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Birding Tradition: the New Year’s Day List

10,000 Birds

Starting the New Year by trying to see as many species as possible is something of a birding tradition. My diary notes that the New Year dawned grey and windy, but I rose early, walked six miles before breakfast and noted a modest 26 species of birds. One of my more memorable New Year’s days was in the Falkland Islands, back in 1989.

Birds 233
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Common Hedgerow Birds of Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

They can’t provide the same ecosystem value as natural forest and woodland but in places intensely modifed by people, hedges are vital sanctuaries for birds and other wildlife. On some coffee farms, hedgerows can be wonderfully developed tangles of native trees, vines, and introduced plants. Hoffmann’s Woodpecker.

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RECENT BIRDING AT COORAN, SUNSHINE COAST

10,000 Birds

Popple] One of the great things about birding is its continuing ability to surprise. After many years pointing binoculars at birds they can still shock you with unseen – sometimes unrecorded – behaviour, baffle you with an unexpected vocalisation or just turn up in oddly unexpected places. Places, too, can surprise. I was wrong.

Koalas 245
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The Cry of the Curlew

10,000 Birds

Curlews are birds of serious conservation concern in the UK, with numbers falling sharply this century. Curlews are long-lived birds, so their decline is not always apparent, with pairs returning annually to their favoured nesting area, despite not having fledged any chicks for years. Males have noticeably shorter beaks.)

Fox 219
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Summer Birding at Conboy Lake NWR

10,000 Birds

I recently drove from my home in Portland to Conboy Lake NWR in southern Washington for a birding day-trip. When I arrived in the morning, there were many birds and no people. The namesake “lake” generally only exists when there is enough runoff during the spring, as the area was extensively modified for farming years ago.

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Interesting Ads In The Wildlife Industry

10,000 Birds

As I’ve switched over to paid corporate birding (doing bird surveys for companies that want to put up wind farms or transmission lines), I’ve been fascinated by the world that has been opened to me and differences from the bird feeding world. Clearly the money is in dissuading birds.

Industry 170
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European Union Farming Policies Wiping Out Birds

10,000 Birds

Familiar birds across the European countryside are suffering precipitous declines. In order to boost food production across Europe, the wholesale ripping up of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and ploughing over of meadows has robbed farmland birds of their homes and food. We have been sleepwalking into a disaster.”

Farming 159