December, 2012

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Why Go to the 16th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival?

10,000 Birds

The end of January is a cold time for those of us who live in the northeastern United States. This past January I had the great pleasure of temporarily escaping winter by going to the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. I had a great time and hoped to be back again in 2013 but life gets in the way sometimes and we don’t always get what we want.

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Luv & Emma’s Dry Pets Review

4 The Love Of Animals

Luv & Emma’s Dry Pets is an absorbent microfiber towel designed to hang on your door handle to provide a convenient and easy way to dry your pet! Perfect for winter and wet months, the towel is super absorbent and works wonders on wet paws. We loved the convience of it being right on the door ready to go. No more searching for a towel while holding a wet pooch, and no more waste of paper towels either.

Pets 149
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Statistics

Animal Ethics

This blog had 2,797 visits during November, which is an average of 93.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 98.7.

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The Razorbill Invasion of Florida

10,000 Birds

Razorbills ( Alca torda ) have invaded the coastal waters of Florida on an unprecedented scale this December of 2012. To put this invasion into perspective, there were only 14 documented records of Razorbill for the entire state before December 2012. This invasion has produced several documented sightings of flocks with well over a hundred individuals!

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Webinar & PDF Test

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Getting the Bill – Taste, Touch and Smell in Birds

10,000 Birds

One of the defining characteristics of birds, besides the obvious features of wings and feathers, is their bills. And they come in a wonderful smorgasbord of different shapes and sizes. From toucans to curlews and from hummingbirds to flamingos, birds display an almost otherworldly diversity in these body-parts. Bills are instrumental in defining three of the senses in birds – taste, touch and smell.

Mammals 211
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How To Tell If A Hawk Is In Your Yard

10,000 Birds

We had a snow storm approaching Minnesota last weekend and the day before I headed over to the bird feeders at Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge to see if they were getting any Pine Siskins or Common Redpolls (surprisingly, no). The feeders were incredibly active which is to be expected before a snow storm. I do enjoy watching a really active bird feeder with dozens of Black-capped Chickadees zipping to and fro, Northern Cardinals dotting the surrounding shrubs awaiting their approach an

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White-tailed Antelope Squirrels at Joshua Tree National Park

10,000 Birds

While eating lunch with Daisy and her family at a picnic area in Joshua Tree National Park the other day a small chipmunk-looking creature ventured out of the rock formation we were eating next to. The cute little critter was clearly looking for a handout which we did not provide. Nonetheless, it stuck around, hoping perhaps that one of the four kids aged six and under would drop some of their lunch accidentally.

Squirrels 200
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Africa’s Big Five and Little Five

10,000 Birds

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Africa’s famous Big Five , but do you know there is also an equally fascinating Little Five ? Africa is famous for its large, charismatic mammals, and the Big Five epitomize the most sought-after of these fantastic beasts. Originally a hunting term, the Big Five were the most dangerous and prized targets of the great white hunters on safari.

Buffalo 198
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Stygian Owl in Ecuador

10,000 Birds

The Stygian Owl (Asio stygius) is very difficult to see but I can hear it regularly calling near my home inside the Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve. This bird is very secretive and every time that I try to get close to his roost he flies before I can see him. For now I can only get close enough to hear his calls! The photo below was taken at Parque Condor which is a great raptor rescue center near Otavalo.

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Don’t Lick the Pied-billed Grebes

10,000 Birds

I was pretty happy with the Pied-billed Grebe shot I shared yesterday. But I took things to a whole new level today. You see, it is a little-known fact that licking Pied-billed Grebes can cause some crazy hallucinations, much like licking certain amphibians. After hearing tales of such activities from more experienced birders I decided to try it today for the first time while visiting Legoland with the family and all I can say is “WOW!

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PDF 9.21.23

this is a test

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Crow Roosts

10,000 Birds

Have you ever gone to look for a American Crow roost in the United States? In winter, crows gather by the thousands for form large roosts and sleep in the winter time. Some will travel as far as 20 miles during the day to forage, but return in late afternoon. It seems that more and more, American Crows are choosing to roost in urban areas. It could be that they are less likely to be shot at and driven away or there are fewer natural predators to disturb them at night.

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Florida’s Tropical Pigeon, the White-crowned Pigeon

10,000 Birds

Bringing a distinctly tropical, Caribbean influence into the resident avifauna of extreme southern Florida, the White-crowned Pigeon ( Patagioenas leucocephala) is one of the few species that have managed to colonize the southern tip of the state from the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas — the center of its range, although there are also populations in coastal Mexico, Central America, and the Lesser Antilles.

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First Bird of 2013

10,000 Birds

What was your first bird of 2013? Let us know in the comments…and, if you wrote a blog post or have a picture of your first bird of the year online somewhere, well, leave a link in the comments too. Happy New Year from all of us at 10,000 Birds! And here’s hoping you see many great birds, including lots of lifers, in 2013! After all, 2012 was a pretty great year and there is no reason 2013 can’t be the same!

2013 156
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Wicked, tricksy, false!

10,000 Birds

They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false! Gollum (the film version) It can’t have escaped your notice that there is a film from New Zealand out today that people are quite interested in. It’s certainly inescapable here in Wellington, as you can see from this shot I took in Wellington Airport on my way to South Island last week.

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CST Sample_VideoTour

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The Rusty Squirrel-Hawk AKA Ferruginous Hawk

10,000 Birds

The Ferruginous Hawk ( Buteo regalis ) is truly a regal bird. Sporting a 56 inch wingspan, it is the largest of the Buteos. They inhabit the grasslands, shrub steppes, and deserts of western and central North America. Click on photos for full sized images. Ferruginous Hawks were known as Rusty Squirrel-Hawks back in the 1800′s and they exist in both a light and dark morph.

Squirrels 156
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Barnacle Goose, Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, New York

10,000 Birds

You know it has been a good year for rarities in New York when a quick drive to the Bronx before work to see a Barnacle Goose wasn’t because it was a state bird or a year bird or a state year bird but for three other reasons. They are: I wanted to add Barnacle Goose to my Bronx County list. Barnacle Geese are inherently cool. It would really grip Mike Bergin off.

New York 155
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Waving The Yearbirding White Flag

10,000 Birds

Tropical Kingbird is likely to be one of the last birds I see in 2012 and first I see in 2013. Not a hard bird to come by in Costa Rica. This confiding Central American bird was far away from its normal home, near Half Moon Bay, CA. December 25th is possibly the worst day of the year to be posting a blog, because lets face it, even the dispensing of wisdom from the world’s leading birder (past, present, and future) can compete with family duties.

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A Skip of Skylarks?

10,000 Birds

During the middle ages, a specialised vocabulary became popular in the sport of hunting. Known at the time as ‘ terms of venery’ , we know them today as collective nouns. One would display one’s credentials as a sporting gentleman by correct use of the terms and knowing that a flock of duck might be called a raft or a skein , depending on whether they were floating or flying, was essential.

Hunting 151
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Gabriel PDF Webinar

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

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A Christmas Hermit Crab

10,000 Birds

Christmas is approaching fast across the world and many countries use the colours red and green to decorate during the festive season. This week I came across a Hermit Crab that had also chosen red, but out of necessity. It is a rather large Hermit Crab that has obviously outgrown its shell and in the search for a shell that is more suitable it has found itself in an awkward situation.

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Chalk-browed Mockingbirds; Feeding time.

10,000 Birds

It is spring in Argentina. This brood of three Chalk-browed Mockingbirds were waiting for a parent to return with food in the Costanera Sur Reserve by the Rio Plata in Buenos Aires. I concentrated my camera on the chick on the right which was best placed, but not best pleased when an adult delivered a food parcel to one of the other siblings. All three of them competed as loudly for their parents’ attention, but my chick had to wait for a few passes before it got its share.

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A Buff-banded Rail in our garden!

10,000 Birds

Tuesday morning started off like every Tuesday. We were awake just after 5:30am as it is light and we had coffee and got ready to face the day. At 06:30am I went to take our recycling bin out to the front of the house whilst Grant put his work boots on and I didn’t get far. I had just reached the front of the house and less than 10 metres from me I was faced by a Buff-banded Rail !

Australia 144
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Fake Eagle in Fake Video

10,000 Birds

Thanks to a slow news day, millions of people have already heard of the video of a Golden Eagle grabbing a child in Canada. Obviously, if you’re reading about it here, you know a bit more about birds than the average aficionado of internet hoaxes. Consider some expert testimony: Greg Laden offers up many excellent reasons why the video may or may not be plausible and Kenn Kaufman assures us that the bird isn’t even a Golden Eagle.

Eagles 144
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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Smoking is (good) for the birds

10,000 Birds

Back in the 1980s, it became popular for biologists to consider plant secondary compounds in understanding inter-species relationships and other ecological matters. I was doing my thesis research at the time, and it even affected what I was doing, as the wild world was being reconceptualized in terms of tannins and alkaloids, seed edators and dispersers, and so on.

2001 143
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In Search of the White Wagtail at Cabrillo Beach

10,000 Birds

When a White Wagtail was found on 10 December at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, just south of Los Angeles, I was pretty stoked. After all, I would be arriving in southern California on 19 December, landing in Los Angeles at LAX, about thirty minutes from the site of the sighting. When it was reported each and every day after that up until the day before I arrived I was even more stoked.

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Tufted Duck at Huntington Harbor, New York

10,000 Birds

After a Tufted Duck was reported yesterday on Long Island I did some figuring and realized that I could go find the bird this morning before work and still, provided traffic wasn’t totally horrific, get to work in New Jersey on time. So I headed out to Huntington Harbor, ran into Anthony Collerton, and eventually found the bird. Species number 311 for the year in New York State and my last of the year, as I will be heading to California in the morning.

New York 140
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Pictures Galore!

10,000 Birds

So my last couple of posts have not had pictures in them. Bad! But that was only because, inspired by Corey , I’ve been working so hard on my photography skillz. See? Cooper’s Hawk plucks Mourning Dove More field marks Cleaning her beak Haha, just kidding, those are stills from a video my brother took, my photos still look like this: But I really am back in New York, and a Cooper’s Hawk really did take a Mourning Dove from my parents’ feeder in dramatic fashion.

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Test

Testing

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Allegedly Artsy Bird Photos from Southern California

10,000 Birds

When I am out in the field birding I often can’t resist taking pictures of birds even when I know that the light is such that I am not going to get a very good image. Sometimes this means low light, sometimes this means that the birds are backlit, sometimes this means that the bird is obscured. I never know what to do with such images. I think you can figure out where this post is headed.

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Where Are You Birding This Final Weekend of 2012?

10,000 Birds

The last weekend of December 2012 is the last weekend of the entire year. How many of you plan, before turning the page on this eventful year, to try to pad your year list? How will you do it? Since I didn’t keep a year list in 2012, I feel no pressure to beat the bushes for final ticks. I may just sit back and contemplate how fortunate I’ve been this year to see amazing birds in amazing places with amazing people.

2012 137
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Tumbesian Endemics at Cerro Blanco Ecuador

10,000 Birds

If you are interested in seeing some Tumbesian Endemics, very close to the Guayaquil Airport in Ecuador, then you must visit Bosque Protector Cerro Blanco. This tropical dry forest is being protected by Fundacion Pro Bosque to conserve the 6078 hectars (15,000 acres) of this fragile ecosystem which boasts amazing life and many endemic birds. One of the most important endemic birds found here is the Great-green Macaw ( Ara ambigua ) which is considered Endangared due to habitat destruction and

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Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of 2012)

10,000 Birds

Time to put another year in the books! You are undoubtedly reviewing the best and worst of everything you experienced in 2012 as we prepare to ring in the New Year. But for now, let’s focus on some specific highlights from just this past weekend… My Best Bird of the Weekend was Red-breasted Nuthatch , many of which were emboldened to visit my feeder in the midst of mountains of snow.

2012 135
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New Production Test

Speaker: cha cha dwyer

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