10,000 Birds

JANUARY 4, 2022

Yes, sure, Rock Pigeons are not a vulnerable species, unless you count the number of times they have been mocked, scorned, and shooed away. They’re apparently not a sensitive species either, because this derision doesn’t seem to bother them at all!

2018 209

2018 New York City Birds Abandon 209

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2020

” The book in question is Birds of Bolivia: Field Guide , edited and written by Sebastian K. That’s pretty amazing–Bolivia has more bird species than India! The source of this ranking, BirdLife International, lists Bolivia as currently having 1,439 bird species, including 18 breeding endemics.

Bolivia 169

Bolivia Birds Brazil Switzerland 169

10,000 Birds

APRIL 29, 2024

The species is listed as Vulnerable – the estimated number of individuals is 4600-5100 (HBW), of which about 2000 winter on Hokkaido. There is a book on the species, but it is out of print and seems impossible to find even in online secondhand bookstores. Where is the movie about his life then? Back to the eagle.

Eagles 130

Eagles Sea Lions Bears Russia 130

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Two books, two authors, two countries bursting with neotropical avian diversity. Since the books share authors and a creation process, I thought I would review them together. An associated issue is that the Belize and Costa Rica guides share many of the same descriptions of species, written by Howell. Why are these issues?

Costa Rica 206

Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 206

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 1, 2023

The official Ontario bird checklist, produced by Ontario Field Ornithologists , June 2022 listed 506 bird species**, putting it in the top tier of U.S. Small Species Accounts: Each species is allotted one page (with certain exceptions) offering basics–bird names and size, one or two photographs, and a one-paragraph description.

North America 203

North America Birds Owls Canada 203

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Every now and then you read a book which you believe should be read by everyone on the planet. Nature’s Best Hope by American entomologist and conservationist, Doug Tallamy, is such a book. Insects and a host of other invertebrate life have evolved with these plant species, and thus depend on them.

Wildlife 262

Wildlife North America Mammals Breeding 262

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2015

Producing a book about birds and nesting is a dangerous business. Some people love books like that. Third, observing and photographing breeding birds and their young have become acts of ethical confusion as birders, photographers, and organizational representatives debate the impact of our human presence on the nesting process.

Eggs 263

Eggs Family 2006 New York 263

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Later in the day, several difficult species decided to be less difficult. There were six species of wild ducks, along with the usual few released domestic ducks. (One One of my ornithologist friends commented, “I hope they stay to breed there.” Any shot of a Great Egret that has caught a big fish is good in my book.

Ducks 223

Ducks Fish Breeding Species 223

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2013

A breeding bird atlas is a special kind of book. For birders, it’s the extremely large book, shelved in a place where it can’t crush the field guides, used to research the history of a bird in their area. The resulting book, 616 pages in length, 6.4 The resulting book, 616 pages in length, 6.4

Pennsylvania 222

Pennsylvania Breeding Birds Sparrows 222

10,000 Birds

MAY 7, 2019

But, sometimes an appreciation of birds and birding requires more than a reference book with images of birds and facts about their identifying field marks. There are large avian handbooks and small ‘how-to bird’ guides, and quite a few excellent books of both types have been published.

Birds 114

Birds North America Breeding America 114

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

The book ends with further reading suggestions, list of useful websites, and the index of both English and scientific names. Seychelles’ small landmass combined with geographic isolation results in few species. That antiquity produces a high level of endemism, e.g. 19% of 62 breeding birds are endemic to the islands!

Seychelles 225

Seychelles Wildlife Tortoises Fish 225

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 5, 2016

And so, I turn to Better Birding: Tips, Tools & Concepts for the Field , the new book by George L. This is a very different book from what I expected, less of a handbook and more of a comprehensive identification text on 24 groups of birds, presented in words and photographs. It is an intriguing choice of species.

Birds 189

Birds Groups 2015 North America 189

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 6, 2016

This book is a field guide treat for traveling birders and birders who love to fantasize about travel, answering that age-old question, “I’m going on a trip to [fill in the blank—Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras], what field guide should I use?”. A lot of attention is given to differentiating amongst similar looking species.

El Salvador 230

El Salvador America Costa Rica Honduras 230

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2018

It’s not often that we have the opportunity to glimpse the home life of albatrosses, nor of any seabird species. We didn’t know much about migration routes, foraging away from the breeding colony, and feeding during migration, in the water and in the air. Technology to the rescue! What about incubation shifts?

Albatross 114

Albatross Penguins Research Breeding 114

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

With 500 pages, this guide is a bit on the heavy side, but still not too much, having in mind that half of the region falls into the tropics and the edition is dealing with almost a thousand species (989 to be exact). The book ends with three indexes, of scientific, English and Afrikaans names.

Africa 264

Africa South Africa Swaziland Lesotho 264

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2015

Every bird book seems to be about the west coast this month!) I was not planning to do either, but I was going to Catalina Island with my daughter, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Todd, and the hour-long boat ride there and back sounded like an excellent opportunity to try this book out in the field. This is a small book, 56 pages long.

Dolphins 162

Dolphins Whales Whaling Porpoises 162

10,000 Birds

JULY 16, 2012

Jake’s favorite before-bedtime book when he was just a bit younger was Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, a picture book I had picked up at a nature center. By the middle of the book, Jake and his younger brother Zach would be chiming in, “I want my mommy,” and when Mama Owl finally return, they would rejoice along with the owlets.

Birds 207

Birds Owls Switzerland Lions 207

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 6, 2015

Here are some things I’ve learned from the Peterson Reference Guide to Owls of North America and the Caribbean by Scott Weidensaul: The Burrowing Owl is the only North American owl species where the male is larger than the female, albeit, only slightly larger. And the term is ‘non-reversed size dimorphism.’).

North America 216

North America Owls America Dominican Republic 216

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2014

So, when Redgannet asked me if I was interested in reviewing Phillipps’ Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo: Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan, Third Edition , by Quentin Phillipps and Karen Phillipps, a book he had acquired at Birdfair, I hesitated. Did I dare dip my toe into this catalog of tantalizing species?

Brunei 173

Brunei Birds Asia China 173

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2021

Pough “with illustrations in color of every species” by Don Eckelberry, Doubleday, 1946. The New York Times obituary cited the series (and Steiner’s other books, but it was the series that made money) as reshaping the publishing industry in the United States.**. This is a fairly large book: 907 pages; 7.38

North America 278

North America America Birds California Condor 278

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 2, 2018

He brings to this book an academic background in biology and horticulture and, more importantly, decades of experience developing strategies for the best backyard bird feeding practices. The book is focused on suburban living, with little attention given to the unique challenges of urban bird feeding.

Birds 168

Birds New York City Squirrels New York 168

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 25, 2022

For species with more than one subspecies in the region, the separate resident/breeding ranges of the distinct subspecies are indicated on the map. As a rule of thumb, all books that I reviewed were of noticeably high quality. The final novelty and a very successful one, is the positioning of range maps. Most (possibly all?)

Thailand 147

Thailand Colombia 2018 Groups 147

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 4, 2016

This is a very good thing; it means they publish a lot of books about birds (probably more at this point than U.S. This is a hefty book, 560 pages long and dimensions of 6.3 Over 3,200 photographs have been used, most showing species in their habitats. British birders are very serious about birding and their birds.

Ireland 141

Ireland Birds Groups Falcons 141

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 6, 2022

edited by the Pasadena Audubon Society, with illustrations by Catherine Hamilton and photographs by many, are two very different books. we learn) that are home to coveted boreal species, breeding wood-warblers, and two species of Grouse. There are 461 species on the Maine checklist.

Los Angeles 188

Los Angeles Birds District of Columbia Parrots 188

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

Steve, another member of our birding group, also had a field guide by Kenefick, Restall, and Hayes, but his was bordered in GREEN, had a slightly different title, and, to my extreme chagrin, was much more recent, showing the recently split Trinidad Motmot instead of the Blue-crowned Motmot on my book’s cover. I was confused.

Trinidad 190

Trinidad Birds South America Research 190

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 5, 2021

Mid-May to Mid-Jun is the best time to see some of the most exciting species here, as this is the prime breeding time. For another species, the Firethroat , it meant I only got acceptable views rather than the really good ones reportedly possible a few weeks earlier. Maybe the author did not know about Grandalas. Time to leave.

China 261

China Birds Vietnam Fast Food 261

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

There was one odd reprint in 2018, when the Subalpine Warbler was split into the Eastern and Western species, but the changes in the guide weren’t sufficient to call it a 3rd edition, so it remained the updated reprint of the 2nd edition. I haven’t noticed changes in the few descriptions of harder to ID species that I compared.

Europe 249

Europe Birds Woodpeckers Ireland 249

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 5, 2023

A new book about the angelic-looking, identification-stumping birds of the oceans, rivers, and marshes has finally been published! That would be Terns of Europe and North America by Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson, published in 1995, another fantastic book, but out-of-print and in need of an update. Tern lovers rejoice!

North America 196

North America America Species Groups 196

10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2012

Life Along the Delaware Bay: Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds , by Lawrence Niles, Joanna Burger, and Amanda Dey, is a book with a mission. The numbers, as detailed in this book, are alarming: the horseshoe crab harvest grew from less than 100,000 in 1992 to over 2.5 million in the late 1990’s.

Delaware 177

Delaware New Jersey Research Eggs 177

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

I have a fascinating little reference book called Whose Bird? There are not, as far as I know, any plans to re-name the Montagu’s Harrier, a bird that’s now a real rarity in the UK that only occasionally breeds here. Eleonora’s Falcons still breed on Sardinia today. It’s full of fascinating facts.

Falcons 216

Falcons Collecting 2003 Wounded 216

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

Maybe these people like challenges – at least here at the monastery, getting good shots of this species is quite easy. Another species apparently enjoying the proximity of a monastery is the White-winged Grosbeak. In the non-breeding season, Common Merganser all look pretty much like females.

Birds 204

Birds Germany India 2018 204

10,000 Birds

MARCH 1, 2024

Black-tailed godwits winter in large numbers on the estuaries of both Norfolk and Suffolk, and we know that nearly all these birds breed in Iceland. They are of the race islandica , a sub species of the nominate race, limosa. In breeding plumage islandica godwits develop a deeper red plumage than their limosa cousins.

Lithuania 130

Lithuania Morocco Iceland Ireland 130

10,000 Birds

MAY 5, 2020

That was the fourth edition, dated 1980, and I didn’t realize at the time that we were getting the books for free because the fifth edition had just been published. (I Adding the 76 new species in the Hawaii section, this makes coverage of approximately 884 species. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before!

North America 201

North America America Hawaii Birds 201

10,000 Birds

APRIL 22, 2021

Rheindt is a big book. Or should I say a great book? Just last year, 5 new bird species and 5 new subspecies were discovered in a few short weeks of fieldwork on the islands of Taliabu, Peleng and Batudaka. “Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea” by James A. Eaton, Bas van Balen, Nick W.

Indonesia 263

Indonesia Timor Brunei Guinea 263

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

While these birds are very much liked by Chinese birders, the species could unfortunately not be named the National Bird of China as the Latin species name of the bird is Grus Japonicus. It is not quite clear why they do this as it apparently does not affect breeding success. A nice example of gender equality of sorts.

Birds 195

Birds Eggs Bald Eagle Owls 195

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 22, 2019

But I insisted he try the blood and violence guy, and he humored me, only to send me, later, a longish email, pointing out the flaws in my judgment and in the book and the author, and closing with this: “Since I didn’t care for any of his characters, I really didn’t care who killed whom.”. Fair enough.

Humane 129

Humane 2018 Laws Science 129

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2019

I like observing them, reading about them, grappling with species and subspecies identification, and even—on a good day—talking about sparrow taxonomy. This is a reference book with many layers, diverse uses and a distinct personality. Scope of Book. Small and other photographers, mostly, if not all, birders.

North America 143

North America Sparrows America United States 143