10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 27, 2019

October birding can either surprise us or confirm our worst suspicions. Lousy winds led to a lousy take, but we did happen upon a raft of waterfowl sheltering from rough weather. Lousy winds led to a lousy take, but we did happen upon a raft of waterfowl sheltering from rough weather. What was your best bird of the weekend?

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2019 Shelters Birds Experience 108

10,000 Birds

JUNE 10, 2020

And I love making my little garden (some 1400 square feet) more attractive to birds. But I would never have imagined how important it would be to my emotional well-being to have a bird-friendly garden during lockdown. In recent years, I have moved much more in the direction of plants that attract birds.

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Birds Woodpeckers Madagascar Nashville 155

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Whiskey Month at Birds and Booze: After going on hiatus last year, Birds and Booze’s Whiskey Month at 10,000 Birds is back and setting its sights on whiskeys all month long this February. Illustration of a Short-eared Owl from The Birds of Great Britain (1873) by English ornithologist John Gould (1804-1881).

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Owls New York New York City Cuba 206

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 8, 2013

The weather outside is frightful, but winter birds are so delightful… guess that’s as good a reason as any to brave the cold. Alas, I had no time outdoors this weekend, which leaves House Sparrows sheltering a giant wreath as my Best Bird of the Weekend. What was your best bird of the weekend? How about you?

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2013 ALA United States North America 161

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 15, 2013

To all you hardy naturalists who have already logged Christmas Bird Count hours in service to citizen science, I salute you! In the face of endless snow, all I want to do is seek shelter, warmth, and booze. Those of you willing to eschew creature comforts to tally birds across your ice-rimed count circles are my heroes.

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2013 Shelters Birds Science 164

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2014

What happens when you visit one of the best birdwatching sites in the region with the highest number of endemic bird species in the Americas in the world’s birdiest country? The area is known for a military base, the legendary Montezuma Lodge, and a boatload of birds. Hope that you’re as fortunate to go birding with Leo!

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Colombia Birds South America America 263

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 27, 2018

Lacking the benefit of heated shelters, birds must heed that warning or perish. This is why the Yellow Warblers and Baltimore Orioles of summer don’t linger to experience October 31st, and even late fall migrants like kinglets and sparrows move to slightly warmer regions. These are the winners: BEST COSTUMES.

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Costa Rica Bats Birds Falcons 160

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2017

Birds begin to filter down through this southern part of Central America by August but the biggest avian movement happens during the third and final weeks of October. Most of them fly on the Caribbean side, especially along the coast south of Limon, and that’s why I guided the Birding Club of Costa Rica down that way this past weekend.

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Costa Rica Birds Parrots Farming 157

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

An unfortunate side effect of birding in the developing world, is the amount of habitat destruction you are likely to see. The neighbors had advised me, from experience, that planting trees without excluding the local free-ranging livestock would be an exercise in futility: first challenge overcome.)

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ALA 2016 Free Range Livestock 191

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 15, 2018

This is her first contribution to 10,000 Birds. Birdwatching is a hobby that many people enjoy, and it’s one that you can experience year-round. With the right amount of food, shelter, water and areas for birds to raise their babies, you can transform your backyard into a birdwatching paradise. Decrease Your Lawn.

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Shelters Wildlife Protection Sanctuary 118

10,000 Birds

JUNE 27, 2011

Up to that point, I’d offered Great Reasons to Become A Bird Watcher in an effort to encourage the uninitiated to try bird watching. Bird watching sounds simple, but for the beginner it’s anything but. Here are three simple steps to starting bird watching the right way: 1.

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Birds United States 2006 Breeders 199

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 4, 2014

This past weekend I was disconnected from the internet, stuck in the woods without electricity, reduced to sleeping in a shelter made of fabric, and cooked meals over an open fire. Here a fledgling Chipping Sparrow , which is one of those confusing, streaky, brown birds, gets stuffed by an adult. How cute is this? Mom has a bug!

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New York Cooking Chipmunks Owls 174

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 11, 2017

From spring hole to spring hole we slowly moved, our captain providing running commentary on the number of gallons flowing from Silver Springs, the number of movies that had been shot here, and the wildlife seeking shelter within the cool waters. Quite the underwater expedition!

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Florida Fish Turtles Shelters 100

10,000 Birds

MAY 3, 2022

It stops those thousands of migrating birds flying across the Gulf of Mexico and directs them right onto the trees, fields, sanctuaries, beaches along the Bolivar Peninsula, where they hopefully find food and fresh water. And us, the birders who travel here from March to May to worship the birds as they seek to survive.

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Houston Texas Sanctuary Sparrows 209

10,000 Birds

APRIL 23, 2013

One of the sheltered bays on Isla Isabel. Lastly, due to its previous inaccessibility to humans and the absence of natural predators, the wildlife is bizarrely unafraid of humans, allowing for a truly unforgettable experience. The boat-trip over to the island is far from uneventful and the pelagic birding is very rewarding.

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Whales Whaling Sharks Marine Life 261

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

It is an odd time of year to travel in the Kimberley, especially with a tent, but we had the opportunity to experience the flooded lands and the different birds that make the area home at this time of year. It is lovely to see such beautiful birds in such a lush green environment at this time of year.

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Family Australia Shelters Owls 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2014

Despite spending my fair share of soggy birding days in the tropics, I hadn’t realized just how much hummingbirds do love the rain until a recent experience at the Catarata del Toro , central Costa Rica. But did that stop us from birding? The Catarata del Toro on a sunny day.

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Costa Rica Bears Shelters Experience 157

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 17, 2016

One of the most camouflaged birds in Australia is the Tawny Frogmouth and we often hear them at night when we are camping in the bush, but the chance of seeing them is less likely. The dam was very full and there were numerous species of birds present. At the base of where the leaves started there was a bird.

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Shelters Geese Australia 2010 100

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Pelagic birding off the Atlantic coast of Florida can be a frustrating experience, usually involving long waits of up to an hour or more interspersed with brief flurries of activity — a far cry from pelagic birding off of coasts blessed with cold water currents and nutrient rich upwelling such as California, southeast Australia, and Peru.

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Florida United States Fish 2005 164

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

Here are some of the experiences of the Pied Oystercatcher chick on Cable Beach in the last 4 weeks. There’s a lot more feeding and growth to do before this precious bird is safe from predators, but I thought you might like to see the progress so far.

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Family Eggs 2007 2008 187

10,000 Birds

APRIL 28, 2024

There are a few spectacles in the birding community that are high energy, happen quickly, and is worth any effort to experience it. One such experience is a bird grounding event, sometimes called a fallout. However, if the wind blows in from the north, then these poor little birds have much more of a struggle.

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Texas Alabama Alligators Nashville 206

10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2015

Danum Valley is the finest birding location I have ever been to. And places I have seen more birds. But a a package, if I had to rate the best places I’ve ever been birding, the only place I can think that comes close is Mweya, in Uganda, or maybe Tikal, in Guatemala. There are, certainly, places I’ve enjoyed more.

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Lemurs Family Rhinoceros Fish 158

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2023

I’ve been fortunate to encounter many owls in my birding life, sometimes because I’m looking for them, sometimes happily by happenstance. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. What the Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds is a joyous, fascinating read.

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Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 209

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

All twitchers will experience it at some stage or another. For those that might not fully comprehend, the birding slang-term to “dip” or to “dip out on” a bird is to go looking for a particular species and not find it. That bird can then be referred to as a”dip”, the noun version of the word.

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Norway Delaware Pennsylvania Philadelphia 229

10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2015

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge : Open to migratory bird hunting (youth only). The Refuge is now home to nearly 200 species of birds, over 50 species of mammals, 25 species of reptiles and amphibians, and a wide variety of insects, fish and plants. This is an Urban Refuge ! Why would you open it up to hunting?

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Fish Wildlife Hunting Game 143

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

and Canadian birding friends: I feel your pain. What my previous experience had not prepared me for, was that this summer I would see many of those species for the first time all at once. We are in the middle of our monsoon season, and I had to repeatedly find shelter from brief midday showers. appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

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Mexico Nashville Virginia Shelters 169

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

The experience was marvelous — but it also weighed heavily on me. That’s because I’d already seen the conclusions contained in a study that Audubon (my employer) was preparing to release, a study about birds and climate change. Birds are finely tuned to the climatic conditions that support them.

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Species Science Los Angeles 2000 175

10,000 Birds

JUNE 26, 2018

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 may sound familiar, it was also the home of one of our most famous extinct birds—the Dodo. Don’t these birds care about propagating their species? Horses bolted.

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Mauritius Stud Zoos Eggs 101

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2012

Corey was lucky enough to meet Carlos while birding in Ecuador , where Carlos was dragooned into accompanying the horde of Queens birders for the day, an encounter that somehow didn’t turn him off of all things New York. If you have been out birding in southeast Florida there is a good chance that you have run into him in the field.

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Florida Miami Cuba Bahamas 158

10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2015

With only a few days to bird together before we came home we had to ignore the weather and head out wrapped up and hope the promised wet weather would not catch us out! We walked along the coastal trail rather than along the promenade or beach, because that way we were sheltered from the fine drizzle that soon reached us.

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Pelicans Shelters Tigers Protection 155

10,000 Birds

APRIL 10, 2011

The male bird has the “red cap&# more than the female during the breeding season and is believed to take less interest in the nesting. It is not uncommon to experience this quite by accident due to the fact that the nests are so well camouflaged. If you follow the bird you know you will not accidentally stand on any eggs.

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Eggs Family Breeding Protection 162

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2013

Most people have heard of Lake Eyre , which is well-known for the variety of bird life on years that it floods. It appeared that Lake Bindegolly National Park could also offer us the same birding opportunities if there was water present. We carried ample water and spent 4 hours walking and birding. Birds at Lake Bindegolly.

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Feral Pelicans Ducks Pigs 147

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Birds fascinate us for many reasons. The migration stories of many of those birds is another. Or at stories of a bird like Red Knot B95, twenty-one years old and logging miles that could take it to the moon, and half way back. It is a 15,000 km round trip, for a bird that only typically weighs in at about 28 grams, or an ounce.

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Africa Somalia North America Nigeria 195

10,000 Birds

JULY 31, 2013

This scraggly collection of islands and deep long bays forms the tip of South Island closest to to North Island, but till this point my only experience of the area had been the long passage down Queen Charlotte Sound to reach the ferry terminal of Picton. That isn’t to say we didn’t see any birds.

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New Zealand Charlotte Hunting Family 164