extends the frontiers of bird identification guides and is an important contribution to wildlife rehabilitation literature.

Wildlife Rehabilitation 270

Wildlife Rehabilitation Birds Family Collecting 270

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

Here are ten titles (it could have been more) selected for their uniqueness, excellence in writing and research, and giftability. For example, many photos are shot in poor light, obscuring the true colours. The guide covers 265 of Maine’s 461 bird species: common nesting species, common migrants, and wintering birds.

Sri Lanka 240

Sri Lanka Malaysia Birds Suriname 240

10,000 Birds

JULY 25, 2022

“A reading of recent research shows that Australian birds are more likely than most to eat sweet foods, live in complex societies, lead long lives, attack other birds, and be intelligent and loud.” ” (Tim Low, “Where Song Began”). While this may sound attractive at first, it also covers highly immoral behavior.

Birds 242

Birds Australia Ducks Mountain Goats 242

10,000 Birds

MAY 4, 2021

Marybeth learns as she birds, embraces listing goals as a means of engaging with community, unabashedly enjoys a little competition, struggles to balance her absolute joy in birding with unexpected, life-and-death family obligations. Adventures of a Louisiana Birder: One Year, Two Wings, Three Hundred Species. by Marybeth Lima.

Louisiana 264

Louisiana Species Mississippi Alabama 264

10,000 Birds

JUNE 20, 2022

Or would be, had I encountered more of them – so far, I have seen only a very small share of the approximately 233 woodpecker species, and got decent photos of an even smaller number – not much more than 10% of all of them. So, writing a post about them is easy.

Woodpeckers 245

Woodpeckers South Africa China Singapore 245

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 1, 2024

Personally, I wish the species the best of luck in this endeavor. (Of However, the fact that there are 30 subspecies seems to indicate that the species has a slightly overblown estimation of its own importance. This species has a relatively large number of calls – 12, to be specific, compared to the average of 7.6

Birds 204

Birds Research Science Europe 204

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Family-owned since 1972, the property’s first guests were volcanologists from the Smithsonian Institute. These researchers preferred this property for their research due to its close proximity to the Arenal Volcano and resplendent natural environment. Over time, the lodge grew into a haven for birders and naturalists alike.

Costa Rica 156

Costa Rica Reptiles Research Industry 156

10,000 Birds

MARCH 11, 2024

This is the home of the Rusty-naped Pitta , admittedly one of the less glamorous of the family, particularly the subspecies found in Yunnan, but still a nice sight and still a pitta. The scientific species name of the Rusty-naped Pitta oatesi honors Eugene William Oates (1845-1911), an English civil servant in India and naturalist.

Burma 214

Burma India Birds Indonesia 214

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

Penguins are cartoons, emoticons, animated films, children’s books (though owls really take first place here), sports teams, a book publisher, and a Batman villain (a rare example of penguin negativity, though Burgess Meredith did bring an endearing attitude to his 1960’s TV portrayal). © Otto Plantema, used with permission.

Penguins 278

Penguins Georgia New Zealand Albatross 278

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Decades later, Richard Pough’s Audubon Bird Guide, Eastern Land Birds (I happily own the 1948 edition) included nest and egg descriptions for each species as well. And photographs of feathers in the species accounts, which surprised me. Text retrieved from the Hathitrust Digital Library. The first is accomplished well.

Eggs 244

Eggs Birds United States Sparrows 244

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2023

Ackerman’s new book is about owls and owl research–the knowledge recently and currently being discovered through DNA analysis, new-tech tracking and monitoring, and old-fashioned fieldwork under the auspices of organizations like the Global Owl Project and the Owl Research Institute.

Owls 224

Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 224

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2020

It’s the bird family that most people don’t know is a bird family. The speaker turned out to be Tim Laman, and the topic was the incredible research he and Ed Scholes had spent years doing on birds of paradise in New Guinea. For many years it was thought the two bird families were related taxonomically.

Guinea 264

Guinea Birds Papua New Guinea Family 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

There is much to enjoy and appreciate here and I only wish I could have tested out some of these species accounts in pelagic waters before writing about them (sadly, the 10,000 Birds pelagic to Antarctica was canceled this year). SCOPE & SPECIES ORGANIZATION. It covers 434 species across 9 orders and 18 families of birds.

Albatross 279

Albatross Penguins Family Groups 279

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

An associated issue is that the Belize and Costa Rica guides share many of the same descriptions of species, written by Howell. Similarly, descriptions of species repeated across volumes do not lose their accuracy with each publication. Other species are splits and lumped and have had their names changed. Why are these issues?

Costa Rica 227

Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 227

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2021

There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. © 2021 Barbara Ballentine and Jeremy Hyman & Quarto Publishing.

North America 279

North America Research Birds Groups 279

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Even the Latin species name soror (“sister”) indicates the similarity to another pitta species (blue-naped). The eBird description of the Small Niltava starts with the surprisingly dull statement that “size distinguishes this species from other niltavas” Who would have thought.

China 242

China Birds Pythons Eagles 242

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

The latest edition of the Clements Checklist that I could find, last modified in August 2022, lists 965 species (a little more manageable!), including 355 endemics, 28 introduced species, 6 extinct species, and 77 globally threatened species. There are three to four species on each page, for the most part.

Australia 253

Australia Birds 2017 Groups 253

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2021

If you had your choice of one bird family to pursue, to seek out and observe and photograph and kvell over, which one would you choose? A passion for one bird family is also very useful. Hummingbird species, on the other hand, number in the hundreds. So, when British natural history writer Jon Dunn (not to be confused with U.S.

Costa Rica 264

Costa Rica Brazil Ecuador Bolivia 264

10,000 Birds

APRIL 4, 2022

According to an article in the Guardian , “nearly a quarter of black swan families are parented by homosexual couples, the males sometimes mating with a female simply to have a chick. On the other hand, given China’s low birth rate, they might serve as an example for the future. I thought I needed to mention this.

Birds 221

Birds China Pythons Breeding 221

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2023

And frankly, the genus name of Eurystomus , or “wide-mouthed”, does not sound that attractive either … But it is a beauty, the Oriental Dollarbird , in line with some of the other members of its family, the Rollers. The paper examines the bird species involved in these bird singing contests.

Malaysia 130

Malaysia Indonesia Lifestyle Japan 130

10,000 Birds

MARCH 2, 2023

Not a cover species The Black Kite is not actually black, but of course, misleading bird names are not exactly rare. No surprise then that the species is listed as Vulnerable. But then, sanity (or maybe respect for you, the reader) prevailed. Fortunately, they are quite common in Shanghai.

Birds 130

Birds Iraq China Ireland 130

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2021

Pough “with illustrations in color of every species” by Don Eckelberry, Doubleday, 1946. The National Audubon Society Birds of North America covers all species seen in mainland United States, Canada and Baja California. The press material says it covers over 800 species, so you know I had to do a count.

North America 279

North America America Birds California Condor 279

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

A logical and outstanding successor to The Genius of Birds (2016), Ackerman’s award-winning book about bird cognition, The Bird Way explores the diversity of bird behavior, the norm and the extremes, with an emphasis on cutting-edge research and findings that explode assumptions. Yet, the research projects are never the whole story.

Research 237

Research Birds Science Costa Rica 237

10,000 Birds

APRIL 8, 2024

This post starts like every birding blog post should start – by showcasing some bulbul species. The researchers speculate that this is because of the contrast against the green canopy background – an explanation that seems a bit spurious to me if applied to captive birds. Yes, I am joking.

Birds 149

Birds Owls China Research 149

10,000 Birds

MARCH 5, 2024

As the one example given in the book shows, John painted with broad, rough strokes. This may be before the Fairy-Wrens developed the ability to detect Cuckoo young in the nest, an ability recently described by ornithologists, or this family may be one of the 60% who don’t detect Cuckoo chicks. and died 15 August 1841.

Australia 202

Australia Birds Europe Collecting 202

10,000 Birds

MARCH 2, 2021

The guide has been expertly, even lovingly revised, expanded and updated (as the authors’ names indicate, this is largely a family affair). This second edition covers 685 species found in the continental U.S. and Canada, including some species as far north as Alaska, an increase over the 500 species covered in the first edition.

North America 270

North America America Species 2018 270

10,000 Birds

APRIL 22, 2021

Just last year, 5 new bird species and 5 new subspecies were discovered in a few short weeks of fieldwork on the islands of Taliabu, Peleng and Batudaka. In recent years Indonesia has been competing with the Andes as the region giving rise to the biggest number of undescribed bird species (naturally, all of them endemics).

Indonesia 264

Indonesia Timor Brunei Guinea 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 1, 2023

The official Ontario bird checklist, produced by Ontario Field Ornithologists , June 2022 listed 506 bird species**, putting it in the top tier of U.S. Small Species Accounts: Each species is allotted one page (with certain exceptions) offering basics–bird names and size, one or two photographs, and a one-paragraph description.

North America 224

North America Birds Owls America 224

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2015

Picidae, Woodpecker, is one of those charismatic bird families that everybody gets excited about. Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide is the first major guide to family Picidae in 20 years. The Species Accounts vary in length from one to three pages. The taxonomy is tricky, as Gorman notes in the introduction.

Woodpeckers 252

Woodpeckers 2002 Europe Research 252

10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2015

The feature distinguishes birds from other species; All birds have them, no other species do. Beaks vary across different kinds of birds, and this great diversity in beaks is part of the great diversity of the 10,000+ species of birds that exist today; Beaks thus facilitated the diversification of birds. So how did beaks evolve?

Alligators 223

Alligators Chickens Research Birds 223

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

There’s more, so much more, in this highly informative, detail-packed, research-based description of bird behavior. He aims to bring together all ornithological and ecological research on birds and winter the world over–not just in areas covered by snow–and summarize the findings in non-scientific language.

Research 176

Research Birds Hoarding Sweden 176

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

” And, if you don’t believe them, just take a look at some of the photographic comparisons of species they present: Or, of albatross plumages: Or, read about the taxonomic confusions and scientific lapses in research on petrels, Albatrosses, storm-petrels, and diving-petrels. Coverage of all families is not comprehensive.

Albatross 167

Albatross North America Birds Groups 167

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2020

That’s pretty amazing–Bolivia has more bird species than India! The source of this ranking, BirdLife International, lists Bolivia as currently having 1,439 bird species, including 18 breeding endemics. The guide covers 1,433 species, the number of birds documented at the end of 2014, the cutoff point for the book.

Bolivia 181

Bolivia Birds Brazil Switzerland 181

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 6, 2015

Here are some things I’ve learned from the Peterson Reference Guide to Owls of North America and the Caribbean by Scott Weidensaul: The Burrowing Owl is the only North American owl species where the male is larger than the female, albeit, only slightly larger. And the term is ‘non-reversed size dimorphism.’).

North America 233

North America Owls America Dominican Republic 233

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Both Puerto Rico and the USVI have active birding communities that are currently excluded from full membership in the ABA family. The USVI are smaller and have fewer habitats and, as a result, fewer bird species. All Americans Should be Full Members of the ABA Family. Because it is much larger, this will focus on Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico 164

Puerto Rico Virgin Islands Hawaii United States 164

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

This is a delightful book, large (8-1/2 by 11 inches), filled with Sibley’s distinctive artwork and an organized potpourri of research-based stories about the science behind bird’s lives. They portray the nesting cycles of Mallard, Red-tailed Hawk, and American Robin, illustrating the various ways in which birds create families.

2020 264

2020 Birds Groups North America 264