2021

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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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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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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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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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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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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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December birding in Belgrade

10,000 Birds

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.

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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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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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Gabriel PDF Webinar 2

Speaker: Gabriel Wagner Presenter 2

TEst

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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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Soda Lake Shorbs

10,000 Birds

Shorebirds – or “shorbs” for the cuteness factor (as if that needed any enhancement) – remain one of the most fascinating families of birds for me. There is something about the challenge in identification, the mysticism of the more you look, the more you see. Add to that their incredulous migration facilitated by physiological capabilities we can barely imagine.

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Birding Wolongshan, Sichuan, China

10,000 Birds

With travel restrictions still in place, going on a birding trip outside of China is still not a practical option. Fortunately, China itself has a large number of bird species and habitats. According to a Wikipedia entry, China has 1413 bird species – though strangely, another list found online, purportedly based on Birdlife International, claims only 1288 species.

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Elton’s Egret

10,000 Birds

Snowy Egrets like to keep their distance. Normally the slender, fairy-feathered shorebirds are shy and avoid the humans who encroach on their territory. But a small colony of them have made an exception for Elton Reed, who has fished off Chincoteague Island, Virginia for almost five decades. Initially wary, the birds came to accept his quiet presence as he checked his traps and floats.

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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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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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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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Grouse in PA, Grouse in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Grouse are the chickens we would love to lay eyes on. “Gamebirds” to some, cool, cryptic understory birds to the birding people, grouse crouch protected as unfettered winds sway the top of the tall prairie grass. Other grouse give booming calls from the interior green of cool, coniferous forest, another picks its way through treacherous scree, thriving in the harsh reality of high mountain passes.

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For Wildlife Emergencies, Contact Animal Help Now

10,000 Birds

Help is not just on the way, it’s here. If you’ve had an encounter with a wild animal – a bird stunned by hitting a window, a fox hit by a car, or a family of raccoons unexpectedly found residing in your attic – you know how hard it can be to find help. Too often there are endless calls to friends of friends, to veterinarians who actually don’t take wildlife, to “animal control experts” who sound so dodgy you’re not sure you want them to know where you live.

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Test

Testing

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Power Companies and Springtime Tree Removal

10,000 Birds

It’s a beautiful Spring morning… humming insects, calling birds. But then you hear the rev of a chainsaw, followed by the ripping sound of a falling tree. The thud sounds awfully close, so you rush to your window and discover it’s your family’s beloved old maple – only you didn’t hire anyone to take it down. The person in charge says they’ve been hired by the power company to clear the area around the poles and lines.

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Birds on Utility Poles – The Electrocution Solution

10,000 Birds

Picture this. You’re wandering through a park, minding your own business, and decide to take a short rest on a bench. You sit down. You want to get comfortable, so you lean against the armrest. Surprise! Thousands of volts of electricity snake through your body. This is what happens to countless birds each year when they land the wrong way on power distribution lines and poles.

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Heat in the Tropics

10,000 Birds

As the boreal migrants head north, breeding season for the residents and austral migrants is beginning to pick up. A friend of mine has been begging me to come over to document a nesting pair of Plumbeous Kites in her property but life has gotten in the way thus far. They’ve not wasted any time, having drifted northward from mainland South America only a few weeks ago.

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