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A Gentlemen’s Big Day’s Birding

10,000 Birds

In my younger days I was very keen on what is generally known as Big Day Birding, or trying to see as many species of birds as possible in one day. Called The Big Bird Race , it tells the story of how my team, representing Country Life magazine , recorded 155 species in 24 hours in East Anglia (Suffolk and Norfolk).

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Birding crème de la crème: Africa – Ngorongoro Crater to Queen Elizabeth II National Park

10,000 Birds

This is the second post in the Birding crème de la crème series (the first, focused on southern Asia, is here ). The bird-richest region of Africa is its equatorial East: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi (unlike the rest, the last one, Burundi, is politically unstable and not recommendable). 3 Lake Manyara NP 573 sp.

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Flights of Passage: a book review

10,000 Birds

Last year there was a spate of books specifically about bird “behavior” – though one might well say that every book about birds, from field guides on up, is about behavior in some way or another. The page or two of text for each bird has some good stuff, not all pertaining to migration. A “broad spectrum,” indeed.

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The Metamorphosis

10,000 Birds

It must indeed have been a bit kafkaesque for a bird that is clearly primarily purple to wake up one morning, see itself in the mirror and learn that it is now a Grey-headed Swamphen. In 2013, it was even included in the birdwatching list of the American Birding Association. The post The Metamorphosis appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

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Pink in Africa

10,000 Birds

Definitely my personal favorite of Africa’s pink birds is the delicate Pink-throated Twinspot. Pink-backed Pelican by Markus Lilje/Rockjumper Birding Tours. Great White Pelicans showing the pink flush of breeding plumage. A pair of Pink-breasted Lark by Markus Lilje/Rockjumper Birding Tours. Pink-throated Twinspot.

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15 expat-friendly countries for a birder to move to

10,000 Birds

And where all those birds are? This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. And it raises a question: if all the birds are having a party over there, am I in the wrong spot? I am talking 600 or 700+ bird species.

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Meet Suliformes, one of the newest orders of birds

10,000 Birds

Brown Pelicans , and the northernmost Brown Booby breeding colony on this side of the Pacific. And, the birds are awesome. Ringer Anhingas and darters , cormorants and shags , frigatebirds , gannets and boobies , pelicans , and the tropicbirds all share a characteristic found in no other living bird: Their feet are totipalmate.

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