10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2022

To be precise, “Birding Shanghai from June 10 to June 30, 2022” – but that is even less of an exciting title than the one above. The reason for this post only covering the period from June 10 being that an earlier post, “Revenge Birding”, was about the first 9 days of June. You should try it too.

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Birds Sparrows Protection Humane 178

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Well, they mainly feed on birds, which may explain their low popularity. For the White-throated Rock Thrush , Wikipedia gives the slightly puzzling statement “The bird’s population is unknown, but is not increasing or declining.” Even if they look as charming as this Northern Boobook. Unfortunately, it is true though.

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Birds China Eggs Owls 190

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 31, 2023

And now for something completely different – birds. That keeps away about 80% of the pesky bird photographers away from the males (though probably also a fair share of the female birds – can’t have it both ways). Mind you, no long tails in this season. Here is a mugshot of a Long-tailed Shrike.

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Birds China Taiwan Raised 130

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Forget lions, tigers, and bears – if Internet listicles are to be believed, all of Oz is full of crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish, snakes, spiders – even magpies – that are dead set on killing, maiming, or injuring any humans they encounter. Good birding and happy drinking! Teal Lake Shiraz (2019). Three out of five feathers (Good).

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2019 Australia Ducks Fowl 212

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Given the complexity of the research, the result feels like a bit of a letdown – “northern populations start migration earlier than southern populations, especially in autumn” The species name of the Chestnut-eared Bunting is fucata , from the Latin “fucare”, to paint red.

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Birds Eggs Bangladesh China 196

10,000 Birds

MARCH 2, 2023

February 2023 was a slow month for birding in Shanghai, at least for me – so slow that I almost put the Spotted Dove , possibly my least favorite bird here, on the cover. Not a cover species The Black Kite is not actually black, but of course, misleading bird names are not exactly rare. Maybe those should be protected too?

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Birds Iraq China Ireland 130

10,000 Birds

APRIL 3, 2023

Chinese Penduline T**s are not particularly woke birds. White’s Thrush is described as “burly” on eBird – not entirely unjustified, I guess, but this description fails to capture the way the intricate patterns of the bird make for great camouflage and also for its own kind of beauty. Maybe the grandparents help.

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Birds Blackbirds Indonesia Bhutan 185

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.

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Singapore Mountain Goats Birds Giraffes 147

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 23, 2015

She runs Birds of Texas Rehabilitation Center in Austin County, Texas. He said the federal government’s and Alaska’s state rules were, for the most part, okay; they were consistent and generally made sense for the safety of both humans and wildlife, and in many respects, coincided with his own views of protecting the native environment.

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Collecting Wildlife Rehabilitation Solomon Islands Texas 240

10,000 Birds

JUNE 16, 2015

” Scientists studying Great T**s , of all birds, have shown that the earlier a male awakens , the more likely he is to successfully hook up with the mates of other males. In this study, the males who slept in weren’t slackers—the researchers manipulated their circadian rhythms with melatonin implants.

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Research Birds Raised Owls 154

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

They looked out their windows and across their patios and up from their apartment terraces and saw–birds. This is a delightful book, large (8-1/2 by 11 inches), filled with Sibley’s distinctive artwork and an organized potpourri of research-based stories about the science behind bird’s lives.

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2020 Birds Groups North America 262

10,000 Birds

MAY 23, 2021

But if there is any justice in this world, there will be room on those lists for Shearwater: A Bird, an Ocean, and a Long Way Home , by Roger Morgan-Grenville. It was Bird Number 83 on his life list, and it became, he says, his “metaphor for wilderness and adventure, always free, always out there, always just beyond reach.”.

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West Virginia Rats Albatross Georgia 194

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

This is Liz’s first contribution to 10,000 Birds. The rise in drone popularity over the past few years has been meteoric — and in our typical human arrogance, we’ve once again ignored the fact that for the past 150 million years, the sky has belonged to the birds.

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Birds Protection Idaho Bears 180

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2016

That’s what a group of researchers suggest in a paper recently published in Behavioral Ecology. 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. Smaller birds are much more likely to tolerate a human presence.

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China Europe Research Falcons 101

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Another item they feed on is hunting edible bird nest swiftlets, which are quite common in edible swiftlet houses in Sabah, Malaysia ( source ). Another paper reviews information on Oriental Pied Hornbills raiding the nests of various bird species in Singapore and even pet bird cages.

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Rhinoceros Singapore Transported Hunting 124

10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2020

Faithful 10,000 Birds readers will remember Suzie as our wildlife rehabilitation beat writer. Suzie wrote about her experiences as a bird rehabber in Flyaway: How A Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings (2009) and used those experiences as the source for her fictional children’s book, Hawk Hill (1996).

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Bald Eagle Eagles Wildlife 245

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2015

Having warned to her theme she introduces her villain of the piece, the AMNH researcher Chris Filardi, who collected a kingfisher. Throughout his professional career, Chris has maintained a commitment to bridging his research interests with grassroots conservation. You see, the bird was collected for scientific study.

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Collecting Papua New Guinea Science Birds 156

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 25, 2011

A profound and deep understanding of birds is hard to complain about. Despite the vacant look in the eye of a Rock Pigeon , birds are not stupid…they cannot afford to be, or else they wouldn’t be here now. And the ultimate question, the one we may never know the answer to… what is a bird thinking ?

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Emotional Science Birds Mammals 197

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

What do the eight birds above have in common? Others are only known from a specimen or two sitting in the drawer of a research institution. Eight more birds. What right do we have to even exist when our very existence as humanity is what has caused a rate of extinction not seen except during cataclysmic events?

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Mauritius Djibouti Guam Birds 171

10,000 Birds

JUNE 27, 2017

Laysan albatrosses are ocean-dwelling seabirds who have 6-foot wingspans, weigh 7-8 pounds, occasionally sleep while flying, and rarely land except to raise their chicks. The oldest Laysan albatross was last seen raising a chick on Midway Atoll in 2016, at age 66. The young men had severed the birds’ legs in order to remove the tags.

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Albatross Honolulu Hawaii Killing 214

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.

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Houston Texas Sanctuary Sparrows 200

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2022

Presumably, in the early days of ornithology, some scientists spent most of their time transcribing bird calls. ” Fortunately, most of these researchers could be taken off their antidepressants after proper sound recording was invented. This post shows some of them.

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San Diego Malaysia China Zoos 197

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).

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Family Parrots Birds 2014 279

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 15, 2013

Birds may have evolved from an ancestor with four wings. This is an idea that has been around for more than a century, to which recent research has given considerable support. A recent analysis of 11 fossil birds suggests that feathers found on their legs had features similar to primary wing feathers that would be used in flight.

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Apes Humane Mammals Research 190

10,000 Birds

MAY 11, 2013

What do all these birds have in common? Speaking of birds in nests, five Chilean Flamingo chicks who were raised by a human “surrogate dad” at a British wildlife center have now graduated to joining the adults in the center’s colony. … It is Pink Bird Weekend on 10,000 Birds!

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Michigan Chile Tennessee North America 147

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.

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Killing South Africa Nebraska Collecting 189

10,000 Birds

APRIL 9, 2013

Find your State Bird. I previously wrote a post entitled “Plugging Kids into Birding” in which I presented 10 ways to get kids into birding. This has devastating consequences for their development and, ultimately, the health and future of humanity as a whole. Ken Keffer was born and raised in Wyoming.

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Milwaukee Mongolia Camels Oklahoma 249

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.

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Michigan Bahamas Endangered Species Research 220

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 28, 2015

As 2015 comes to a close and birders the world over start thinking about what 2016 will bring we here at 10,000 Birds would like to take a moment to celebrate our best birds of 2015. Each Beat Writer was given the opportunity to share their Best Bird of the Year for 2015 and, as usual, we had some pretty solid birds.

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2015 Costa Rica Birds Sparrows 180

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Nineteenth and early twentieth century naturalists collected birds on long and arduous exploratory expeditions in the New World. Some remained stored for decades before a researcher would pick them up and inquired about these poorly documented specimens. Birds hatched in captivity have been re-introduced. Photo: Adam Castillo.

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Collecting Peru Neglecting Hunting 266

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. We simply refuse to squee.

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Eggs Family 2006 New York 263

10,000 Birds

MAY 30, 2019

Author Sherrida Woodley thinks deeply about dearly departed birds. Raised in and around the West Texas steppe country where temperatures reached 100 degrees with regularity, he began life as the Dust Bowl and Great Depression converged. such as California Condors and Passenger Pigeons. He came for the hawks. I knew no falconers.

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Falcons California Condor Alaska Texas 170

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Birders have a natural tendency to appreciate variety in form, from the bewildering range of colors displayed within a single avian family, to minute distinctions between otherwise similar birds wholly inscrutable to the untrained eye (or even to those of many birders!). More birds mean more potential lifers.

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Ohio India Hawaii United States 113

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Thus, the cattle we raise for meat and dairy are sometimes called Bos taurus while the extinct wild form is always called Bos primigenius. Some time after the Spanish encounter with the Turkey, birds were brought back to Europe where they were raised and became an important source of food and fancy feathers.

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Turkey Columbus Spain Fowl 197

10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2011

To a birder, migration means that you can live in Minnesota, New York, Paris or Moscow and see exotic tropical birds such as Piranga olivacea and Icterus galbula on a regular basis without buying a plane ticket. The birds do the flying for you. But what is migration, why do birds do it, and how is it accomplished? Image source.

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Research Humane Compassion New York 186

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.

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Delaware New Jersey Research Eggs 176

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.

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Animal Mammals Hawaii Dolphins 263