2021

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The Usual Suspects

10,000 Birds

I went to the rural park of Kilómetro 23 last Monday, so-called because of its distance from downtown Morelia. It is not one of my favorite sites, but it is worth visiting a couple of times each year. Still, the outing did not produce any new species for the year, or enough good photos for a post here. Instead, I have chosen to write about an idea I’ve had percolating for a while: to tell you what the most common species are down here.

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British UK Government makes pledges on animal welfare including 'Recognising animal sentience - the capacity of animals to have feelings, including pain and suffering', and to be 'a "global leader" on animal welfare and set "high standards for others across the world to follow".'

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/dannylenwinn [link] [comments].

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Seeking the Bahama Nuthatch

10,000 Birds

Jim Wright is an author and birding columnist. His latest book is The Real James Bond , available as a hardcover, an eBook and an audiobook. For more Bahama Nuthatch information and links, check his blog, [link]. Jim’s first contribution to 10,000 Birds was A Rare Caribbean Parrot on the Brink. In 2021, the American Ornithological Society announced that it has now classified the Bahama Nuthatch as a distinct species, Sitta insularis.

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Where Worlds Collide

10,000 Birds

A week ago Monday, I drove half an hour to get to the area between the little towns of La Escalera, El Palmar, y Arúmbaro. As I was very surprised to discover recently, this area is at the same elevation as my home in Morelia. But Morelia is part of a large relatively homogenous ecosystem, while the La Escalera area sits right on the junction of our highland pine-oak forest system and the lowland tropical thorn forest biome.

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Webinar & PDF Test

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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A surprise Orange Chat

10,000 Birds

One of the target bird species for birders when they visit the Broome area is Yellow Chat. They are relatively easy to find year round and sometimes you are lucky when they pose for you. Some years we encounter Crimson Chats around Broome too and even less rare is the Orange Chat. The last record of an Orange Chat in the Broome area was in 2006. We have encountered Orange Chats before in Western Australia, but also in the Northern Territory at the Tennant Creek Poo Ponds.

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A solitary Chestnut-breasted Mannikin

10,000 Birds

As I have mentioned in the past we often place branches out for birds. The birds can then access water much more easily and we get the enjoyment of watching them all come in for a drink and bathe. At this time of year around the north of Australia the ephemeral lakes are drying out fast. All of the birdlife in the surrounding area comes to drink and bathe and you can easily observe a wide variety of birds by just sitting and watching.

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A perfect birding rucksack: Swarovski BP Backpack 30

10,000 Birds

In my early birding years, rucksacks were of no importance and any could do. I would be leaving it behind anyway, in my kayak club, to continue birding with a paddle in my hands. Yet, as I started doing more land birding, I needed something a bit larger and sturdier. In 2013, I wrote of my non-necessity checklist. Commenting on rucksack, I said “I have never found a rucksack that I would consider ideal, but in order to call it usable, it should have around 40 litres of capacity and that arched f

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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

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Best Bird of the Weekend (Third of March 2021)

10,000 Birds

No matter how obsessed with birding you may be, you’ll have those weekends where other concerns dominate your thoughts. But enough about the New York Giants’ free agency activity. this is just my way of explaining why I plain forgot to post BBOTW at the usual time! I certainly looked at birds this weekend, particularly those menacingly sleek Common Grackles who progressed from absent to ubiquitous in a heartbeat.

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Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

There was a time when I thought each bird species had its own individual song. Then I found out that there was this vocalization called a ‘call,’ so I thought each bird species had its own individual song (but just the males) and individual call. But then, somewhere along the time I saw my first Common Raven, I realized that not every bird species sang, some just called.

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PDF 9.21.23

this is a test

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National Audubon Society Birds of North America: A Guide Review

10,000 Birds

Audubon guides to birds have been around since 1946. The first guide bearing the National Audubon Society imprint was Audubon Bird Guide; Eastern Land Birds , written by Richard Hooper Pough, and illustrated by Don Eckelberry. Both men were working for National Audubon at the time and both went on to become legends–Pough in the field of bird conservation (he was the founding president of The Nature Conservancy), Eckelberry in bird conservation and bird illustration (in addition to his artw

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Beljarica Backwaters: Some good news announced (but not yet official)

10,000 Birds

I am not used to good news, and am suspicious of them. What could be the big picture here, my suspicious mind keeps asking? But let me go back – you do not know the news! My readers are already familiar with Beljarica Backwaters, as described in half a dozen posts here at 10,000 Birds. It is a spacious floodplain between the River Danube and the levee, 2.1 km / 1.3 mi at its widest point and some 9 km2 / 3.5 mi2 of seasonally inundated riparian forests, industrial poplar plantations, river arms

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How To (And Not To) Transport Wild Birds

10,000 Birds

I am so happy to be back on 10,000 birds – I have missed Mike and Corey and my fellow Beat Writers! Normally I rant about environmental dangers and describe heartwarming/mind-boggling/headscratching wild bird rescues. Occasionally I host wildlife rehabilitator vent-fests, where I post a question on Facebook and duly note the rehabber responses.

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GUYANA–Simply Delicious Birding!

10,000 Birds

Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning “land of many waters” but it could just as easily mean “land of many birds”. That’s because this fascinating part-Caribbean, part-south American country holds well over 800 species of avifauna making it without doubt one of my top three countries in all of the continent to visit. Before I delve into some of these avian treasures let me give you a few non-birding reasons to visit this gem of South America.

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International birding tourism after the Covid-19 – what will change?

10,000 Birds

We are stuck. In a world we made. I remember a cartoon showing the prehistoric Earth as a vast forest with tiny villages fenced-off due to dangerous animals, and the today’s Earth as a wasteland, with a few tiny forests remaining, fenced-off due to abominable humans. It may look like a cartoon, but while birding Philippines, Phoebe Snetsinger literally slept in a prison, because its buffer zone held the only remaining forest in the agricultural landscape.

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Guamúchil Mania

10,000 Birds

Pithecellobium dulce is a tree with many English names. The most common one, Manila tamarind, is wildly inaccurate, since the tree is native to southwestern Mexico, not Manila, and its only connection to tamarind trees is that both are in different subfamilies of the huge legume family. I first met the tree in Baja California, where it is known as guamúchil (gwa-MOOCH-eel), so I will call it that.

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A Birder’s Guide to The Wilderness Act

10,000 Birds

Birders who venture off the beaten path may run across a sign like the one above. But what is “wilderness” and how does it differ from any other federal land? The short answer is that wilderness areas are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System and they are protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964. Simply put, wilderness areas are the most protected public lands in America.

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Worth Protecting

10,000 Birds

I wrote, a few weeks ago, about seeing my first Sedge (now Grass) Wrens through the kind invitation of a local biologist, and new birder, on whose property these live. Last week he messaged me to ask if I could go birding with him just south of Morelia’s urban area. This site is along a small river, named Río Bello. My new birding buddy, Ignacio Torres, knew of this area because a company had built a large partially-paved access road as part of a plan to build a housing development on a pr

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Gabriel PDF Webinar

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter

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Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America, Second Edition: A Field Guide Review

10,000 Birds

Of all the living things in our world to be passionate about, mushrooms may rate as the most unlikely. Ranging in color from off-white to dingy black, with pastel to gelatinous shades of yellow, orange, purple, and brown in-between, found in moist crevasses, decaying trees, rain-soaked pastures, mushrooms lack the beauty of butterflies and wildflowers cannot equal the action of bats, or flying fish, and certainly lack the spiritual zest of birds.

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Habitat Mash-up

10,000 Birds

The southwest peninsula of Trinidad is unfortunately rarely birded by visiting birders. Most tourists historically spent their time at the northern end of the island and although it may seem like a small place – getting around can be a bit tricky. Let’s just say that the journey from the capital city, Port of Spain, to the said peninsula could easily run into 2.5 hours one-way.

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Quality Lowland Caribbean Birding in Costa Rica at Centro Manu

10,000 Birds

Birding in the Caribbean is about islands, beautiful beaches, extra special endemics, rum, and smiles. It could also be much more, maybe less, it all depends on how you want to rock an international birding trip. Where a birder goes in the Caribbean determines which birds are seen including toy-like todies, Carib hummingbirds, cool pigeons, quail-doves, unique avian families and outrageous woodpeckers.

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50 Top Birding Sites in Kenya review

10,000 Birds

When it comes to tropical birding, field guides regularly deal with well over a 1000 birds and tend to be on the hefty side. Travel guides are mostly lighter, but this “where to watch birds guide” is truly lightweight and traveller friendly. It easily fits in your jacket pocket, even a side pocket of your cargo pants; hence you are certain that you will carry it with you, check it during a flight or a long transit drive.

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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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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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Honey x3

10,000 Birds

The islands and surrounding islets of Trinidad and Tobago boast an astounding list of almost 500 species of birds. For such a small place, birders are often spoiled for choice, there seems to be a representative of almost every neotropical family making their presence felt in some corner of habitat. On this blog, I have spoken previously of a trend I managed to pick out while compiling the information for a book I published last year.

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Best Bird of the Weekend (Third of August 2021)

10,000 Birds

As August comes rushing to a close, the doldrums of the last few weeks have already started to give way to a new mass movement of birds. Move with them! Late summer in many parts of the U.S. usually signals shorebird migration, which, in turn, signals whatever passes for excitement when people see shorebirds. All the best birds in my corner of New York over the last few months have been shorebirds, which explains why I dragged myself once again to Rochester’s fabled East Spit to bag a rare

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Mangrove Birds of Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Forest doesn’t just grow in mountains, hills, and valleys. Give certain, special trees the right conditions and they also take root in the shallow mud of estuaries and other coastal situations. The trees that occur, that thrive in such places are various species of mangroves and as is typical of so many other tropical microhabitats, mangrove forests have their own suite of birds.

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Test

Testing

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It May Not Seem Like Much But

10,000 Birds

This post does not contain serious eye-candy nor riveting text. In fact it slipped me to upload this earlier as I was completely swamped with some other (bird-related) responsibilities. Over the past few years we have been rewilding our yard here in the suburbs of the island of Trinidad. Some of you who may have been either following my posts on this topic or undertaking a similar adventure yourself would be well acquainted with the exhilaration of some fruit of that labor.

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Birding with 12s: Swarovski NL Pure 12×42

10,000 Birds

“I don’t know anyone else crazy enough to try 12s,” my friend answered when told that I am about to test NL Pure 12×42. And he stood behind his words: he bought an NL 8×42. What do you think? Are 12s right for birding? Or have you ever birded with 12s? Back in the 1990s, I did. And did it mostly from a canoe, which responds to every move you make, multiplied by the river currents, making it ever harder to use the narrow field of view (a.k.a.

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A juvenile Wedge-tailed Eagle

10,000 Birds

In April 2012 I wrote about A close encounter with a Wedge-tailed Eagle. I can’t use that heading again! This time the Wedge-tailed Eagle was closer and only involved ourselves and no other creatures. We were walking to the beach along a track and we suddenly got “shadowed” by something very large. We soon realised a juvenile Wedge-tailed Eagle was coming in to land just in front of us.

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New Birding Site in Costa Rica: Snowcaps, Raptors and More!

10,000 Birds

Snowcaps are simply surreal. Not the sublime chocolate ones crowned with sugar but the live feathered ones that look like they have been dipped in choice burgundy and topped with a luminescent satin cap. The adult males sport that look; a bird created with crayons and an imaginative mind. Even better, when they zip between flower patches, the glowing white crown stands out like a miniature fairy light, one that bounces between among small tropical flowers.

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Test Webinar 6/19/20 03

This is a webinar to test the attendee data event.