10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

The final weekend of October carries a particularly macabre yet playful resonance in most years. The horrors of this particular year seem to have stolen most of the joy of Halloween, if the meager stream of trick or treaters we saw this weekend were any evidence. But birds don’t seem to care about what ails us humans. They have been moving just as they tend to do this time of year, which can–as you may know–spectacular.

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2020 2007 Owls Birds 253

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Late Sunday afternoon I was relaxing at home trying to recover from my early awakening due to having turned back the clock one hour for daylight saving time. Well, that and over imbibing on Halloween candy, if I’m being honest. I mindlessly opened my phone and scrolled through Facebook…and an image jumped out at me, an image of a flycatcher from Kissena Park in my home borough, a flycatcher I had never seen in Queens, a flycatcher so obscure that I couldn’t even identify it.

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Birds Collecting 2015 Species 235

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Back in March, back when the world realized that a pandemic was happening and that it was spreading with tenacious unconscious determination, Costa Rica closed its borders. The abrupt move helped slow the number of cases for some time, helped give the country’s health system a chance at staying ahead of being overwhelmed but it couldn’t keep the virus at bay forever.

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Costa Rica Birds United States Washington 225

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

Usually when I think of unseasonably mild autumn weather, I picture a last gasp of summer manifesting itself with an early fall heat wave in September, or maybe a stretch of warmer weather in October before Hallowe’en. But here in eastern upstate New York, as we near the end of the first week of November, we’re a few days into a nearly balmy spell of clement temperatures that’s forecasted to last into early next week.

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2018 New York Blackbirds Owls 201

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Adam Cairns is a photographer, writer and poet. He is returning to the UK after a four year spell in Qatar, in the Middle East. He posts photos and descriptions of the birds he finds on his blog, Birderlife. This is Adam’s first contribution to 10,000 Birds. I was studying a row of Black-winged Stilts on the edge of the concrete rimmed reservoir when a shadow flickered overhead.

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Qatar Farming Sanctuary Raised 183

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia , one of the many fantastic characters is a rather human-like frog creature named Puddleglum. Puddleglum is an endlessly pessimistic, though kind-hearted, ally to the story’s several heroes. By the end of the series’ fourth book, The Silver Chair , he has himself become a reluctant hero. Puddleglum could also describe my mood last week as I drove north from Morelia to Lake Cuitzeo.

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2020 Ducks Sparrows 2019 251

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

I bought a new rucksack yesterday and the first thing I checked when I brought it home was, how easily my spotting scope with a mounted window clamp fits in – test passed with flying colours. What purpose rucksack did I choose? Well, that tells a lot about me: it’s a 40l plane carry-on type (which I will carry on as my day-pack, too). I clearly miss travelling, long distance travelling.

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Asia Malaysia Papua New Guinea Thailand 271

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

Western Australia is a very large state and often there are vast distances between towns. The closest town to Broome if we head south towards Perth is around 600kms. Derby lies around 200kms to the north. The capital city, Perth, is over 2000kms away. Darwin is actually closer, but we still have a hard border, so we can’t leave Western Australia.

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Australia Zebras Eagles Species 175