10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2022

No macws in Niagara Falls… On the birding side of the coin, August up north is the quiet before the big fall migration rush, a time when many birds quiet down and change feathers before they chase the summer south. The woods and fields lack much of the bird song of May and June but coastal habitats and wetlands are another story.

Costa Rica 184

Costa Rica Eagles West Virginia Albatross 184

10,000 Birds

APRIL 21, 2021

My state of Michoacán has a wide variety of nectarivorous birds. But we have one bird here, a bird that does not occur in the U.S., This bird, in spite of what you may see in the photo at the top of this post, is named the Cinnamon-bellied Flowerpiercer. The post Sneak Attack appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

Costa Rica 244

Costa Rica South America North America Venezuela 244

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 12, 2019

Bird migration! Our big month of bird movements in Costa Rica, the 10th month of the year, is when most of the swallows, Scarlet Tanagers , thrushes, and other species on the South American express push through. The bulk of birds, though, move along the coast and through the northern lowlands. What do they eat?

Costa Rica 258

Costa Rica Nicaragua Birds Panama 258

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2022

On that glorious day, I observed ten critically endangered birds, representing 8% of their Costa Rican, or 2% of their global population!! In my previous post , I dealt with Rancho Naturalista Lodge itself and birding within their private reserve. But, let’s start at the beginning. 130 mature individuals, in 2019 (Monge et al.

Costa Rica 227

Costa Rica Nicaragua 2019 Farming 227

10,000 Birds

JULY 19, 2018

Birders follow different patterns of bird migration and their local activities and travel accordingly. It illustrates the bird richness per country. Shown as a list, it looks like this: Less than 200 bird species: Antarctica; oceanic islands. Focus on the wider triple border area – the birding top of the world.).

Equatorial Guinea 190

Equatorial Guinea Costa Rica Guyana Central African Republic 190

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 15, 2022

and I am taking my observation-sofa position next to a glass wall, overlooking bird feeders in the misty cloudforests of the Cordillera de Talamanca. I met Serge five years ago, when he invited me to a mad bird race all the way from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It is 6.40

Costa Rica 219

Costa Rica Panama Squirrels Nicaragua 219

10,000 Birds

APRIL 16, 2022

The birding in Costa Rica is always golden but some days, you really do strike gold. Go birding in the humid, moss decorated forests of the Caribbean slope and the feathered nugget might take the form of a Bare-necked Umbrellabird. Focus on birds in the southern Pacific region and treasure might be a Turquoise Cotinga.

Costa Rica 237

Costa Rica Fish Belize Nicaragua 237

10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2020

I had such a good time exploring the zone that I went back again the following week, something I rarely do, given that I have so many quality birding sites to choose from in my region. These tiny birds like to sing from any available perch, and have the amusing habit of doing backflips in the air while they sing. And they sing a lot!

Mexico 235

Mexico Lamb Nicaragua Sparrows 235

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 15, 2018

A couple of the biggest of bird families are restricted to the Americas. Purple and shining beryl adorn the males of this beautiful little bird. Oddly enough, DNA studies seem to indicate that it’s closest relative is not any of the other mountain gems, but the following dissimilar bird. Purple-throated Mountain-gem.

Costa Rica 209

Costa Rica Nicaragua Panama Honduras 209

10,000 Birds

MAY 30, 2015

There are lots of great birding sites in Costa Rica. In fact, go anywhere with a good amount of natural forest and the birding is gonna be good. Visiting those out of the way spots is necessary if you want to add these and other choice “bonus birds” to the three or four hundred species ticked at the usual sites.

Costa Rica 173

Costa Rica Chile Nicaragua San Jose 173

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2019

“Target birds” The term can foster excitement but is easily contentious. Aren’t all birds worth watching? There’s nothing wrong with appreciating and watching every bird but there’s also nothing wrong about going to great efforts to see lifers only found in dreams. Fiery-throated Hummingbird.

Costa Rica 202

Costa Rica Panama Birds Eagles 202

10,000 Birds

JULY 30, 2014

The Steller’s Jay ( Cyanocitta stelleri ) is one of the ubiquitous birds seen at Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. They are a non-migratory species found in western coniferous and mixed-coniferous forests, breeding from Alaska, western Canada, and the United States south through western Mexico to Nicaragua.

Nicaragua 171

Nicaragua Alaska United States Canada 171

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 6, 2016

Last weekend, I guided a trip to Laguna del Lagarto for the Birding Club of Costa Rica. The “who knows what else” comes from this site being situated among good-sized tracts of lowland forest connected to the big forest block in Nicaragua. Canopy birds like Blue Dacnis came down for a bite along with a dozen other species.

Costa Rica 124

Costa Rica Nicaragua Eagles Parrots 124

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 6, 2016

Birds know habitat. They don’t read treaties or draw maps or build walls and, as far as we can tell (since we can’t talk to birds, yet), they have no concept of political boundaries. Robert Gallardo’s self-published Guide to the Birds of Honduras came out in 2015, and is the first bird field guide dedicated to that country.

El Salvador 230

El Salvador America Costa Rica Honduras 230

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 29, 2016

I don’t see many long-term benefits to a landscape where large areas have been converted to monocultures of banana, pineapples (real eco-deserts full of poison), and cow, but it’s at least worthwhile to know that such habitats are pretty worthless for birding. At least that’s how it was at Casa Calateas.

Costa Rica 165

Costa Rica San Jose Panama Birds 165

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 10, 2015

Mountains are a boon for birding. The montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama are home to at least 50 species of birds that live nowhere else except for one or two that also occur in northwestern Colombia. Bird the high elevation habitats of the Talamancan Mountain Range and the regional endemics rule.

Costa Rica 150

Costa Rica Panama Nicaragua Honduras 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 4, 2011

home about advertise archives birds conservation contact galleries links reviews subscribe Browse: Home / Birds / What is the National Bird of Denmark? What is the National Bird of Denmark? It is no wonder that the ugly duckling grew up to be the national bird of Denmark. The Numbat is the animal emblem.

Denmark 161

Denmark 2011 Honduras Deer 161

10,000 Birds

APRIL 1, 2017

Unless those non-birding folks happen to be duck hunters or love to go fishing, they tend to stay away from the marshes, the riparian zones, the bottom lands. See the birds? There are two main wetland areas in Costa Rica, one in the Tempisque River floodplain, and the other in wetland areas associated with Lake Nicaragua.

Costa Rica 100

Costa Rica Birds Ducks Pelicans 100

10,000 Birds

JULY 23, 2016

Birders concerned with ticking off bird species from a list in North America already know all about the AOU Supplement. For folks who don’t put much emphasis on taxonomic issues and classification of the birds they see, let’s start by saying that we aren’t talking about something that adds extra vitamins to your diet.

Costa Rica 100

Costa Rica 2016 South America Panama 100

10,000 Birds

JULY 27, 2013

And while the birds that we in the western hemisphere refer to as blackbirds in their common names are from several different genera it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that if a bird is in the same genus as the North American meadowlarks that it would also be called a meadowlark. If only naming birds were so simple!

Blackbirds 166

Blackbirds Trinidad Costa Rica Nicaragua 166

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2015

Quetzal is THE beloved, sacred bird of Guatemala and they do live there (and in southern Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) BUT are more accessible in Costa Rica. If the birds are feeding along the road, you can just as easily find them yourself. These people feed birds. Even the non-birders will love the scenery.

Costa Rica 150

Costa Rica Panama Nicaragua Honduras 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 18, 2011

home about advertise archives birds conservation contact galleries links reviews subscribe Browse: Home / Birds / What is the National Bird of Honduras? What is the National Bird of Honduras? By Corey • March 18, 2011 • 1 comment Tweet Share The national bird of Honduras is the Scarlet Macaw.

Honduras 150

Honduras 2011 Deer Birds 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 11, 2011

Which, naturally, got me to thinking about the newly erected order Suliformes, a development I mentioned in my December column, 2010′s Top 10 Developments in Bird Taxonomy and Systematics , but which I thought deserved further examination, for it’s one of those stories that defines the era in which we are living and birding.

2011 151

2011 Pelicans Papua New Guinea Birds 151

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 6, 2018

It actually makes a lot of sense, the geographic features of the isthmus between North America (including Mexico, because Mexico is part of North America) and South America cut across political lines, as do birds. It is the first bird field guide to every country of Central America (plus the islands governed by those countries).

America 212

America El Salvador Costa Rica Honduras 212

10,000 Birds

MARCH 11, 2011

And reports of birds nesting – not owls, of course, those weirdo snow fetishists, but other birds nesting – light up my life. Most exotics, at least in the bird world, stick close to their point of arrival and barely hang on – or don’t – over the generations. In 1998 W. And of Wyoming.

Montana 133

Montana 2011 New York Bahamas 133

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 27, 2021

I’ll be honest: As much as I enjoy writing for 10,000 Birds, there is an element of anxiety to the commitment. Every plant is blooming, and hummingbirds, our most colorful birds, are everywhere. I’m quite fond of the Black-headed Siskin , a tropical finch found from Mexico to Nicaragua. Suddenly, it is mid-October.

Nicaragua 230

Nicaragua Mexico Guatemala Nashville 230

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Obviously, not all bird records have been reported to eBird. It happened during a Christmas Bird Count in Louisiana in 1984. The notes on this exceptional number of birds is “counted blackbirds in aggregates of 100,000 and estimated ratios of species every 10 minutes.” After all, have you ever counted to a million?

Birds 161

Birds Louisiana Nicaragua Blackbirds 161

10,000 Birds

JULY 21, 2021

The first words describing this species in Wikipedia are “poorly-documented” Before 2015, when I first saw it in Paso Ancho, it had only been reported twice on eBird outside of its Sierra Madre Occidental breeding range: once from Taxco, Mexico, and another report from Nicaragua. Are those enough Orange-breasted Buntings ?

2016 260

2016 2015 Nicaragua Mexico 260

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 4, 2018

And, for all our complaints about brown and gray plumages, gulls can be beautiful birds (well, some more beautiful than others, and Heermann’s Gull is one of my favorites, with one N at the end or two). In a birding world that celebrates identification, there are surprisingly few articles and books on gull identification.**

North America 195

North America America El Salvador Nicaragua 195

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 19, 2017

In Costa Rica, we don’t get many chances to chase birds. The same goes for other challenging resident birds like the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, Speckled Mourner, and Gray-headed Piprites. No matter where in the world we bird, it seems like the ones we twitch are the birds that aren’t supposed to be there.

Costa Rica 100

Costa Rica San Jose Falcons Nicaragua 100

10,000 Birds

APRIL 28, 2018

In addition to Spanish, several other languages continue to be spoken, the pines and cypress trees of the Guatemalan highlands only occur as introduced species once you travel south of Nicaragua, and dozens of bird species that occur in Costa Rica and Panama don’t even make it to Nicaragua. How true this was!

Costa Rica 113

Costa Rica Guatemala Birds Nicaragua 113

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 16, 2018

Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama make up Central America. Obviously, many (nearly all) of those birds exist outside that relatively small geographic area, up in to North America and down into South America. The post New Field Guide: Central America appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

Antigua and Barbuda 114

Antigua and Barbuda El Salvador America Costa Rica 114

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

But you are here for the birds. The curse of forest birding - a bird drought. Maybe the birds will come to you. They are the only birds able to fly backwards and the 340-odd species come in many different forms. Fantastic caterpillars, otherworldly insects, ghoulish spiders, tiny scattering creatures.

Colombia 279

Colombia Ecuador Bolivia Peru 279