10,000 Birds

MAY 13, 2022

The only bird-related activity I can think of is looking at bird photos I took in Singapore in 2015, and adding some irrelevant comments to them. Presumably, birds living in Singapore do not understand German. Writing this post, I have been in lockdown in my Shanghai compound for 60 days. “Odd, me?”

Singapore 227

Singapore Birds Zebras Feral 227

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 18, 2023

So, not much that is not to like about hummingbirds, particularly as they also frequently perch (unlike hummingbirds), which makes the life of the bird photographer so much easier. The somewhat shoddily edited Wikipedia entry on sunbirds states that there are 145 species in one paragraph and then talks about 146 in the next.

Indonesia 183

Indonesia Asia Species Raised 183

10,000 Birds

JULY 28, 2012

Four critically endangered Indonesian birds – the Flores Hawk , the Siau Owl , the Sangihe Honeybird , and the Mandar Gendang , which is otherwise known as the Invisible Rail - will have their profiles raised a bit when they debut on Indonesian postage stamps. It is unclear if the Invisible Rail stamp will be blank.

Indonesia 162

Indonesia Raised Birds Owls 162

10,000 Birds

JUNE 16, 2021

They also remind me why I love birding in Michoacán. I would love to know how the order spread across these regions, since that spread must have involved either crossing oceans or the frigid regions that these birds avoid. Honesty requires that I confess to having seen none of these species. Those are good numbers.

Mexico 188

Mexico Indonesia North America Arizona 188

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 15, 2015

You’d think that dressing in green to hide from predators inside a dense rainforest is as a strategy as plain as day, yet only a surprisingly limited number of bird species on Borneo have ventured down that evolutionary road. Interestingly, the females are more varied between the species and are far more readily identified.

Indonesia 170

Indonesia Birds Asia Groups 170

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 21, 2014

From a birder’s perspective however, this is both a shame and a blessing, as I will show below based on my observations of the species on the island of Java in November. The prinias are a group of around 25 Old World warbler species found in Africa and Asia. The Brown Prinia is an Asian species with a very peculiar range.

Burma 161

Burma Laos Birds Indonesia 161

10,000 Birds

JUNE 6, 2012

There are few families of birds as bewitching as the birds-of-paradise. They are feathered jewels with extraordinary breeding dances almost unrivalled in the bird world. Adding to their mystique is the remoteness of their home, the undeveloped and rarely visited islands of New Guinea and eastern Indonesia.

Indonesia 194

Indonesia Birds Australia Guinea 194

10,000 Birds

MAY 5, 2013

The munias, or mannikins, or silverbills, as the genus’ members are called, are finches belonging to the Estrildidae , and the 40-odd species range from Africa throughout South and Southeast Asia to Australia. But what kind of metabolic twist would turn a brown bird to red?! No Avadavat. But what could it be?

Indonesia 175

Indonesia Asia 2012 Africa 175

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2014

Miami, Florida has a reputation among the birding community for being overrun with exotic bird species. However, the typical birding experience for someone down here also includes a large menagerie of other species such as Orange-winged Parrot , Mitred Parakeet , Egyptian Goose and Nutmeg Mannikin.

Miami 203

Miami Asia Florida Malaysia 203

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2015

And where all those birds are? This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. And it raises a question: if all the birds are having a party over there, am I in the wrong spot? I am talking 600 or 700+ bird species.

Sri Lanka 257

Sri Lanka Botswana Africa Serbia 257

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 28, 2014

It varies in appearance across its enormous range, and a new genetic study — Dispersal and speciation in purple swamphens (Rallidae: Porphyrio) — bolsters the case that this “supertramp” is actually a superspecies that could be split into six different species. Above: Swamphen in Australia by James Niland).

Papua New Guinea 194

Papua New Guinea Philippines New Zealand Florida 194

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 28, 2013

They belong to the same species like those found back in Europe, Sus scrofa – which inhabits a belt stretching from northern Africa and Europe all the way to Indonesia, but a different subspecies, S.s. The next two species are the Southern Grey Shrike and the Tawny Pipit , also characteristic for this habitat type.

India 229

India Birds Eagles Boars 229

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 26, 2014

There is one thing however that makes the Sunda Teal a rather highly desired species, and the name is a bit of a give-away: the species’ magic is in its range. The place where you look forward to the birds, but not the birding. No, definitely not the birding. Birds dabbling ducks Indonesia waterfowl'

New York City 165

New York City Los Angeles Timor Indonesia 165

10,000 Birds

APRIL 20, 2016

This year’s awards will be handed out on April 27th, and one of the finalists has devoted himself to saving migrating birds of pray from illegal hunting. Alexander Rukhaia focuses his efforts on the “ Batumi Bottleneck ,” an Important Bird Area along the coast of the Black Sea in the Ajara region of Georgia.

Papua New Guinea 100

Papua New Guinea Snow Leopard Pakistan illegal 100

10,000 Birds

APRIL 15, 2011

Here are the clues: 1. Some references indicate that this country has nearly 900 different species of birds. 2. It is at the top of my list of countries to visit specifically for birding. 3. Corey has written about one of the species, which I will most likely see when I go. No plans yet, sigh.

2011 150

2011 Myanmar Bolivia Venezuela 150

10,000 Birds

JULY 22, 2014

Will Raup is a birder from upstate New York who helped Corey learn a lot about birds when Corey was first starting out as a birder. When you think of invasives, you think of the birds that have been helped by human beings to get where they are, such as House Sparrow or European Starling. There are two main subspecies, the nominate B.

Cattle 170

Cattle South Korea Suriname Seychelles 170

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. Did I dare dip my toe into this catalog of tantalizing species? I’m already looking up birding tours of Borneo and pricing airfares.

Brunei 177

Brunei Birds Asia China 177

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 17, 2013

We now have a much better idea of which birds belong in the bombycillid clade, thanks to a paper called Clarifying the systematics of an enigmatic avian lineage: What is a bombycillid? First, we turn to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, where dwells a dusky, streaky, sociable bird called the Palmchat ( Dulus dominicus ). Hypocolius.

Saudi Arabia 220

Saudi Arabia 2008 Indonesia Groups 220

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2013

So I wasn’t aware there was any controversy about the matter, until I saw a passage in a new monograph on the bird, The Snowy Owl , by Eugene Potapov and Richard Sale. Birds owl owls Snowy Owl taxonomy and systematics' Banks et al. 2003 , PDF). Three hundred pages of Snowy Owl goodness for those who just can’t get enough.).

Owls 170

Owls Indonesia 2002 North Carolina 170

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2013

Here, I show you a few images of Savanna Nightjars , a Southeast Asian species I was able to observe nicely and commonly on Java and South Borneo in 2012 and 2013. You will clearly see a nice bird, but you will see no legs whatsoever. Here is a further series of images from another typical day-roost of the species: roof-tops.

Goats 195

Goats Indonesia Science Experience 195

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 18, 2012

The Yellow Bittern is a tiny heron, substantially smaller than the Butoroides (Green and Striated) species and slimmer too. It is an adherent to fresh water lakes, canals and swamps from India through East Asia, Indonesia and New Guinea. It likes plenty of cover as one would imagine of a bittern species and especially favours Pandanus.

Singapore 170

Singapore Indonesia Asia Guinea 170

10,000 Birds

APRIL 30, 2017

Way back in the days when blog posts still got a lot of comments, I wrote a piece on why field guides that arrange species in a more or less strict taxonomic order regularly frustrate me. Taxonomy is constantly changing and so does the order of species in field guides. Phillipps, Q. & van Balen, N. Brickle & F.

Brunei 159

Brunei 2009 2016 2014 159

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 22, 2024

When not climbing, he collected species, and thus a number of birds are named after him. Three of them can be found on Mount Kinabalu, and local bird guides speak admiringly of colleagues who have seen all three of them on one day (we only managed two). Like the broadbill, Whitehead’s Spiderhunter is a Borneo endemic.

Birds 230

Birds Indonesia Breeding Charlotte 230

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 10, 2019

The 125 Best Bird Watching Sites in Southeast Asia, edited by Yong Ding Li & Low Bing Wen. And now I am holding the “The 125 Best Bird Watching Sites in Southeast Asia” – an expanded and fully updated second edition of “The 100 Best Birdwatching Sites in Southeast Asia”. That is about it – I do not know much more about this region.

Asia 229

Asia Laos Myanmar Indonesia 229

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 18, 2015

The pygmy wren-babbler is a tiny babbler that looks like a wren, making it a bird well named. Seriously, it is much nicer to blog about a brown bird with a descriptive name than some other bird whose common name references an ancient ornithologist none of us have ever met. Very, at 7.5 to 9 cm (around 3 inches). Well, most days.

Vietnam 160

Vietnam Timor Myanmar Asia 160

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

I’ve never been to the Indonesian Archipelago, but I really like the birds there. Lynx Edicions, the ornithological (and now mammal) publisher that gave us the Handbook of the Birds of the World , has now published Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea , by James A. So, this is no ordinary bird guide.

Indonesia 130

Indonesia Brunei Birds Malaysia 130

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2015

Since this is the season of love and harmony and all things nice, I sincerely and originally had planned to write an equally nice, loving and harmonic post on a beautiful group of birds that’s mostly found in SE Asia, the broadbills. Gone, bird magic. Even the group’s namesake feature, the broad bill, is ill-chosen.

Groups 107

Groups Asia Species Birds 107

10,000 Birds

MAY 25, 2013

Let’s take Singapore’s Changi International Airport as an example; it is a huge hub airport with large numbers of people passing through in transit to Australia, Indonesia and south-east Asia. Anyone with more than a couple of hours to kill could easily make a quick birding foray out from the airport. and take 23 minutes).

Singapore 160

Singapore Woodpeckers Parrots Zebras 160

10,000 Birds

APRIL 25, 2019

Also, the island of New Guinea appeared as a whole, or as its parts, the eastern independent country of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the western West Papua province of Indonesia. 4%: Mexico, West Papua (Indonesia), New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya. 6%: Antarctica, Argentina, Indonesia (including the votes for West Papua), India.

Papua New Guinea 214

Papua New Guinea America Costa Rica Sri Lanka 214

10,000 Birds

MAY 15, 2023

I visited Tengchong in late 2020 and wrote about it – but I also went there earlier, in 2017, and this post shows some photos I took during that trip, along with the usual comments that seem to be much more about ridiculing my fellow humans (especially ornithologists and the like) than providing useful information on birds.

China 186

China 2017 Birds Indonesia 186

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Sometimes I just want to hug eBird, or more specifically, whoever writes the short species descriptions (even though I am not the typical hugging kind of person, trust me on this). There are about 50 different species of flowerpeckers globally. There are about 50 different species of flowerpeckers globally. “Dull, me?

Los Angeles 192

Los Angeles Birds Woodpeckers Owls 192

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 26, 2021

And apart from local people, primate researchers sometimes spot it, but it is a species seen by fewer than ten living birders. This book is essentially about those birds that breed on the continent south of the Sahara, a topic few birders are familiar with.

Congo 264

Congo Africa South Africa Kenya 264

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2023

Otherwise, why would eBird call it a “heavily built, flat-headed dark blue bird”, which sounds more like a description of a robot or a piece of machinery than that of a beautiful bird? Apparently, in many regions of Indonesia, songbird contests are frequently held.

Malaysia 130

Malaysia Indonesia Lifestyle Japan 130

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2022

And in my customary environmentally friendly approach to recycling bird photos, I have collected some of them in this post. Apparently, soloensis stands for “Discovered in or native to the Solo River valley” (Wikipedia; the Solo river is a river in Indonesia). It is not a bird I am ever likely to find boring, though.

Falcons 248

Falcons Japan China South Africa 248

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 4, 2020

They contributed 150 lists accounting for 1032 species and more than 36,000 individual birds. Thus 100 species were missed by the time he woke up and noticed that eBird had reset the counters at midnight(do you guys have nothing better to do?). Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve. Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve.

2019 172

2019 Chile Texas Sanctuary 172

10,000 Birds

JUNE 3, 2012

I also love bird identification. And I believe there’s a place for taxonomy, and there’s a place for bird identification. The place for bird identification is a field guide and a field. I’ve been birding for 30 years now, and for the last 20 year, I’ve mostly birded in the same geographic regions.

Indonesia 241

Indonesia Family Asia Species 241

10,000 Birds

MAY 7, 2014

When birding, as in life in general, it is important to stop occasionally and smell the metaphorical roses. This isn’t just because roses smell nice (although many do) or even because we need to remember that almost all birds depend in one way or another on plants (although they mostly do). Sure, they aren’t birds.

Philippines 164

Philippines Protection Malaysia Indonesia 164