10,000 Birds

JULY 8, 2018

July often means travel, which sometimes means tourist attractions, which occasionally means exotic or introduced bird species. We may know these birds well, but should we love them? The reason I ask is because my family and I visited the Bronx Zoo this weekend. What was your best bird of the weekend? Following me here?

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2018 Zoos Birds Raised 100

10,000 Birds

JUNE 26, 2018

Pink Pigeons were featured on episode four of the second season of The Zoo , the excellent television series about The Bronx Zoo,* and their story was disturbing. A bit of background: Pink Pigeons are medium-sized, pink/gray/ brown birds found on the island of Mauritius, Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar.

Mauritius 102

Mauritius Stud Zoos Eggs 102

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

School either just started or is starting soon, weather in most places simply demands grilling, and birds are on the wing. I wish I could count the uncharacteristically confiding Sunbittern at the Toronto Zoo, but that species continues to elude me in its natural range. What was your best bird of the weekend? How about you?

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2015 Zoos Birds Canada 154

10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2020

Faithful 10,000 Birds readers will remember Suzie as our wildlife rehabilitation beat writer. Suzie wrote about her experiences as a bird rehabber in Flyaway: How A Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings (2009) and used those experiences as the source for her fictional children’s book, Hawk Hill (1996).

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Bald Eagle Eagles Wildlife 264

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 16, 2019

But Friday, 6 December, was the first day of the African Birding Expo and we knew that sleeping in wasn’t an option because the afternoon would be spent doing expo events and we wanted to get some time to go birding. Herbert is the driving force behind the African Birding Expo and essentially the king of Ugandan birding.

Uganda 237

Uganda Zoos New York Experience 237

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2020

The NYC owls have little to do with the book in front of me except that it too is about birds and people. The 26 essays in When Birds Are Near are all about the real-life and emotional spaces where people overlap with birds. The essays range widely in place, bird, and voice, though the emphasis is on the North American.

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New York City Birds Owls Fox 194

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

In August, we took a family trip to beautiful San Diego, seeing SeaWorld , LegoLand , and the San Diego Zoo. The boat is called the Legacy and it is an 80 foot whale watching vessel that generally seats 115, but takes about 70 for birding trips. If I saw that bird, I did not appreciate it, so it is not on my list.

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San Diego Los Angeles Cooking North Carolina 147

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 17, 2023

An organization called the Carolina Avian Research and Education states that “if you google the top ten most beautiful birds in the world, it [the Golden Pheasant ] always makes the list.” It turns out the pandas are not very interested in Golden Pheasants despite their position among the top 10 most beautiful bird species.

Pandas 130

Pandas Research Phoenix Science 130

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 16, 2011

He lost nearly a day off of his trip but I am sure that he managed to see some birds once he arrived. Let’s assume that he saw something delightful and tropical like, say, the national bird of Costa Rica. Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed.

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Costa Rica New York City Atlanta 2011 178

10,000 Birds

MARCH 12, 2011

As part of the Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil giveaway we asked readers of 10,000 Birds to name the bird in Brazil that they would like to see more than any other species. It is a really neat bird that I have not seen before. It would mean that I was birding in a really cool place! Come quickly!”

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Brazil 2011 Birds Wildlife 212

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2019

For many folks who live in places with cold winters, toucans are the birds on cereal boxes. It was all too easy to look at that natural cartoon of a bird and leave it as that; some funny looking caricature of a supposed wild bird because really, how could such a strange thing exist? Yes, this bird acts like a jay.

Costa Rica 182

Costa Rica Panama Eating Eggs South America 182

10,000 Birds

JULY 19, 2013

This is a shame, because were the text less verbose, I could see the book appealing to a younger audience with more patience for the basic, the obvious, and the odd passage of imaginary dialogue between birds. This is a pretty good model of the modern environmental ethic of self-restraint and respectful watching.

Stray Cat 171

Stray Cat Stray Zoos Owls 171

10,000 Birds

JUNE 3, 2014

Most of the books about extinction, including Fuller’s Extinct Birds (now, ironically, out of print), describe what was lost and look for explanations, scientifically and historically. The idea of Lost Animals was conceived after the publication of Extinct Birds (2001), a 400-page, four-pound book on 75 extinct species.

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Animal Mammals Hawaii Dolphins 269

10,000 Birds

JULY 10, 2012

Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, experts have determined that the current rate of bird extinction is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times the background rate. Globally, 1,313 bird species of a total of count of 10,064 are threatened, a frightening 13% of the total.

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Endangered Species Species South Africa Morocco 196

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2011

With only two islands the population was vulnerable to one-off events, so some birds were taken into captivity with the intention of creating new populations in other secure locations. These three birds represent at least 1% of the world population of this species! A female preens her throat An immature. New bands are itchy!

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New Zealand Penguins Endangered Species Species 162

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 19, 2012

No matter, the warm fire and comforts of home are nice, as is the winter birding here. On the way I managed to sneak in a manic day of birding in and around the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. So much birding was squeezed into this day that I have had to break it up into two posts! If you have two days there are even more options.

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Thailand New Zealand Terrapins Asia 154

10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2017

With enough planning, you can enjoy a family-friendly, bird-rich vacation in the Panama Canal zone. Any dedicated birder visiting Panama City should first consider the Canopy Tower , one of the most important and beloved birding lodges in the Americas. Despite the golf course, this place host all manner of birds and mammals.

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Panama 2017 Monkeys Family 100

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2015

They are software mascots, cartoon characters, animated film dancers, children’s book heroes, zoo celebrities, and documentary film stars. There is also a great deal of biological and ecological information encapsulated within De Roy’s experiences. That’s a lot of books about a bird family that cannot fly.

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Penguins New Zealand South Africa Albatross 205

10,000 Birds

MARCH 7, 2015

Fortunately, I realized that this wacky jaunt from one side of the mountains to the other and back up again would involve more driving than birding so we opted for splitting that route into a pair of days. The afternoon was then dedicated to looking for flowering trees and bushes on the road next to Carara National Park.

Costa Rica 211

Costa Rica San Jose Species Owls 211

10,000 Birds

JUNE 29, 2011

The Gods of Birding, being both capricious and wrathful, decided to punish my insolence by washing up an Emperor Penguin on the coasts of the island upon which I make my home. Any given area has a general set of birds you might expect to see in it. I’d rather see a bird where it belongs. It’s actually kind of sad.

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Penguins New Zealand Zoos Birds 165

10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2012

Furthermore we have another very special stork-like bird, the regal Shoebill , previously known as the Whale-headed Stork but now placed in its own family. Further to the east, Asian Openbill displays the same special feature but is mostly a white plumaged bird.

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Africa Tanzania South Africa Uganda 244

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 22, 2015

She has grown up in the reserve and has no experience of the environment of which tourists would not be a permanent, however boring part of. During 1990s, the South China Tiger became extinct in the wild (some still survive in zoos) and the number of extinct races reached four. Telia, copyright © Nitin Bhardwaj.

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Tigers India Killing 2012 250

4 The Love Of Animals

MARCH 17, 2011

Grief, friendship, gratitude, wonder, and other things we animals experience. Donna Fernandes, president of the Buffalo Zoo, witnessed a wake for a female gorilla, Babs, who had died of cancer at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo. Waterfall Dances: Do animals have spiritual experiences? by Marc Bekoff. Empathy Among Elephants.

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Emotional Animal Whales Whaling 100