10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 17, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 10, 2021
It can easily come across as laziness, but I like to call it efficiency. Some of my continental friends may not think twice of having to drive for four hours to see a single bird. I on the other hand, have been frequenting a specific wetland I’ve written about on this blog innumerable times thus far. Reason being: it’s just about 20 minutes away from where I live.
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10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 5, 2021
Red capped Plover – a resident among the Samphire – above and below. An American showed up in Australia recently. Well several really. In Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, about 100 km south of where I reside, several American migratory waders lost their bearings and turned up on the wrong side of the Pacific. Two Pectoral Sandpipers turned up in Kedron Brooks Wetland.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 10, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 25, 2021
I was just wondering about another topic for a post. Ideally, it should be one even less relevant than previous ones (like the one on wet birds, the one on blue birds, or the ones just showing birds eating or sleeping). Then I had an idea – a post based on birds starting with the same letter. The letter A is the obvious starting post for this series (which is very unlikely to be continued, though it would be easier to do than Sufjan Steven’s stated ambition to record an album for eac
10,000 Birds
MAY 3, 2021
Jim Wright’s latest book is The Real James Bond , the biography of the ornithologist whose name Ian Fleming stole for his secret agent 007. He writes “The Bird Watcher” column for the USA today newspapers in N.J. He is a deputy Marsh Warden for the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, N.J. This is Jim’s first guest post on 10,000 Birds.
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10,000 Birds
JULY 19, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 28, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 18, 2021
In Belgrade, Serbia, winter months offer surprisingly good birding possibilities. Winter is a season of extremes – opt for the very top and the very bottom of the city. Woodpeckers and finches The top of the city would be the highest peak of the Avala Mountain Reserve (511 m / 1700 ft above sea level), with the Memorial to the Unknown Hero and overgrown with firs and pines.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 4, 2021
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
10,000 Birds
JANUARY 25, 2021
With a worldwide pandemic still raging the tourism industry has taken a massive hit. And while we here at 10,000 Birds aren’t terribly concerned about the cruise ship industry or the airlines we are greatly concerned about the impact that the lack of bird tourists has had on the many birding guides, eco-lodges, and birding tour companies. Mike and I talked it over and came up with a small idea that we hope helps to some degree.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 7, 2021
When you travel north along the highway from Broome towards Willare and Derby you come to a wide bridge with a sign that says “Cockatoo Creek” I would highly recommend that you pull up on the right after you have crossed the bridge and park where the plaque is for the official opening of it. There are still a few single lane bridges around the Kimberley and this bridge offers an area where you can easily birdwatch the water below.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 12, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
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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10,000 Birds
MARCH 22, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 2, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 16, 2021
Have you ever birded a place so young that birds still have no names? Ten days ago, I was sitting in a boat in the Colombian Amazonia, listening to the chatter of numerous Large-billed Terns along a vast sandbank in the Rio Guaviare. The sunset was slowly blanketing the scene, making the water ever bluer and the forest deeper shaded. Then a group of birders appeared from the forest.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 3, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
JULY 28, 2021
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
10,000 Birds
JUNE 17, 2021
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
10,000 Birds
JUNE 1, 2021
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
10,000 Birds
APRIL 18, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 19, 2021
When the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (or SARS-CoV-2) acquired the name COVID-19 (short for “coronavirus 2019”) last February, many birders couldn’t help but notice the coincidental similarity between that abbreviation and name of one of the most familiar of all passerine families – Corvidae. Even more similar is “corvid”, the generic name we give members of this family, whether they be crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, or nutc
10,000 Birds
MARCH 17, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 17, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 15, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 18, 2021
The reception of bulbuls in the ornithological world is decidedly mixed. A typical description of the family is that of “a tropical African and Asian songbird that typically has a melodious voice and drab plumage”, another is “small, dull-colored passerine birds of Asia and Africa”, yet another states that they are “often rather plain” Individual species get even harsher reviews.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 11, 2021
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.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 14, 2021
The last weekend of winter/summer looks a whole lot like the first weekend of spring/fall. That doesn’t mean, however, that winds of change aren’t blowing birds hither and yon. Some of the banner birds of your next season may have already arrived, but more will come every week. Be ready! I’m so focused on my birds of spring that I’ve been tuned out to what the last of winter has had to offer around here.
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