10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 21, 2023

I understand there are still people out there who deny human-induced climate change. Our 2020 drought taught me that any body of water, no matter how small, might host these “drought refugees” in dry years. Perhaps those people have never had to personally experience increasingly erratic climate patterns.

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Ducks Mexico California Fish 130

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 28, 2019

For many women, pregnancy gives them a burst of energy, the joy of creating new life the boost they need to continue their daily activities while growing a human inside them. So cheers to 2020, and more birding adventures! Not so much. I did not fall into that category.

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Bald Eagle Alabama Kansas Florida 145

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

He’s the author of The New Neotropical Companion (2017, originally published in 1997), a must-read for any birder preparing to travel to Central and South America, the Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior (2020), and a long list of other books and articles. They complement Kricher’s text.,

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2006 Tortoises Sea Lions Sea Turtles 246

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2021

Pathfinder UK, 2020, 220 pp., What he calls “extreme birding” is part of his unique fun, as well – by that he means looking for lifers or other interesting birds while involved in such things as a firefight with the Taliban in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. More Birds Than Bullets: My Life With Birds. By Geoffrey McMullan. UK, $18.99

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Fox Kuwait Bosnia Afghanistan 175

10,000 Birds

MARCH 25, 2020

And here we are, in 2020, being told to shun human contact as much as possible. But if you can, do go out and look for a new, no-human patch. I did it because no one else had done it yet in my particular area. If I didn’t find my own birding sites, I would not have any birding sites. You never know what you may find!

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Birds Abandon Abandoning Abandonment 129

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2021

The six chapters that follow explore bird communication in mating; defending territory; rearing children; responding to predators; interacting with neighbors and functioning in large groups; and communicating successfully in a noisy human world. There is so much here! I do wish there was more about research on female bird song.

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North America Research Birds Groups 278

10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2020

To humans, birdsong is akin to Joycean language, isn’t it? 27, March 10, 2020. But to fully understand it, to be able to “read” it – well, that’s either impossible, or else takes years of dedicated ardor and study. And to follow Kroodsma’s suggested paths, all of them, might take you, not centuries, but surely years.

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Virginia Boston North America 2020 240

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 10, 2020

I dread to imagine what Yellow-billed Cuckoos from Illinois, Missouri, and elsewhere will find when they arrive on these wintering grounds in 2020. Us humans need that habitat too. All of these habitats are increasingly threatened by deforestation and massive fires fueled by climate change. Common Nighthawks.

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Costa Rica South America Colombia Paraguay 265

10,000 Birds

APRIL 5, 2022

There are many more factors than I imagined: compass errors, wind drift, overshooting, extreme weather and irruptions, natural dispersal, and human-driven vagrancy. Some birders may want to carefully read the chapter on human-driven vagrancy, which takes up the question of ship-assisted vagrancy. Next time, I’ll know why.

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Birds Compassion Eagles Science 258

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley. copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley. The longer Introduction lists and briefly summarizes topics covered in the Portfolio (evolution feathers, coloration, variation, senses, movement, physiology, migration, food and foraging, survival, social behavior, birds and humans, threats).

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2020 Birds Groups North America 263

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2023

It’s also about human-owl interaction on an individual level and a wider sociocultural level, and ultimately how we can use all this for habitat and bird conservation. As the names and habitats imply, not all owl species are alike, in behavior, adaptation, relationship to humans, and in how humans perceive them.

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Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 207

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia , one of the many fantastic characters is a rather human-like frog creature named Puddleglum. Once I got home and confirmed the species I had seen, I realized that my first-of-year Godwits, Black-bellied Plovers, the Vesper Sparrow, and a couple of Dunlins have brought my total species for 2020 to 301.

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2020 Ducks Sparrows 2019 248

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2021

There is a photo of him caring for a White-chinned Sapphire in the book, the only human pictured in Dunn’s 16-page collection of hummingbird photographs, and it is inspiring. A good part of The Glitter in the Green is devoted to the history of how hummingbirds have been treated and depicted and valued or not valued by human beings.

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10,000 Birds

JUNE 9, 2020

The authors are Bianca Lopez ( The New School ), Emily Minor ( University of Illinois at Chicago ), and Andrew Crooks ( George Mason University ), and the article is “ Insights into human-wildlife interactions in cities from bird sightings recorded online.”. Why are birds a good proxy for broader human-wildlife interactions?

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Chicago Research Illinois Michigan 267

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

But the cost of changing the installed hardware base and the human capital invested in QWERTY effectively precludes those alternatives. But in 2020, perhaps the app example is more relevant than the book or museum examples. Perhaps the value of stability in 2020 is less than it was in 1983. But maybe not.

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Birds Laws 2020 Jordan 234

10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2020

And don’t forget, I’m the one coming out of solitude and ready to rejoin humanity in March of 2020. Perch Press (March 24, 2020). So I can’t tell you how not to be distracted, but I’d sure like someone to tell me how not to be obsessive. What titles and/or authors on wildlife do you recommend to 10,000 Birds readers?

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Bald Eagle Eagles Wildlife 253

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

It’s all about the improbable intersection of human beings and Emperor Penguins, and if I can’t make it to an Emperor Penguin colony (highly unlikely), reading this book has been the next best thing. It’s part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific narrative, part prologue to making an argument for Antarctic conservation.

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Penguins Seals Leopards Research 154

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

And the most outlandish–Anayoliy, the sweet, strange hermit and Katkov, possibly the most bizarre, annoying field assistant of all time–are drawn with empathy and an urge to understand, an emphasis on the human and not the caricature. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2020, 368 pages. Who will play Slaght in the film?

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Owls Russia Fish Research 133

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2020

In “Birding in Traffic,” Jonathan Rosen, no stranger to making connections between birds and human elements as he did in “The Life of the Skies,” describes how he took the subway to Union Square Park to see a rare (for NYC) Scott’s Oriole. Press, 2020, 304p. Comstock Publishing/Cornell Univ.

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New York City Birds Owls Fox 184

10,000 Birds

JUNE 6, 2023

Reading this chapter, I thought back to the emotional conversations I, a white Jewish woman, had with birding friends back in May 2020, mostly online (remember, it was still the pandemic). It’s powerful writing. Shockingly, not everybody supported Chris. Some didn’t want to talk about racism and focused on the dog issues.

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Emotional Birds Minneapolis Nepal 222

10,000 Birds

MAY 15, 2023

I visited Tengchong in late 2020 and wrote about it – but I also went there earlier, in 2017, and this post shows some photos I took during that trip, along with the usual comments that seem to be much more about ridiculing my fellow humans (especially ornithologists and the like) than providing useful information on birds.

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China 2017 Birds Indonesia 179

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 9, 2020

We call this a “lump” But hey, this is 2020. I have never seen a “Brown-throated ” House Wren near human settlements. Now, splits are more likely to result from objective genetic studies. Two former species can also be joined into one, the same way. Do we really need to talk about sad events?).

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San Diego San Francisco Mexico Baltimore 174

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 1, 2016

Others, by their own admission, are Luddites and believe that the pinnacle of human technological achievement was reached on the day that man first bound a notebook in moleskin. This is not an exhaustive list as a few of the beats do not use compatible listing software, or have reservations about revealing sightings of sensitive birds.

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2016 Sanctuary Australia Ghana 154