article thumbnail

Birding Finland on the Fly

10,000 Birds

Joseph Chiera is a Masters student in Animal Behavior and Conservation at Hunter College in NYC and a “somewhat newbie” to birding. After taking an ornithology course last year, he was hooked and spends most of his free time birding or reading birding blogs. Of course, birding was on the itinerary!

Finland 166
article thumbnail

The Cry of the Curlew

10,000 Birds

Curlews are birds of serious conservation concern in the UK, with numbers falling sharply this century. Curlews are long-lived birds, so their decline is not always apparent, with pairs returning annually to their favoured nesting area, despite not having fledged any chicks for years. Males have noticeably shorter beaks.)

Fox 197
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

What the rings reveal

10,000 Birds

Most serious bird photographers dislike taking pictures of birds wearing rings (or what on the other side of the Atlantic you call bands). I can sympathise, as a shiny new ring, clamped to a bird’s leg, rarely enhances its portrait. The information I received didn’t indicate the age of the bird.

Lithuania 130
article thumbnail

Horrible Hybrids

10,000 Birds

On BirdTrack, the British equivalent of e-Bird, the list of birds provided does allow for Tufted Duck x Ferruginous Duck to be recorded, but not Tufted Duck x Pochard. However, there had been reports of a Scaup mixed in with the flock, which at first glance I thought this bird might be. My hunch was Tufted Duck x Pochard.

Geese 189
article thumbnail

How to find the Ural Owl in Serbia

10,000 Birds

The Ural Owl inhabits old and undisturbed boreal forests, in an unbroken belt from Sweden and Finland across Russia to Japan, and is rarely seen to the south, only here and there, in the Carpathians (Slovakia/Ukraine/Romania/eastern Serbia) and Dinaric Alps (Croatia/Bosnia/western Serbia). Two years ago I screamed “UralOwlUralOwlUralOwl!!!”

Serbia 245
article thumbnail

What is the State Bird of Alaska?

10,000 Birds

Though many people joke that the mosquito is the Alaskan state bird, in fact it is the much more pleasant Willow Ptarmigan. In 1955 – before Alaska was a state – the Territory’s leaders in charge of drafting a constitution allowed schoolchildren to choose what would eventually become the state bird.

Alaska 102
article thumbnail

The European Christmas Bird Count

10,000 Birds

The Christmas Bird Count was the answer. The IWC census starts from mid-January following the logic that it is the period when the birds have reached their wintering grounds and are rather static, so the chance of double-counting the same flock is minimal. But it is so frustrating to pass the birds by without IDing them!

Geese 146