May, 2022

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Highly recommended – Europe’s Birds: An Identification Guide

10,000 Birds

When you spot a brand new bird identification guide, especially for your home region – in this case, Europe – reaching for it comes naturally. And a highly recommendable book it is, there is no doubt about it. The only issue is, checking the photos of it at the Princeton Nature website obscures the fact that this is rather thick and hefty book, not something one would consider a field guide (true, the publisher calls it an “identification” and not a “field” guide).

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Lights out, Chicago! Millions of birds expected to migrate over city in next two days

Reddit Animals

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One Good Turn

10,000 Birds

(No, this is not a reference to my personal worst birder joke ever, that One good tern deserves another. Although that joke does apply to Faraaz Abdool’s latest post.). I consider myself exceedingly fortunate to have several birder friends who are biologists. Most are ornithologists, although one is a botanist. One of those ornithologists is Jonathan Vargas, with whom I went birding on the first Monday of this month of May.

San Diego 243
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Gull for a Godwit in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Godwits and curlews are shorebird royalty. The macaws of the sandpiper clan, these long-billed, long-legged, loud calling birds are large and in charge. Unlike peeps and other smallish sandpipers, identification of godwits and curlews doesn’t even require the use of a scope. Better magnification is always preferred but there’s no need to investigate tiny toe palmations or miniscule feathered details on these magnificant mud probers.

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Webinar & PDF Test

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Big Day on a Tiny Island

10,000 Birds

The island of Tobago isn’t the smallest in absolute terms, but it’s pretty tiny at approximately 25 miles long and just under 7 miles wide at its widest point. For Global Big Day on May 14th, we decided we’d try our hand at birding as much of the island as possible. Naturally, we headed into the rainforest at the crack of dawn. The temptation to begin in the wetlands in the southwest of the island was great, but the rainforest in the early morning has a magnetism I simply canno

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Out Birding to Help an Endemic Sparrow in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

I won’t be answering any messages this morning, won’t be available. Won’t be taking any phone calls either but I’ve got a good excuse. Today, along with teams in a few other parts of Costa Rica and elsewhere, I will be birding for a cause, watching birds to help one that only lives in Costa Rica, the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow.

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Collaborative list – April 2022

10,000 Birds

In April 2022, the Collaborative submitted 216 checklists from 4 countries ( Costa Rica , United States , Mexico , and the United Kingdom ) and observed 735 species. The 2022 year list stands at 1,023, and the life rises by a single species ( Great Swallow-tailed Swift seen in Mexico) to 4,114. The United Kingdom ranks sixteenth on the Collaborative’s country list with 211 species observed.

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Birding Singapore

10,000 Birds

Writing this post, I have been in lockdown in my Shanghai compound for 60 days. 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. This is a big advantage when they listen to Tocotronic’s “Crash” – enjoying the song sounding sort of how I would imagine The Smiths to sound today, in a good way – while not havin

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Getting sentimental: Birding at Baihualing, China

10,000 Birds

Up until a few years ago, Baihualing in Yunnan was both a great place to see birds and open to foreigners. I am not sure about the first nowadays, as the second is no longer true. The place has been blocked for non-Chinese nationals for more than 2 years now. Here are some of the nice birds foreigners could see at Baihualing, before it was blocked for foreigners.

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Baihualing – The Sequel

10,000 Birds

At this moment, Baihualing is the eBird hotspot in China which has by far the largest number of species – 486. With 398 species, Nanhui is trailing far behind despite being covered by a much larger number of checklists (2225 compared to 608). So, it is certainly justified to cover this spot in more than one post. A scimitar is a single-edged sword with a convex curved blade associated with Middle Eastern, South Asian, or North African cultures ( source ).

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PDF 9.21.23

this is a test

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“The Hawk’s Way” — a book review

10,000 Birds

Maybe author Sy Montgomery is right when she says that “birdwatchers often look down on falconry,” and maybe not. (Some, according to her, consider it a form of slavery; a 1982 book in my library, The Birdwatcher’s Companion cites “the sentimentalist element of the wildlife protection movement” as deeming falconry to be comparable to cockfighting.).

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Outer Range Brewing Company: Pluck Pluck Pluck Rice Lager

10,000 Birds

The temperature soared to 85 degrees yesterday here in Albany. That’s not entirely unheard of around here in May, but it was an unexpected foretaste of summer considering we haven’t even hit the peak of spring migration yet. And as much as I’d love to feature once again some colorful spring migrants this week at Birds and Booze, the fact is I haven’t had much luck locating any – well, on cans and bottles of booze, that is.

Chickens 202
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What to Do at High Island When the Winds are South

10,000 Birds

High Island in April requires Weather, so I was told. A very specific type of weather–north winds, a cold front, rain. 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.

Houston 202
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Bloody Bay Birding

10,000 Birds

It may seem like an unnecessary alliteration but I’m referring to an actual Bloody Bay – one of Tobago’s many picturesque, idyllic bays on its leeward coast. There are of course various Bloody Bays spread across the Caribbean as the region does have a history in which bloodshed features heavily. This particular Bloody Bay is the last easily accessible bay one encounters when traversing the endless twists and turns of the thankfully well-paved Northside Road.

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CST Sample_VideoTour

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My Global Big (half-)Day, May 2022

10,000 Birds

In the previous period I wrote mostly book reviews (but of some really great books ), yet I cannot remember when the last time was that I wrote of birding itself? Perhaps in my December posts on birding Colombian Amazonia ? I hardly did any birding this year, from getting (mild) Covid in January to my elderly car developing some symptoms and the car repair shop trying to treat the consequences first, instead of going straight for the cause… Also, a mild case of depression too, nothing that canno

Breeders 200
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Weird Towhees

10,000 Birds

Towhees are large, ground-hugging sparrows that occur only in North America. They belong to either the Pipilo or Melozone genera, or perhaps both, as their taxonomy is still a point of contention. (Just to complicate things more, four members of the Melozone genus are called Ground-Sparrows rather than Towhees.). Down here in central Mexico, the Canyon Towhee is a constant presence in open areas, including in my garden and around our church.

Mexico 199
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Black-necked Storks at Myalls Bore near Derby

10,000 Birds

Whenever we make a trip to Derby we pull over seven kilometres before we get to town at Myalls Bore and the 120 metre long cattle trough. We have seen the cattle trough enough times to know there is not a lot of bird-life using it, because it is easier for the birds to use the water that overflows from the bore to make a wetland. Most people drive straight by and visit the Boab Prison Tree and don’t notice the bird-life, but it is a bit hard to ignore the magnificent Black-necked Storks wh

Cattle 197
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Bird-watching at Langi Crossing

10,000 Birds

Our closest river to Broome is the Fitzroy River and we can only access it for part of the year. It is approximately 140 kilometres from Broome with the last section being a gravel road. Once we have our wet season rains the gravel road becomes inaccessible and the river floods. Camping beside the Fitzroy River at Langi Crossing is popular once the weather cools off and the gravel road is accessible.

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Gabriel PDF Webinar

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

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Human elements

10,000 Birds

There is an association of wildlife photographers down here, much maligned among my Mexican birder friends for a variety of reasons, which has proposed a rule that governs which photos they will accept: No wildlife photography should contain any human elements. In other words, no fenceposts, buildings, or telephone wires are allowed. When I had a wonderfully close encounter last week with a Lesser Roadrunner , it made me wonder about this rule.

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Birding St Lucia, South Africa

10,000 Birds

St Lucia is a small town on the Southeastern coast of South Africa. It seems to consist mainly of hotels and restaurants, as the local economy depends on visitors to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park. They mostly come to see the hippopotamuses and Nile crocodiles living in and near the Saint Lucia Estuary. Not as interesting as birds, but easier to get photos of – see a few at the end of this post, just put there in an uncaring way as I really went to St.

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Munkajarra Wetlands near Derby

10,000 Birds

Until recently the access to Munkajarra Wetlands near Derby has been a four-wheel drive track that was not always accessible all year. However, the firebreaks that have been put in recently make it a lot easier for vehicles to access the area. You wouldn’t necessarily take any vehicle in there, but you no longer need to worry about high clearance or four-wheel drive.

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We Go Way Back

10,000 Birds

I’ve been through a few rather complicated weeks lately, so my last couple of outings haven’t been very ambitious. The second week of May, I went to the road beyond San Miguel del Monte, a route with the advantage of being only a few miles from my home. It doesn’t always offer the most interesting set of birds, but it is nearby. Fortunately, the first call I heard when I opened my car door belonged to an old, dear friend.

2013 183
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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Birding Inner Mongolia

10,000 Birds

(Note: this post refers to a trip I took a long time ago, in 2015. Still, after I used modern software to turn the originally black-and-white photos into colored ones, some of them may still be worth looking at). (Second note: Inner Mongolia has a land area larger than that of France and Germany combined, and I only spent one week there. So, to claim that I birded Inner Mongolia is a massive exaggeration.

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Varied Sittellas at Langi Crossing

10,000 Birds

Last week I wrote about our camping trip to Langi Crossing for Grant’s birthday. We are very lucky that it is a reliable place to observe Varied Sittellas and they are often observed on the drive in on the gravel road. They are very distinct in flight due to their white wings being clearly visible and size wise there is no other bird similar. When you are walking through the bush or sat in camp it is the sound of the Varied Sittellas that you hear – or not as the case may be.

Suffering 178
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Birding Shanghai in April 2022

10,000 Birds

This post is a bit of a joke as I have been under lockdown in Shanghai for the whole month. Still, as we did not have any covid cases in our compound for the last third of the month, the government graciously let us outside for the occasional walk within our compound. I, desperate for some birds, used that to take a few photos, even though it meant attracting a lot of attention from the other residents, as I am the only foreigner in this compound and also the only person owning an 800 mm telepho

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Salon des Refusés (part 2)

10,000 Birds

At some point in my life, when I was about 25 and a university student, I thought of myself as a writer. The best thing I ever wrote – in my opinion – was this very short piece: Life is exhausting and depressing – sometimes one would prefer to just sit somewhere on the floor. But every now and then, one has to get up, go to the fridge and get a new one.

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Test

Testing

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Hakeas and Honeyeaters

10,000 Birds

At the moment around Broome we have Hakea macrocarpa flowering profusely. The trees will be flowering for a few months now and they are currently attracting a lot of birds and insects to their flowers. We have two of these trees in our own garden, but they are not flowering quite as profusely as one of the trees in Cygnet Park. Hakea macrocarpa is endemic to Australia and will quite happily grow in very poor soil.

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Birding Sanming, Fujian

10,000 Birds

When birding a rural place such as Sanming in winter, you already know that the only places and times you will be warm during the whole trip are in the train to the destination (thanks to China’s indeed very modern and well-functioning system of high-speed trains) and possibly in bed at night (if the place you are staying has thick enough blankets).

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time for shopping

Reddit Animals

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Animal 98
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Please Help Identify These Tracks!!!

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/Exact-Negotiation-44 [link] [comments].

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New Production Test

Speaker: cha cha dwyer

testing erfgjnea;rgfnae