10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2022

All birding is essentially good. Time spent watching any birds is time spent connecting with our natural surroundings, a time that can act as a relaxed escape as well as one of meditative focus. Such rare and special birding times can also include days when the birding doesn’t stop, when one finds one rare bird after another.

Costa Rica 252

Costa Rica Birds Owls Geese 252

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

I often poke fun at listers I perceive as being more interested in ticks than birds. But there is one kind of tick that I genuinely do enjoy, and as I do more and more birding it becomes harder and harder to get; new families. Getting entirely new families is easy when you start birding.

Family 163

Family Wombats Uganda Fiji 163

10,000 Birds

JULY 16, 2015

Midsummer birding can become boring if you focus solely on species counts. The general lack of longitudinal movement among birds limits most areas to the same restricted pool of resident breeders every year. Canada Geese are never as interesting as when escorting those adorable goslings! How about you?

2015 158

2015 Breeders Geese Canada 158

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 6, 2022

Every place has its common birds, the species that do very well in a given habitat. As we like to say, these are species that are “hard to miss”, birds that, if you are watching, will be seen. As one might expect, signature birds take many forms. Bird in southern Asia and there are mynas and magpie-robins.

Costa Rica 147

Costa Rica San Jose Asia Geese 147

10,000 Birds

JUNE 3, 2015

I’ve never been one to be overly concerned about whether a bird “counts” People, and organisations, have complex and elaborate rules about whether a bird you saw or heard actually is a bird you saw or heard, which seems a very unnecessary way to add complexity to an already complex hobby. Red Lechwe.

Botswana 162

Botswana Birds Lesotho Elephants 162

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

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. This is truly a bird-lovers dream-destination.

Sweden 165

Sweden Denmark Geese Birds 165

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.

Falcons 259

Falcons Eagles Meat Geese 259

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2013

I wanted to bird among the blossoms. Despite all the people, the birds were incredibly active, rarely shy, and a reminder that natural wonders like the cherry blossoms interact with more than just us humans. Unfortunately for me and my future birding adventures, this amateur birder still struggles with the early morning wake-up.

DC 192

DC Washington Birds Geese 192

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 14, 2011

Feeding birds is generally regarded as a harmless past-time, a wholesome way for people to share nature and enjoy wildlife with the family. However, more and more news stories are popping up this year of communities cracking down on bird feeding. How do you know when you are a little too involved with feeding birds?

Bald Eagle 243

Bald Eagle Birds Deer Minnesota 243

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Back on Friday, 12 February, I was dismayed when I read the weekly New York City Rare Bird Alert email. Why would a bird like that being reported in Queens dismay me? Despite my best efforts and despite seeing around 200 Canada Geese , I had no luck with the Specklebelly. The locale where I found the bird.

Puerto Rico 121

Puerto Rico Geese Canada Porpoises 121

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2011

It’s a common call/email/text that most bird watchers get this time of year: “HELP! I just saved a baby bird! Both of those sites allow you to enter your zip code or state and find someone nearby who has the state and federal permits that allows them to treat wild birds. Do not worry about touching the baby birds.

Birds 265

Birds Fox Raised Ducks 265

10,000 Birds

APRIL 23, 2017

This year has been very wet and the local birds have taken advantage of the situation. Not only have the Magpie-larks been busy building their mud nests and the Tawny Frogmouths been breeding at the supermarket car park, but other birds arrived and started to breed. Black-winged Stilt feeding on the highway in front of traffic.

Breeding 100

Breeding Geese Australia Eggs 100

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Despite all this red tape stuff, I am still making some time for birding. This location is great as it is close to Jeanne’s Family, as well as a very short drive to the Billy Frank Jr. Over 200 species of birds can be found on the refuge, depending on the time of year. Nisqually NWR.

Fox 125

Fox Washington Geese Sparrows 125

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 20, 2020

He has been an avid lover of the natural world since he was a kid, with a strong love for paleontology when he was younger, but he only took up birding in his last year of high school and hasn’t looked back since. This is Luis’s first guest post on 10,000 Birds but hopefully not his last! And something different I got!

Canada 165

Canada Cuba Miami Florida 165

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2013

Two-thousand-twelve was a pretty darn good year for me birding-wise and otherwise. Seeing 525 species was nice, as was the fact that I birded in four countries, nine of the fifty states in the United States, and fifty-one counties. I went to the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville, Florida. Mottled Duck ?

2012 143

2012 Czech Republic Hedgehogs Hungary 143

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

While we have been living in Palmerston in the Northern Territory I do miss our garden at home in Broome and all of our daily visiting birds. However I am able to visit Marlow Lagoon in town regularly and cycle there most days to observe the changing bird-life as the different trees flower. Straw-necked Ibis and Green Pygmy-geese.

Geese 167

Geese Australia Parrots Dogs 167

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

The last weekend of January found me in the frosty Pacific Northwest, meeting some long over due work and family obligations. This is not to say that there wasn’t a little birding time snuck in here and there. The cold was quickly forgotten once I was away from the car, and started seeing the number of birds all around me.

Wildlife 105

Wildlife Seattle Bald Eagle Geese 105

10,000 Birds

MAY 6, 2018

Access to the local ephemeral lakes remains closed to vehicles, which means the only access is on foot and as such we are discovering the bird life to be particularly good when we do good bush walking into these areas. It was very hard to try and capture the evidence and not have other birds or dragonflies in the way, but I got evidence!

Ducks 100

Ducks Australia Geese 2009 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 4, 2012

I figured a Pacific Loon is a Pacific Loon no matter how far away it is and made the hour-drive from JFK Airport after dropping my family off Saturday morning. Still, I wasn’t getting the views I wanted of what would be a state bird. Year bird number 299 in New York State and number 457 overall. And scanning. And scanning.

New York 135

New York Birds Abandon Abandoning 135

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 15, 2017

The 118 th Christmas Bird Count (CBC) began yesterday and I’m sure many of you have at least one count scheduled in the next few weeks. Fermentation of Uncommon Crow is carried out exclusively with a local strain of Brettanomyces , the wild yeast family we’ve encountered before in some other sour beers.

New York 124

New York Portland Washington Geese 124

10,000 Birds

JULY 25, 2018

So, I think it is understandable that I have not done a whole lot of birding, well, until yesterday and today. We were able to find a very nice RV park, just a couple of miles from one of my all time favourite birding hotspots, Billy Frank Jr, Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. That is what birding weather should be.

New Zealand 112

New Zealand Seattle Qatar South Africa 112

10,000 Birds

JUNE 4, 2017

After a very good Wet Season with substantially more rain than normal over the first few months of 2017 the land was flooded and a huge variety of birds arrived in the Broome area to take advantage of the ideal conditions for breeding. Two birds on the right and one on the left-note the bills! Australian Painted Snipe nest.

Breeding 100

Breeding Eggs Raised 2017 100

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2016

The English language, or at least the adherents thereof with more time on their hands than sense, has bestowed us a great number of names to collective nouns for groups of birds. English has not been similarly encumbered with frivolous names for young birds of specific types. A Jackbird! Jackbirds are young South Island Saddlebacks.

New Zealand 104

New Zealand Parrots Rats Bats 104

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 17, 2011

If you are not a birder there is no reason to see it in the theater because despite the fact that the movie is about birding there is very little that is exciting or funny or original and little in the plot that is not cliched. ” Honestly, I would have much preferred to see an outstanding birding movie. What did I like?

Colorado 244

Colorado Geese Family Owls 244

10,000 Birds

MARCH 14, 2014

The day before the marmot encounter, I spotted an American Robin on my lawn; the night before that, the distinctive sound of a small flock of Snow Geese sounded from the sky above my apartment, heading north. During the winter the birds are dependent on small fissures in the sea ice kept open by the currents of the bay.

Woodchucks 232

Woodchucks Chipmunks Rodents Seals 232

10,000 Birds

MARCH 11, 2011

Which, naturally, got me to thinking about the newly erected order Suliformes, a development I mentioned in my December column, 2010′s Top 10 Developments in Bird Taxonomy and Systematics , but which I thought deserved further examination, for it’s one of those stories that defines the era in which we are living and birding.

2011 152

2011 Pelicans Papua New Guinea Birds 152

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2017

Over the past few months there have been a lot of birds breeding around Broome with the excellent rain events that we have been having and the vegetation is at long last revived. The open plains are now busy with young Magpie Geese and numerous other waterbirds and the Sharp-tailed Sandpipers are busy feeding up before migration.

Breeding 100

Breeding Eggs Protection Cows 100

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

With shore side access limited to the northern end of the lake, that protection allows for a large population of water based birds. This is a bird that I have no memory of when I was a kid growing up here. In a 3 mile stretch of grassland, with sprinklers flowing, I counted well over 100 of these dark birds.

Dogs 103

Dogs Mules Deer Oregon 103

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 30, 2013

After a successful morning’s birding and a very fine lunch, Peter and I made our way to our next site, Bang Poo. In fact the area where the pier hit the mangroves was crammed with birds, including Pied Fantails, a very vocal Oriental Magpie Robin, Green Herons and Little Egrets. This piece follows on from Part One.

Thailand 102

Thailand New Zealand Family Bats 102

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2011

All the local avian characters have been extra-antsy despite the weather, all contending for best bird of the weekend. What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. Where Are You Birding This First Weekend of March 2011?

2011 154

2011 New York Deer Birds 154

10,000 Birds

MAY 26, 2014

My string of winter-only visits to the Adirondacks is over now, happily, because of a three-day weekend with the family in Montreal. But one of the species I most wanted to track down because they are one of my favorite boreal birds, Olive-sided Flycatchers, were absent. Shows what I know about when birds breed. Wait, what?

New York City 161

New York City New York Canada Woodpeckers 161

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

For the many birds that depend on the saltings for their food, high tide is a time for roosting and waiting. If you are a birdwatcher or bird photographer, there’s no finer place to be than an estuary when the tide is falling. As the tide fell, it exposed sand banks that attracted small parties of garrulous Brent Geese.

Geese 182

Geese Russia Breeding Unwanted 182

10,000 Birds

APRIL 18, 2012

The Daintree River is popular with tourists for river cruises to look for saltwater crocodiles, and for birders to look for a few choice rarities in this tidal river (not to mention crocodiles if no birds are present). Smaller birds were present too, including Brown-backed Honeyeaters and White-breasted Woodswallows. Very early.

Australia 156

Australia Asia Geese Eagles 156

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. Tawny Frogmouths are actually more closely related to the Nightjar family. The dam was very full and there were numerous species of birds present.

Shelters 100

Shelters Geese Australia 2010 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2014

The magnificent history and diversity of birds on Earth came into sharper focus this month with the publication of 28 new scientific papers in Science and other journals. One of the central papers, Whole-genome analyses resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds (Jarvis et al. American Flamingo photo by Dick Culbert).

Family 279

Family Parrots Birds 2014 279

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

(Boring bureaucratic note to dissuade casual readers: This post covers birds seen in Shanghai in January 2023, except for those seen at Tianmashan – these are shown in a separate post. End of note) Probably the most interesting bird in Shanghai this month was a Barred Cuckoo-Dove choosing a small downtown park to feed on berries.

Birds 147

Birds Geese Fish Industry 147

10,000 Birds

MARCH 5, 2023

I recently received a kind letter from a 10,000 Birds friend, who was worried that my recent irregularity in contributing to this website might indicate that something was wrong. Then we threw together a semi-planned family-related trip to the States in early December. I assured him then, and assure you now, that I am fine.

Jordan 194

Jordan Mexico Birds Ohio 194