10,000 Birds

APRIL 5, 2022

Thank you, goddess of birding luck and text group people).* My inner self felt stuck in an area between disbelief and total joy and the voices near me were echoing this state of mind: “Oh My God,” “I never thought I would see this bird,” “Look at that bill!” “How did that bird get here?”

Birds 263

Birds Compassion Eagles Science 263

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

He’s the author of The New Neotropical Companion (2017, originally published in 1997), a must-read for any birder preparing to travel to Central and South America, the Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior (2020), and a long list of other books and articles. There are changes in where to find the birds.

2006 262

2006 Tortoises Sea Lions Sea Turtles 262

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

There’s something wonderfully primeval about the Northern Bald Ibis: it has the look of a bird that really ought to be extinct. The fact that it’s not is quite surprising, as this curious bird has come very close to the brink. Sadly, they no longer breed in Algeria, while in Turkey no free-flying birds remain. (In

Morocco 236

Morocco Austria Algeria Germany 236

10,000 Birds

MARCH 9, 2023

Here’s an example: born and bred in Europe, I do not know much about the tropics, especially the bird-rich New World tropics. Yes, I had local bird books, but only during my second tour of Costa Rica did I finally buy a mammal guide, and only after my trip to Colombian Amazon did I obtain a habitat guide.

Costa Rica 247

Costa Rica Cougars Mammals Madagascar 247

10,000 Birds

JUNE 9, 2022

With the lockdown lasting until the end of May (ironically thus pretty much including the whole spring migration – the divine sense of humor is a rather malign one, I am afraid), June still had the freedom of birding anywhere in Shanghai, not just inside a smallish compound. Accessorizing for birds.

Singapore 147

Singapore Birds Mountain Goats Giraffes 147

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.

Falcons 198

Falcons Wildlife Collecting Owls 198

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

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Clavruel’s book is not a day-by-day recreation of Audubon’s various itineraries, but rather a loose investigation of “regions and birds unknown to me,” he says, prompted by his “desire to meet and sketch people who live each day in contact with nature.” Birds, mammals and other wildlife, humans and landscapes are all rendered magnificently.

Bald Eagle 147

Bald Eagle Louisville Pennsylvania Ohio 147

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 25, 2016

Mark Gamin, a Cleveland lawyer, likes cats and birds both. This is Mark’s first contribution to 10,000 Birds. In Oregon, the Barred Owl is taking over Northern Spotted Owl territory and threatening that smaller bird’s survival. Agonizing quandaries concerning invasive species are well-known to wildlife biologists.

Feral Cats 264

Feral Cats Cats Tnr Feral 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 23, 2013

Some of those mysterious creatures were birds. The most obvious place that cryptozoology and ornithology overlap is in the area of Lazarus taxa and would-be Lazarus taxa — the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Eskimo Curlew, Pink-headed Duck , and the like — birds that no one doubts existed once, whether or not they exist today.

Apes 161

Apes Birds Woodpeckers Primates 161

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 12, 2019

This week, I have been pondering the value of bird rehabilitators. Let me assure you that I have no doubts about how much they contribute to individual birds and to the ravaged conscience of modern man. A world without bird and/or mammal, fish and reptile rehabilitators would be a very sad one. appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

Owls 177

Owls Brazil Reptiles Mammals 177

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.

Brunei 179

Brunei Birds Asia China 179

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.

Houston 226

Houston Texas Sanctuary Sparrows 226

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 24, 2016

North American listers, if you haven’t already been following the latest drama in bird taxonomy, courtesy of two new studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, buckle up … because it’s probably going to be a bumpy ride. A press release about the study likened the contrast to “the differences between humans with and without freckles.”)

Guatemala 107

Guatemala Research Morals Science 107

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2020

Happy New Year, 10,000 Birds readers and writers! Everyone is looking back on their best birds of 2019, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at a book that looks back a little further: Urban Ornithology: 150 Years of Birds in New York City , by P. The Bronx also has a special place in birding history.

New York City 157

New York City New York Birds Breeding 157

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2011

As you might surmise, I spend an inordinate amount of time every day thinking about both birding and blogging. Where we may differ substantially, however, is that those thoughts are often crowded out by more pressing considerations of the fine art of SAT and ACT instruction. You’re better off birding!

Costa Rica 175

Costa Rica Birds Colorado ALA 175

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

There were three profound questions my birding group discussed while we birded Trinidad and Tobago, back in December 2012: (1) How many Bananaquits could fit on a banana? (2) 3) What was the best guide to the birds of Trinidad and Tobago? The bird guide question was a conundrum.

Trinidad 205

Trinidad Birds South America Research 205

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 4, 2013

I fully realize that my last post was not a bird post in the strictest sense. That’s why I won’t talk too much this time – just the birds. Aspect one is feeding when humans are not around. Birds Germany godwits shorebirds' The Black-tailed Godwit in particular.

Germany 179

Germany Russia Iceland India 179

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 8, 2014

Amazon had a brilliant press release on Cyber Monday 2013 about using drones as a possible delivery service for their products in the near future. While many people were saying, “OMG COOL” others were thinking “that’s too Big Brother-ish for me” and a few said, “Oh hey, wait, what about birds?”

Bald Eagle 201

Bald Eagle Mississippi Eagles Ducks 201

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 11, 2011

He’s got a different view on how bird watchers should respond to The Big Year than the one Corey recently expressed here. I am already on record that the story will effectively change birding forever. Advertisers, press and Monday morning news, Hollywood and how people see birders are the issue.

West Virginia 240

West Virginia Chickens Missouri United States 240

10,000 Birds

MARCH 10, 2017

Once he was a black child, and he grew up on a farm in Edgefield County, South Carolina, surrounded by protected woodlands and troubled human history. Lanham is also an activist on the topic of getting more diversity into the birding community: you can see a video of his work here. 24.00, Milkweed Press. Drew Lanham.

South Carolina 136

South Carolina Stray Cows 2012 136

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Dozens of other introduced bird species, largely escapees from pet owners, now call Miami home. Strangely, only a paltry eighteen exotic bird species are countable for birders, according to the American Birding Association. I recently had a great day out targeting miami’s exotic birds.

Miami 141

Miami Parrots Research Birds 141

10,000 Birds

MAY 30, 2019

Author Sherrida Woodley thinks deeply about dearly departed birds. Creatures that crawled, or worse, slithered, would lie in the bottoms, pressed into shade and invisibility. But he tried, using the Craigheads’ techniques, and he learned from that young bird, and eventually many others along the way.

Falcons 191

Falcons California Condor Alaska Texas 191

10,000 Birds

JUNE 7, 2012

Yes, the warbler formerly known as Dendroica kirtlandii , now Setophaga kirtlandii , is one of those birds that make birders’ hearts pulse quicker and their legs churn faster. Look what happened when the bird made the first of three appearances at the Biggest Week in American Birding at Magee Marsh! photo by Lynn C.

Michigan 240

Michigan Bahamas Endangered Species Research 240

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 13, 2011

We humans have a very deep and powerful urge to assemble individual data points into some sort of larger construct — to label and categorize them and understand how they relate to other things we know. Suddenly, hoatzins are no longer strictly birds of the Neotropics. The Hoatzin was described initially as a pheasant.

South America 220

South America Africa America Namibia 220

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. But the special delight for readers who love birds is the centrality, to the stories, of avifauna, and the sophistication and precision of the bird-prose. Let me start again.

Collecting 120

Collecting Abandon Abandoning Abandonment 120

10,000 Birds

MAY 4, 2017

Written by an ornithologist who is also a birder and who embraces the world from an ecological viewpoint that sees birds as part of larger systems of evolution, succession, and mutualism, The New Neotropical Companion is the textbook-that-is-not-a-textbook you always wanted to read, though you may not know it yet. Press, 2011).

South America 163

South America Ecuador Reptiles America 163

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. Good birding and happy drinking! Three out of five feathers (Good).

2016 133

2016 Portugal Falcons Japan 133

10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2012

If this bird did become extinct, it would be the first pheasant species to have been lost in the 400 years since proper records began. The most pressing need is for intensive surveys in the bird’s native habitat, to maximise chances of locating any remaining populations in the wild.

Vietnam 156

Vietnam 2000 Germany Groups 156

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. It’s also about human-owl interaction on an individual level and a wider sociocultural level, and ultimately how we can use all this for habitat and bird conservation.

Owls 225

Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 225

10,000 Birds

JUNE 3, 2014

Most of the books about extinction, including Fuller’s Extinct Birds (now, ironically, out of print), describe what was lost and look for explanations, scientifically and historically. The idea of Lost Animals was conceived after the publication of Extinct Birds (2001), a 400-page, four-pound book on 75 extinct species.

Animal 270

Animal Mammals Hawaii Dolphins 270

10,000 Birds

MARCH 19, 2013

This week, a new study was published about Sparrows in Nebraska, that in some ways resembles the study by Bumpus and may well be a better example of Natural Selection in birds. House Sparrows ( Passer domesticus ) are introduced birds over most of their very large range. As you know, a lot of birds are killed in the U.S.

Killing 204

Killing South Africa Nebraska Collecting 204

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.

Puerto Rico 241

Puerto Rico Parrots New York City 2013 241

10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2012

Of course, I jest a bit in the above paragraph because as a sometime New Jersey birder I have birded the Delaware Bay and seen sights such as the memorable image below, in which thousands of Red Knots, Dunlins, and Short-billed Dowitchers fly up as if connected telepathically. You simply cannot bird the Delaware Bay and walk away unaffected.

Delaware 184

Delaware New Jersey Research Eggs 184

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2020

The NYC owls have little to do with the book in front of me except that it too is about birds and people. The 26 essays in When Birds Are Near are all about the real-life and emotional spaces where people overlap with birds. The essays range widely in place, bird, and voice, though the emphasis is on the North American.

New York City 199

New York City Birds Owls Fox 199

10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2015

The latest press release from the USFWS. What this press release doesn’t mention about the amount of money pumped into the economy by the National Wildlife Refuge System, as stated in the Banking on Nature Report, about 72 percent of total expenditures are generated by non-consumptive activities on refuges!

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Fish Wildlife Hunting Game 145

10,000 Birds

APRIL 17, 2012

As you read the below timeline and see the below images, don’t ever forget the perils that walk hand-in-hand with human greed. Oil begins to wash up on the beaches throughout May and June of 2010 May 6, 2010 Oil washes ashore on the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast, an important nesting and breeding area for many bird species.

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2010 Louisiana 2012 2011 245