10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

I’ve subsequently managed to dive in some spectacular destinations, including Turneffe Atoll in Belize, the Great Astrolabe Reef in Fiji, the kelp forests of Monterey and the wreck of the President Coolidge in Vanuatu. In fact no less a figure than Jacques Cousteau rated it in his top ten, and he was no slouch when it came to diving!

New Zealand 181

New Zealand Belize Vanuatu Fish 181

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2013

In his comment in last week’s post on the Marlborough Sounds , Beat writer Jochen described the New Zealand Fantail as one of the best birds in the world. wakawaka, the New Zealand Fantail is a delightful inhabitant of New Zealand, and one of my favourite local birds. Birds New Zealand endemic New Zealand endemics'

New Zealand 175

New Zealand Samoa Fiji Killing 175

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 14, 2015

I worked with an enormous collection of bird skins in the collection of Te Papa (The National Museum of New Zealand) during my (unfinished) PhD. Shelf after shelf after shelf of trays of dead birds, most with their original archaic Victorian era label written in spindly cursive attached to a leg. Box after box of egg.

Collecting 219

Collecting Solomon Islands New Zealand Fiji 219

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

We’ve only recently begun to completely piece it together, using fossils and scientific analysis, but what is shows is that, once upon a time, the rail family was one of the most, if not the most, species rich family of birds in the world. we are hosting Extinction Week here on 10,000 Birds from 7 September to 13 September.

Hawaii 202

Hawaii Mammals Guam Fiji 202

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2013

It is, instead, a member of the Petroicidae, the Australasian robins, a family mostly found in New Guinea and Australia but also reaching here in New Zealand and as far across the Pacific as Fiji. Whether the Grey-headed Robin of Australia represents a toehold of a mostly New Guinean species or an endemic, it is still a nice bird.

Guinea 154

Guinea Fiji Australia New Zealand 154

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

All of the birds within Raphini are highly specialized for island life. It’s a spectacular pigeon with long neck plumes and blue, green, and copper iridescence in its feathers (I mean, look at this bird ), and it lives on islands from the western Indian Ocean all the way out through northern Melanesia. ” Beehler et al.’s

Solomon Islands 275

Solomon Islands Guinea Mauritius Humane 275

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 8, 2012

As 10,000 Birds’ New Zealand beat writer, I sometimes should write about New Zealand birds, but today I thought I’d talk about a bird that people thought was one but almost certainly wasn’t. So what were these Australian birds doing in New Zealand? And, sometimes, New Zealand.

New Zealand 179

New Zealand Pelicans Solomon Islands Palau 179

10,000 Birds

MARCH 30, 2011

It was long expected that the fossil record would show extinct members of the genus in the islands between New Zealand/New Caledonia and the Society Islands (places like Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands) that had gone extinct before Europeans arrived, but no such fossils have been found.

New Zealand 146

New Zealand Fiji Parrots Tonga 146

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Sometimes, when I’m writing trip reports about far off places (relative to most of my readers) I wonder what exactly people make of some of the birds I mention seeing. Is a Coua a bird or a city in Brazil? Is a saw-wing a bird or an engine part? Is a logrunner a bird or a black market timber trader? What a treat!

Australia 171

Australia Fiji Hunters Family 171

10,000 Birds

JUNE 15, 2011

I mentioned last week, while talking about rails and the Pacific, that Tonga is not a particularly birdy birding destination. A combination of extinctions and proximity to Fiji means that a trip to that island group would net you pretty much all the same birds plus a whole raft of others.

Tonga 162

Tonga Fiji New Zealand Parrots 162

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

Enter the Silktail , an odd little bird found only on two islands, Taveuni and Vanua Levu, in Fiji. The affinities of this small dark blue bird with a white tail has been a longstanding mystery for taxonomists for a long time. Indeed it was part of that family.

Horses 165

Horses France North America Fiji 165

10,000 Birds

MARCH 23, 2011

The world of birding is filled with challenging groups well known to all, birds like gulls , Empidonax flycatchers or cisticolas that require attention to the tiniest details in order to assign an individual to a specific species (if it can be done at all). One such bird is the Collared Kingfisher ( Todiramphus chloris ).

Samoa 168

Samoa Vanuatu United Arab Emirates Tonga 168

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

I’m not sure why Australian birds are given this name, but the Australian subspecies is the Torrresian Kingfisher ( Todiramphus sordidus ). Subspecies vitiensis , Fiji. One new Pacific island form is the Mariana Kingfisher ( Todiramphus albicilla ) from the Mariana Islands in Micronesia. Saipan, Micronesia. SE Queensland.

United Arab Emirates 176

United Arab Emirates Micronesia Tonga Vanuatu 176