10,000 Birds

MAY 20, 2021

It was an unexpected bird tour, without too much planning and aimed at a few target species, of which we saw most, but the main one eluded us… Early morning, leaving the last houses behind… and a Little Owl awaits us on a traffic sign. Red-footed Falcon by Martin Mecnarowski/Wikimedia Commons. Did I mention Great Bustards ?

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Serbia Birds Romania Eagles 258

10,000 Birds

JUNE 13, 2021

The bird is just chilling out, waiting for the urge to fly. The bird below is also waiting, but not to fly. One might assume this is a falconry bird, but it’s not. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of birds knows the efficiency and delicacy of their respiratory systems. Now imagine you have the lungs of a bird.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Tethering Giraffes Alabama 264

10,000 Birds

MAY 9, 2022

Harris’s are also, according to Cowan, smarter than other hawks; they hunt in packs and, for that reason, may welcome humans as hunting partners more so than other raptors. As Montgomery shows, falconry is different from any other human/animal interaction. We serve them.”.

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New Hampshire Chickens Hunting Falcons 239

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Birds of Belize by Steve N. Howell and Dale Dyer and Birds of Costa Rica by Dale Dyer and Steve N. Dale Dyer put in years working on his paintings for Birds of Central America , both in the field and in the museum. Two books, two authors, two countries bursting with neotropical avian diversity. Why are these issues?

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Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 236

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2022

I read Rodney Stotts’ Bird Brother in two days, as part of a National Audubon Society-wide collective of 250 staff members who received a copy of the book. This was the first bird we had seen while working on the tributary, and it had landed on a spot that we had cleaned up.” We were all quiet for a moment.

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Falcons Wildlife Collecting Owls 201

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

This was actually the place where the late Richard ffrench spent much of his time as a music teacher, amassing countless observations of birds that would later form the basis of one of the essential birding guides for Trinidad and Tobago. The subtle white edging to the gape of this bird indicates it is near breeding time.

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Trinidad Birds Parrots Falcons 231

10,000 Birds

JULY 9, 2022

They are places where we invest most of our birding time and rightly so; mature tropical forests are where we find the highest number of species. Tropical forest is a must but those mossy green mansions aren’t the only places where birds occur. Such field and edge birding becomes especially fun in urbanized areas.

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Costa Rica Farming Birds Sparrows 277

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

When looking for birds in Costa Rica, the Central Valley isn’t the first place that comes to mind. Tongues and patches of green space host birds but most birders leave as soon as they can. Why linger when you can go where the birding is better? I can’t blame them, I would too.

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Costa Rica Sparrows Birds Rodents 263

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

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Dissection Birds Research Europe 246

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 12, 2020

A generalist raptor that can keep on living in a human dominated landscape. Granted, the more urban, the less likely that a raptor can make it (except for maybe pigeon connoisseur Peregrine Falcons or garbage disposal Black Kites and vultures) but allow enough green space to persist and some raptor will usually find its place.

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Costa Rica Mice Arizona Squirrels 322

10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2015

At the request of blog management, I’m embarking on a series of posts on the names of birds. Since we’ve covered some generalities already, once a month I’ll be exploring how a species, genus, or family of birds got its name, and how those names fit in with our larger understanding of, and relationship with, birds.

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Falcons Eagles Meat Geese 260

10,000 Birds

MARCH 28, 2014

Via John of A DC Birding Blog , I ran across an article about a recent French study that suggests that urban birds may be changing looks in response to selective pressures caused by city life. Fortunately, it seems that many species of birds are willing to at least consider city life, if we’ll meet them halfway.

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DC Birds Falcons Humane 171

10,000 Birds

JUNE 14, 2011

One of the primary reasons that these hawks make such excellent falconry birds is because they are one of only two raptor species (the other is the Galapagos Hawk ) that hunt cooperatively. Consider the following quote, &# Falconry involves the use of birds of prey to kill other birds and animals for sport.

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League Against Cruel Sports Rabbits Falcons Hunting 270

10,000 Birds

MARCH 29, 2019

While the hunting of game with trained birds of prey can be a controversial topic among birders , falconry was a valuable early source of information on birds, and its history, culture, and imagery continue to fascinate bird lovers, as we shall see.

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2016 Portugal Falcons Japan 139

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 24, 2018

Eight days ago, on Sunday, 16 December, a whole big bunch of intrepid birders headed out across my fine home borough into abysmal conditions to conduct the 2018 Queens County Christmas Bird Count. Nevertheless, I put my eye in the scope and started to spot birds. A falcon-like bird coursing through the wave-troughs?

2018 113

2018 Birds Bald Eagle Falcons 113

10,000 Birds

MAY 24, 2016

One of the most impressive birds in North America is the Golden Eagle. ” The bird is massive. ” The bird is massive. Golden Eagles have a global breeding population of around 300,000 birds, 3% of which spend at least part of the year in Mexico. In fact, the caracara has been called the “Mexican Eagle.”

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Albania Mexico Eagles Kazakhstan 102

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

We watched the bird for awhile as it foraged and though the injury was painful to contemplate for we humans the bird seemed to be getting by alright. I was reminded of the American Redstart I saw foraging in New Jersey several years ago and hoped that this bird would prove as resilient as I had observed that redstart to be.

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Culling Falcons New Jersey Killing 157

10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2021

In birding circles, Costa Rica is better known for protected areas, quetzal tours, and glittering displays of hummingbirds than the things that fly in urban spots. I mean, who comes to Costa Rica to bird on city streets? In the final bits and pieces of green space that dot a typical human dominated landscape? That makes sense.

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Costa Rica Falcons Farming Woodpeckers 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

You get three or four books in one with Jonathan Meiburg’s A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey. Meiburg doesn’t say it in so many words, but it’s almost as if he believes he and the birds are in telepathic converse. And it’s more than the sum of the parts.

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Guyana South America Washington DC 259

10,000 Birds

APRIL 14, 2023

In the human psyche, owls can be cuddly signs of good luck and benificence (as they are in Japan, and Harry Potter movies) and, at the same time, eerie and unsettling. Either way, they are perhaps more central to our stories and lore than other birds, a familiar example, as Darlington reminds us, being Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

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Barn Owls Owls Serbia Finland 113

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2016

The scientists, who studied bird populations in Europe and China , speculate that urban areas may have some appeal for passerines that rural areas otherwise lack. Birds like cuckoos, who lay their eggs in songbirds’ nests, and whose young then off the hosts’ own chicks, tend to avoid cities.

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China Europe Research Falcons 102

10,000 Birds

MAY 7, 2019

But, sometimes an appreciation of birds and birding requires more than a reference book with images of birds and facts about their identifying field marks. There are large avian handbooks and small ‘how-to bird’ guides, and quite a few excellent books of both types have been published.

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Birds North America Breeding America 116

10,000 Birds

APRIL 6, 2014

You’ve probably heard of many different kinds of bird cams—web feeds that spy on the inner lives of birds. There are hawk cams , falcon cams , puffin cams , tern cams , heron cams , and even Osprey cams. Common Ravens tend to avoid nesting around lots of humans. News Common Raven nesting birds webcam Wellesley'

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Boston Puffins Massachusetts Science 197

10,000 Birds

JUNE 5, 2015

Not only do we take care of zillions of injured and orphaned birds/mammals/reptiles/whatever, we also have to deal with and educate the public. I had a finder bring me a bird he’d correctly ID’d as a merlin – a not-too-common falcon – but when he brought him in, I could see he’d been trying to feed it BIRD SEED!”

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Squirrels Hamburgers Chickens Wildlife Rehabilitation 250

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

While Richard Dawkins thunders across the intellectual landscape with that one, though, I’d like to turn my attention to matters more practical: birds are using fire to obtain food. At some point, some kind of raptor — most likely a falcon — is going to independently invent barbecue. This can mean only one thing.

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Science Falcons Australia Humane 128

10,000 Birds

JUNE 6, 2018

If you like birds and you also like. I already know that you like birds — that’s why you’re at this blogsite. The others (in order of publication and story-line, A Siege of Bitterns , A Pitying of Doves , and A Cast of Falcons ) are all now available here in new editions, according to the publisher. Let me start again.

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Collecting Abandon Abandoning Abandonment 126

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2015

Producing a book about birds and nesting is a dangerous business. The truth is that there are few images cuter than baby birds in the nest opening their mouths and begging for food, but there are curmudgeons amongst us, myself included, who don’t like to admit this. And of birds courting and mating. Peregrine Falcon nests.

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Eggs Family 2006 New York 263

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 23, 2014

2014 has been a good year for us at 10,000 Birds. We’ve traveled to lots of places, seen lots of great birds, and met lots of great birders. So, as we’ve done for the last several years we thought we would share our Best Birds of the Year with you. Below are our Best Birds of the Year. What was yours?

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2014 Costa Rica South Africa Birds 206

10,000 Birds

APRIL 6, 2012

It’s a beautiful day, you’re out birding, and you come across a bird who, instead of perching 20 feet over your head or winging its way past your face, is standing on the ground with its wing askew, wearing a dismayed expression. This first case of trouble was due to the human penchant for constructing buildings. What do you do?

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Falcons Humane Birds Bird Rescue 244

10,000 Birds

APRIL 21, 2015

H5N2 is a bird influenza virus that is making news. This mainly affects domestic fowl, and in this sense is not a topic central to 10,000 Birds. But, wild birds are part of the story, and the virus itself has changed and has been known to make wild birds ill. Ostriches are infected as well as, in one known case, Falcons.

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Mississippi Fowl Turkey Minnesota 180

10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2013

Birds are supposed to have feathers and birds without feathers look incomplete, like they left home with shaving cream on their ear and toothpaste spots on their shirt. The smellier the better, particularly as, unusually for birds, many species can boast a robust sense of smell. Here’s the kicker though.

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California Condor Turkey North America Jordan 200

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2014

The danger of reviewing a field guide to the birds of an exotic country you’ve never been to is that you become obsessed with visiting that country, no matter how far away and how expensive it may be. I’m already looking up birding tours of Borneo and pricing airfares. Borneo, the authors say, is under-birded.

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Brunei Birds Asia China 184

10,000 Birds

MARCH 4, 2017

Sort of like the mega birds, these aren’t your average worm-eating, seed-feeding, chirping guys with brightly colored plumage. In keeping with high diversity in other aspects of the avian kingdom, including falcons and excluding owls, this small country has a raptor list that tops fifty species. King Vulture. Barred Hawk.

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Costa Rica West Virginia Eagles Monkeys 101

10,000 Birds

JULY 1, 2014

I enjoy collecting children’s books about birds and nature that I come across in the expected (book stores) and unexpected (academic library conference reports) places. The Taínos named the birds Iguacas, after their call. Spanish settlers arrived in 1493 and called the birds Coterras. The birds thrive.

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Puerto Rico Parrots New York City 2013 245

10,000 Birds

APRIL 24, 2015

Macdonald is, among her many accomplishments, a falconer. White, who wrote The Once and Future King and The Sword and the Stone , and who was also a falconer – but a very, very bad one. The terrified bird keeps leaping off his glove and trying to fly away, so he hangs him, upside down, by his feet. This, excuse me, is b t.

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Falcons Michael Vick Whales Whaling 241

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

They consistently disappointed me by not being butterflies or small birds, and I associated them with an oppressive sun and being a long way from the garden hose and getting a headache for want of a drink. But who?* “Birds”, says the all-knowing Internet. So, which birds? They can carry parasites to humans.

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Montana Cooking Texas Cattle 176

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2012

The newest bird on the brink to capture her fertile imagination is the California Condor, on which she graciously shares her research and ruminations: Sometimes as a writer you recognize there’s been something overlooked in your midst—something quietly abiding. Condors, like all New World vultures, can disturb the human psyche.

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California Condor California Idaho North America 228