September, 2021

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Swarovski Skills Camp, or men and their toys

10,000 Birds

Yesterday evening I got home from the second Swarovski Skills Camp at Lake Neusiedl in the east of Austria. I am still tired from the long drive, but it was great to play with the very best toys for birders, to be able to share experiences and to ask the factory staff all sorts of silly questions. It was also great to finally travel overseas again, meet a lot of people I did not know (and some I did), to be in a new country… and not just the new country, but its best birding area, where al

Austria 295
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WATCH: Florida Man Fights Off Gator and Traps Him Inside of a Trash Can in INSANE Viral Video: 'I Got Kids to Protect'

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Seabirds: The New Identification Guide: An ID Guide Review

10,000 Birds

Some people read cookbooks though they have no intention of whipping up a mushroom risotto, some people read bird guide books, even when the likelihood of actually seeing the creatures in those guides is remote. It’s intriguing, it’s fun, it’s even educational. For the past two weeks I’ve been enjoying a superb new addition to the bird guide genre: Seabirds: The New Identification Guide by Peter Harrison, Martin Perrow, and Hans Larsson.

Albatross 278
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NATURE’S BEST HOPE BY DOUG TALLAMY – A REVIEW

10,000 Birds

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. The reason why is that it preaches simple truths: 1. We are in the midst of an incredibly dangerous biodiversity crisis [coupled with climate change] . 2. That every human on the planet ultimately depends on biodiversity and nature for stable weather and climate, food, water and fresh air; that is, life

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Webinar & PDF Test

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Why Do I Keep a Neighborhood Bird List?

10,000 Birds

“Why do you always keep a list?” my brother asked on a hot and muggy afternoon in North Florida. Gwynn sat behind me in the canoe as we paddled lazily around a shallow lake. Visiting from California, he had visited local gardens and trails with me, spent time by the pool, and took a few mini-canoe trips. Each time, a small notebook tagged along with me, and I would note the bird species I spotted, then put it away. “Well…” was my first answer, as I struggled to arti

Florida 257
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Birding in Place on Poas Volcano- What can You See?

10,000 Birds

Poas Volcano isn’t just a mountain built with magma. In common with so many other volcanoes, Poas also houses farms, people, and forests full of birds. Strawberries are grown year round, visit the area and young locals will let you know. They hold up boxes of strawberries as you drive past, loudly exclaiming, “Fresas! Freeesas!” Soaking up nutrients from volcanic soils and shaded with black fabric, the small fruits are a tasty piece of Poas.

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Grassy Green Space in the Central Valley- Trash Habitat or Prime Real Estate for Oddball Birds?

10,000 Birds

When looking for birds in Costa Rica, the Central Valley isn’t the first place that comes to mind. Fly in to Juan Santamaria airport and this is where you arrive; a heavily populated and urbanized intermontane valley. Tongues and patches of green space host birds but most birders leave as soon as they can. I can’t blame them, I would too.

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A Most Remarkable Book

10,000 Birds

You get three or four books in one with Jonathan Meiburg’s A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey. And it’s more than the sum of the parts. There’s a meditation on and biography of the American/Argentinian/English naturalist and novelist, W.H. Hudson; and a primer on geological history, including the continuing zoological effects of the “Great American Biotic Interchange”; and a travelogue of an extraordinary river trip through Guyana

Guyana 233
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More Encouragement to Bird at Home

10,000 Birds

After a lifetime of lockdown measures we’re all surely chomping at the bit to get back out and slip back into that birding groove. I for one have been cautious, probably overly so. Nevertheless, I have taken my fair share of chances in life thus far. I shall not get into those, as we may never get to the birds! A few weeks ago a local birder let us know of a pair of Pearl Kites that had seemed to take up residence about 40 minutes from where I live.

Birds 233
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Zenato “Alanera” Rosso Veronese (2016)

10,000 Birds

To paraphrase Aristotle via Aldo Leopold, one swallow does not a summer make, but zero swallows, that is fall. That at least holds mostly true where I am in eastern upstate New York, where I haven’t personally seen a swallow in several weeks, and the last reports in my home county of Albany are now over a fortnight old. Now that we’re officially into autumn as of yesterday afternoon, there may be a few swallows lingering along the riverways and reservoirs here, and some may be found here and the

2016 231
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PDF 9.21.23

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Bird Therapy

10,000 Birds

“I am not a psychologist, but I portray one in my role as the pastor of a small church.” Actually, my wife and I have a fairly deep understanding of counselling techniques — which is a good thing, because studies show that much counselling and mental health work occurs in church settings. Many people are more comfortable speaking to a pastor than to a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Birds 228
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Birding Baxi Forest, Sichuan, China

10,000 Birds

The last few days, I have been mildly obsessed with a Velvet Underground cover version of “I’m waiting for the man” by Matt Berninger (video here ). Of course, it is hard to justify such an obsession in a blog post ostensibly all about birds. On the other hand, such a challenge is also an opportunity (such a cliche, I know). So, I went through the lyrics of said song and found the one line that apparently applies both to waiting for your local heroin dealer and to birding: R

China 219
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Cute and Cuter

10,000 Birds

My latest posts have tended to the thematic, rather than offering up lots of photos of the cool birds I am seeing. That is not due to a lack of birding; I am still going out every Monday. But very rainy weather during August made it harder to see exciting birds, and often resulted in poor photos of those I did see. Alas, our rainy season seems to be slowing down — although I heard a rumble of thunder as I wrote the sentence — fingers crossed!

Colombia 214
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Teal Lake Shiraz (2019)

10,000 Birds

Most birders know better than to fall prey to such sensationalism, but among the public at large, Australia is notorious for being a land creeping and crawling with dangerous and even lethal wildlife at every turn. And not just deep in the bush, either, but at the beach, in urban parks – even in the country’s suburban homes. Forget lions, tigers, and bears – if Internet listicles are to be believed, all of Oz is full of crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish, snakes, spiders – even magpies – that are dea

2019 214
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CST Sample_VideoTour

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Birds and Trash

10,000 Birds

In some places, birds have to live with large amounts of trash in their environment. Fortunately, some have found creative ways to deal with this issue: Trash indicating food ( Yellow-billed Chough , Balangshan, China). Trash as nesting material ( Upland Buzzard , Ruoergai, China). This is actually getting more popular in nesting areas with a high risk of gentrification.

China 212
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Best Bird of the Weekend (Second of September 2021)

10,000 Birds

And just like that, migration is upon us. Actually, many birds started their seasonal peregrination weeks ago and may have many more weeks ahead until they’ve reached their destinations. Migration is meaningful to those of us who appreciate when non-local birds invade our local airspace, so make the most of this one. Most of the birds I spotted this weekend are the same species I’ll be hanging out with all winter.

Breeders 210
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Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of September 2021)

10,000 Birds

Every fall weekend bears a bite of bittersweet wonder around here. The thrill of a wave of migrants also brings a pang of worry that these may be the last songbirds we see for a while. No worries, though, as long as the next season brings its own suite of specialties. Plus, fall has a lot more to offer all of us. I finally tracked down Black-bellied Plover , a shorebird species that had been eluding me for the county for years, plus a bonus bird in the form of a very infrequent Forster’s T

Bears 209
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Birding Fengxian, Shanghai in summer

10,000 Birds

With my favorite Shanghai birding place at Nanhui getting gradually destroyed under the watchful eyes of the local government favoring Tesla over terns, I have been searching for some alternative Shanghai locations with less ongoing construction, fewer people, and hopefully more birds. Fengxian is one of these places – geographically not as good as it is a bit away from the most straightforward coastal migration part, but indeed a bit less disturbed for now.

Cats 209
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Gabriel PDF Webinar

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

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Birding Mengbishan, Sichuan, China

10,000 Birds

Mengbishan is about five hours away from Balangshan by car, on a road that is partly excellent, partly horrible. The horrible essentially meaning half-an-hour delays for construction while the road is being upgraded. As often in China, the choice seems to be between terrible infrastructure and almost no people or great roads accompanied by caravans of tour buses.

China 208
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Leucistic Limpkin

10,000 Birds

Conceptualizing a plumage aberration such as leucism, where pigments are prevented from reaching some (or all) feathers (in the case of birds) may be a feat of the imagination that can most easily be applied to one of the more common species – maybe an American Robin , or a Rufous-bellied Thrush. Personally, I’ve seen leucistic hummingbirds more than anything else – I photographed a completely leucistic Black-throated Mango many years ago on Tobago, and more recently I’ve

Paraguay 207
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A posing Yellow Chat

10,000 Birds

The photograph above is your typical photograph of a Yellow Chat around Broome. You will be walking along and there is a little bit of movement on the ground and you observe a couple or more Yellow Chats. Recently we encountered a flock of over one hundred Yellow Chats , but they did not stay still and they were impossible to photograph. Often the Yellow Chats will sit on the top of the saltbush near the coast, but once again only briefly.

Mexico 207
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Birding with a Botanist

10,000 Birds

I am guessing that no birder practices this passion exclusively for the birds. If you are like me, and I suspect you are, it’s also for the butterflies, beetles, lizards, and plants. In my case, it is especially for the plants. In fact, I’ve brought a good number of those plants (in the form of cuttings and seeds) back to my two gardens.

Birds 205
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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Flycatchers in the Cocoa

10,000 Birds

When out birding, I prefer completely wild habitat. There is something about a mature rainforest, for example, that cannot be replicated by any human. Reforested areas may come close, but there is a feeling that weathering the passage of time engenders. Humans have altered their habitat for hundreds of years, creating various new habitats that some aspects of nature have come to colonize.

Trinidad 205
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Pied Oystercatchers don’t give up!

10,000 Birds

This year, like every year, the Pied Oystercatchers have not given up on trying to successfully breed along our coast here in Broome. The breeding season started early this year with the first eggs laid at the end of May. This pair of Pied Oystercatchers have incubated two clutches of eggs and had chicks for a few days on both occasions. They are currently making nest scrapes once again, so maybe it will be third time lucky.

Eggs 205
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Birding Gonggangling and Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China

10,000 Birds

Ronald Reagan once said that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” When starting a birding tour, which words by your tour guide can have a similarly terrifying effect? For my money, the question “Do you like music” is a strong contender. What to do when faced with this question, if the urge to start the birding trip is stronger than the initial reflex to run away?

China 204
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Best Bird of the Weekend (First of September 2021)

10,000 Birds

September has arrived, bringing the first waves of a new season of migration. Millions of birds around the world are making moves. Will you move with them? I spent the last week in Alaska chasing all kinds of excitement but finding fewer birds than I’d hoped. The weekend found me in the Fairbanks area, where the dominant bird right now has to be Sandhill Cranes.

Alaska 195
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Test

Testing

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Administrative Procedure for Birders II: Duck Stamp Rulemaking (Again)

10,000 Birds

Last year, I wrote about the rulemaking process used by the Trump Administration to change the requirements of the art contest for the Federal Duck Stamp. The change was to “permanently” require a mandatory hunting element in each submission. This year, the Biden Administration used the same administrative process to undo that “permanent” change. * * *.

Ducks 194
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Brahminy Kite

10,000 Birds

The Brahminy Kite Haliastur indus is an unmistakeable medium-sized raptor that we observe very regularly around Broome. We currently have a pair of Brahminy Kite nesting at the top of a dense tree in our local neighbourhood, but the tree is too tall and dense to take photographs. I was lucky enough to observe the birds carrying nesting material over a period of time into the tree in somebody’s garden, because you would have no idea the nest was there otherwise.

Fish 194
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Collaborative List – August 2021

10,000 Birds

It is delightful to see that the beats are getting back into the field and brandishing their optics around with great relish. They have been waiting for the natural imperative that calls them outside and now the leash has been loosened. I hope that you have made it out too. Stay vigilant and safe. 10 of the beats have submitted 124 checklists which are collated below for your perusal.

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The Strange Case of the Hyperactive Stilts

10,000 Birds

Only one week after the Atlantic hurricane Grace dropped a good amount of rainfall on Michoacán, the outer bands of the East Pacific Hurricane Nora did the same, this Saturday and Sunday. As a result, I suspected that many of the sites on my Monday birding rotation would be pretty muddy. So I headed to the one place where most of my walking/birding route is paved.

Pelicans 191
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New Production Test

Speaker: cha cha dwyer

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