10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2013

Some lingered to gaze at samples from the Field’s collection of bird specimens, such as perfectly preserved thrushes, warblers, and even a Rose-breasted Grosbeak under glass. Other hardy souls signed up for an early morning “Ostrich Run” 5k, with the prizes beinging–you guessed it–actual ostrich eggs.

San Diego 186

San Diego Ostriches Chicago Colorado 186

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2013

Data collection for the Second Breeding Bird Atlas Project of Pennsylvania took place from 2004 through 2009, roughly twenty years after the first official atlas project, 1983 through 1989. It was a gigantic, innovative project that collected and catalogued massive amounts of data about birds, habitat, and ecological change.

Pennsylvania 245

Pennsylvania Breeding Birds Sparrows 245

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2023

Johnson is collecting myths about owls from cultures around the world and is also presiding over a 12-year Burrowing Owl Project that seeks to collect DNA samples, vocalizations, morphological data and map locations for every Burrowing Owl subspecies the world over.

Owls 231

Owls Science Barn Owls Penguins 231

10,000 Birds

JULY 21, 2011

For instance, I can lay my hands on data for primates and rodents (because I’ve collected those data for research) but I don’t have comparable data for bovids (just selected data) and zero data for birds (in spreadsheets on my computer). Note that there are a lot of mammals (about 40) that are bigger than any bird in this sample.

Mammals 182

Mammals Rodents Birds Reptiles 182

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Alternatively, imagine I set the dial to produce simple heat, like the kind that comes out of your stove to cook your scrambled eggs. The kind of energy produced by a cell phone signal is way more like the heat that cooks your eggs than like the scary radiation that comes form an H-bomb or X-ray machine or whatever.

Mammals 250

Mammals Birds Fish Cooking 250

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2017

Illustrations were created using diverse visual and physical source materials–skin collections from Australian museums and a database of over 300,000 photographs (plus, of course, the artists’ years of field experience). Some offer nest information, egg information, breeding timeline, in flight views, etc.

Australia 111

Australia Birds Penguins 2015 111

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

Here’s a sample of how that section reads: “Ducks have 14-18 feathers (rectrices). The 10-page section aptly named “Age, sex, and identification of ducks using in-hand upperwing patterns” is a guide to just that, utilizing images from two Washington State museum collections. Barker and Carrol L.

Ducks 128

Ducks North America Geese Hunters 128