10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

Islands, for various reasons, experience more extinctions than continents (with Africa being the only continent not suffering a bird extinction!). As you can imagine, I was champing at the bit to get to this lost paradise and when I finally obtained the necessary permissions in 2008, it didn’t fail to astonish!

Madagascar 246

Madagascar Lemurs 2006 Owls 246

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 22, 2015

The closer one raises her head, than lies back. The Little Egret walks in front of her, a dozen Lesser Whistling Ducks flies noisily low above water and through a flooded grass wades one Black-winged Stilt. Telia yawns, raises and sprays her urine on a dead tree stump, marking her territory. These are my first wild tigers ever!

Tigers 252

Tigers India Killing 2012 252

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 21, 2014

The ugly truth is that this stuff doesn’t usually go public in any big way, but the birding record is filled with references to sketchy sightings, lists that are looked upon with raised eyebrows, and even a few cases of outright fraud. We are not immune. What happens if you get caught. It’s your reputation.

Raleigh 220

Raleigh 2008 Rights Raised 220

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 4, 2016

The authors themselves–Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop, and David Tipling–collectively have 100s of years of birding and photographic experience. I imagine that it’s a product of the authors’ concerns, but I don’t think it contributes to identification skills or knowledge base.

Ireland 150

Ireland Birds Groups Falcons 150

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2014

It confirms many of the once-radical notions put forward or refined by Shannon Hackett and her colleagues in 2008, and several since, and it proposes solutions to some of the most deeply unresolved questions about how major bird groups are related to each other. ( In 2008, Nick Sly published a review of Hackett et al. This is why.

Family 279

Family Birds Parrots 2014 279