10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2011

And a very happy Masemas for anyone who observes my son Mason’s birthday (probably not as many as the last group!) My mother, mother-in-law, and godmother are all visiting right now. Blair Cessna Mar 17th, 2011 at 3:01 pm I do most of my birdwatching right from my computer chair looking out my den window to my back yard.

2011 150

2011 Deer Birds South Dakota 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 21, 2011

from left to right Fred, Mike, Isaac, Andrew, Gene (in back), Tom Though it was an absurdly long trip and the ratio of birding to driving was not ideal the twitch was well worth it. These Blasts From The Past Where Are You Birding This Third Weekend of March 2010? Wicked, right? Thanks for visiting! Hat-tip to Stella.

New York 200

New York Woodpeckers Jordan 2011 200

10,000 Birds

MARCH 20, 2011

By collecting data and following individual birds it is possible to provide data to both governments and environmental groups to help protect the habitat both here and overseas into the future. OpticsPlanet - Great prices on binoculars for birding , spotting scopes , telescopes , flashlights , compasses & more! Wicked, right?

2011 150

2011 Australia Deer China 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 11, 2011

Which, naturally, got me to thinking about the newly erected order Suliformes, a development I mentioned in my December column, 2010′s Top 10 Developments in Bird Taxonomy and Systematics , but which I thought deserved further examination, for it’s one of those stories that defines the era in which we are living and birding.

2011 154

2011 Pelicans Papua New Guinea Birds 154

10,000 Birds

MARCH 4, 2011

Gulls in Larnaca, taken 22/02/2010 by ©Stavros Christodoulides Recognizing that gull identification is confusing doesn’t help your average birdwatcher however. OpticsPlanet - Great prices on binoculars for birding , spotting scopes , telescopes , flashlights , compasses & more! Wicked, right? I am clearly not.

2011 157

2011 Cyprus Deer Species 157

10,000 Birds

MARCH 20, 2011

Over the winter, the universe lost four whooping cranes to what appears to be recreational shooting: three gunned down together in Georgia on December 30, 2010, and another in Alabama on January 28, 2011. That’s what you do with other game, right? But I do think this issue of hunting sandhill cranes goes beyond the right to hunt.

2011 243

2011 Hunting Kentucky Hunters 243

10,000 Birds

MARCH 14, 2011

One important reason is the wide discrepancy in mid-winter count survey numbers—in Tennessee those figures were 44,000 counted in 2010 versus only 12,000 counted in 2011. Ohio has tracked two families of their state-endangered breeding sandhill cranes and found them to have wintered over in Tennessee in 2010. Isn’t that neat?

2011 252

2011 Kentucky Tennessee Hunting 252