2022

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Dreaming of Congo rainforest: Gabon, Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic

10,000 Birds

Hot summer days, often reaching 40C/104F, time to open another beer and dream of birding some cooler place, a place where deep shade of tall trees controls the heat… Perhaps the world’s second largest rainforest? The Congo is one of the deepest rivers in the world with depths sometimes exceeding 220 meters (720 feet). The Congo Basin, second in size only to the Amazon, spans six countries: south-eastern Cameroon, portions of southern Central African Republic, the north and central Democrat

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Vocal communication was recorded in 53 previously silent animals.

Reddit Animals

submitted by /u/Historical-Object374 [link] [comments].

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I’ll fly tonight to the magical kingdom of Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Tonight I’m going to fly to the magical kingdom of Costa Rica, to reset and restart at Rancho Naturalista. This lodge has the longest checklist among the eBird hotspots of Costa Rica – over 55 % of the nation’s total, including about 40 hummingbirds. Five years ago, I spent a day there and met Lisa Erb, the manager and owner, but also a former bird guide.

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eBird Weather: RainCrow Q&A

10,000 Birds

I routinely review recent eBird checklists for several of my local patches and recently noticed a few with weather information ( e.g. , temperature, wind, cloud cover, humidity, etc.) from something called RainCrow.

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Test Survey

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Birding: Special Lockdown Edition

10,000 Birds

In the great tradition of authors reporting on and from global hotspots (think Hemingway or Orwell during the Spanish Civil War), this post is written on day 9 of being locked down in my Shanghai apartment compound. After the first 7 days dominated by daily compound-wide Covid tests and being locked down inside the compound, I went outside on the compound grounds on days 8 and 9.

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Looking for Lost Warblers at Parque Rio Loro, Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

In the world of birding, we have our stars, the birds that lift our spirits and provoke oohs, aahs, and admiration. These are the birds that make us race to the nearest park, scan refuge headquarter trees with anxious eyes, and turn some of us into temporary paparazzi. The stars of the bird world take many forms and fame is often related to location but some species, some cool groups of birds are accorded priority no matter when or where they are seen.

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What’s Up with the ABA?

10,000 Birds

Jeff Gordon resigned as president of the American Birding Association, effective November 30, 2021. A week later, on December 7, 2021, the ABA got around to making an announcement on its website. As far as I can tell, this announcement was not posted on any of the ABA Facebook pages and the only mention in the ABA Twitter feed is a retweet of Jeff Gordon’s tweet from his personal account.

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Factors to consider when selecting a robin

10,000 Birds

Picking the right robin that fits your needs can be confusing and stressful. The task is not made easier by some birds that are robins in name only, such as the American Robin, a typical RINO (robin in name only). A RINO. For those serious about robins, the choice will most likely come down to either the European Robin or the Japanese Robin. In this post, I will tell you what to keep in mind when you choose between one of these two robins.

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Recently Received

10,000 Birds

Several seasonal specialties have been arriving in the last remaining patches of wetland at the southwest end of the cigar-shaped island of Tobago here in the southern Caribbean. Being based on this island for the better part of this year has afforded me the opportunity (for the first time) to bear witness to the movement of bodies through these quarters – and it continues to be exhilarating.

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A few more birds and streetlights

10,000 Birds

After last Sunday’s post featuring a few of the birds that use the streetlights around Broome I thought I really should show you a few more! We had a surprise early morning storm on Good Friday, so that brought some clouds for a change and a welcome 10mm of rain. We had thought we had possibly seen the last of the rain for about six or seven months, so any extra is a bonus.

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Andrew Test Webinar

Speaker: test-presenter-1232123

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The Compact Australian Bird Guide: A Field Guide Review

10,000 Birds

Australia has a lot of birds. The “ Working List of Australian Birds, v.4 ,” published by BirdLife Australia lists 2,016 birds, but that includes subspecies (add extinct, domestic, failed introduced & non-confirmed birds and you have 2,106). The latest edition of the Clements Checklist that I could find, last modified in August 2022, lists 965 species (a little more manageable!

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The Fallen Yellowlegs

10,000 Birds

Yesterday morning was simply one of those incredibly eventful birding sessions, about which I may expound upon in parts within the coming weeks. After several (relatively) run-of-the-mill birding missions within the rainforest and along the coasts of Tobago over the last few weeks, we kept getting our socks knocked off while birding the wetlands of southwest Tobago yesterday.

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October Global Big Day in Costa Rica- an eBird Trip Report

10,000 Birds

Global Big Day has become an annual collective event in May that encourages thousands of people to watch birds on the same date. As far as promoting birding goes, the only thing better might be October Gobal Big Day ! In Costa Rica (and, I gather, some other tropical places), our local birding community gets involved in both GBDs but we’re especially pleased with the one in October because for those of us on the flyway way south of northern breeding grounds, the 10th month is our “Ma

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How much time do you devote to birding?

10,000 Birds

How high is birding on your list of activities – is it the very first or merely one of? Are you happy with an occasional morning here and there or do you need more? And how much more? These are the types I recognise: Coffee Break Birding – 10-15 minutes, usually not planned ahead but squeezed out of your schedule. E.g. you have a meeting next to a park or a lake, so you come a bit earlier to see whatever may be there.

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Test webinar 6/10 3pm

Speaker: Aggregage

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Torresian Crows in Australia

10,000 Birds

Torresian Crows Corvus orru are the most common of the Crow family in the northern part of Australia and are the most likely of the Crow species that you will encounter. In Broome it is the only Crow species and we do not have Ravens , so it makes identification easy. If you go birding in more southerly regions you will encounter other Crow and Raven species and identification can then become more problematic.

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Beljarica Backwaters are finally protected!!

10,000 Birds

“To the sea their hearts they vow. They will not come again. And even if they came, would you recognise them now? The ocean masks a man. If they return a while, we know not if they smile or weep beneath their tan.”. Beljarica Backwaters (some August birding here ) is a spacious floodplain of the left bank of the Danube, less than 10 km / 6 mi north of Belgrade, and is an exciting place to bird.

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Not Where I Expected Them

10,000 Birds

After two and a half years of being unable to bird anywhere other than Michoacán, Mexico, I was really looking forward to our current Old World tour. Surely a change of continents was just what my 10,000 Birds writing “career” needed. Lots of new sites, in new countries! So many new species! The words and images will just pour through my laptop!

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Common Hedgerow Birds of Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Hedgerows are living fences and windbreaks, lines of green space that bisect fields and pastures. They can’t provide the same ecosystem value as natural forest and woodland but in places intensely modifed by people, hedges are vital sanctuaries for birds and other wildlife. In Costa Rica, we have those living fences, these planted rivulets of green.

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Webinar 5.9.22

Speaker: Steve Romanco

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Birding Shanghai in October 2022

10,000 Birds

Somebody highly knowledgeable in the area of SEO (search engine optimization) strongly recommended that I should write more posts including Japanese T**s. I don’t think I will stoop that low. The consultant also suggested increasing readership by catering to highly specific niche interest groups. So, here is something for foot fetishists. According to Wikipedia, “A l owl ife is a term for a person who is considered morally unacceptable by their community” The local Nanhui shrik

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Urban Birding in Costa Rica- Benefits of Brushy Fields and Coffee Farms

10,000 Birds

Costa Rica is more than cloud forest with mega worthy quetzals, more than rainforest with fancy Keel-billed Toucans and luscious Green Honeycreepers. Those are certainly two of several birdy habitats in this bio-wonderland. They are places where we invest most of our birding time and rightly so; mature tropical forests are where we find the highest number of species.

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A Brief Return to Trinidad

10,000 Birds

For those who have been following my posts here, some months ago I swapped islands and moved to Tobago. Having spent all my life in Trinidad, it was the first time I would be stationed away from the island of my birth. Living on a different island is interesting and exciting – but what I had been anticipating greatly was the return. What would it be like?

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Critically Endangered Birds in Costa Rica- How to See Them, How to Help Them

10,000 Birds

Sadly, horribly, we live in an era of mass extinction. Go for a walk in a local park in near the capital of the USA and the statement seems far-fetched, absurd even. Most of the usual birds seem present, a frog or two call from a small wetland, and a few other expected animals are there too. It’s the same old background sounds, the usual natural sights; where’s the extinction?

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Test

Testing

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Casa Tangara dowii, Costa Rica: to claim our feathery gold

10,000 Birds

Continued from over the misty mountains cold. Off to lunch in the Savegre River Valley we go, known for Flame-coloured Tanager , Long-tailed Silky-flycatcher , Wren Thrush , Volcano Junco , Volcano and Fiery-throated Hummingbirds. Situated in misty, cool montane oak forest, the touristy hamlet of San Gerardo de Dota is the most popular birding area in Talamanca: it hosts the largest population of the Resplendent Quetzal in the world.

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Owling in Trinidad & Tobago

10,000 Birds

While preparing an article this week for a local newspaper on the nighttime denizens of Tobago, it crossed my mind that I never considered owls as a group, far less target species for any particular outing (except for a select few, upon which I shall expound here). Owls have always held a special place in my heart – and I’m certain that many of you can say the same.

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Highlights from the 2022 Arenal Christmas Count in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

December is not the ideal month for bird counts, at least not in Costa Rica. Yes, we do have warm, tropical weather and a fancy assortment of resident and wintering species. Nor is there any trudging through snow in search of extra hardy species or visits to feeders with the hope of finding a grackle or Red-winged Blackbird that failed to fly south.

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Seeds

10,000 Birds

I bought my first plant for the garden, with my own money, when I was eight years old. I have no idea how I gathered enough money for the purchase, since I distinctly remember my allowance at that age being ten cents each week. (Admittedly, a dollar went a lot further in the sixties. But still…). It was only a few years later when I discovered birding.

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Test Webinar 6/19/20 03

This is a webinar to test the attendee data event.

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CBC in Paradise

10,000 Birds

It is undoubtedly the most wonderful time of year – when we don our binoculars and boots and head off on a tradition spanning more than a hundred years – that of the Christmas Bird Count! I’ve been leading a small but faithful group on Trinidad for several years to count birds within a livestock farm that is generally restricted to the public (you can read about some of those shenanigans here ); this was the first time I was to embark on a CBC on the smaller island of Tobago.

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What’s Up with the ABA Now?

10,000 Birds

The American Birding Association has not had a leader since November 2021. The Board of Directors has been searching for a candidate since that time, but it does not appear to have found one. This is not surprising, as the next Executive Director will take the helm of an organization that is in debt, experiencing a long-term revenue decline, and regularly runs operating deficits.

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Casa Tangara dowii, Costa Rica, or over the Misty Mountains cold

10,000 Birds

It is 6.40 a.m. and I am taking my observation-sofa position next to a glass wall, overlooking bird feeders in the misty cloudforests of the Cordillera de Talamanca. My friend and host, Serge Arias, brings me a mug of a slowly, drop by drop, prepared specialty Tarrazú coffee. I may be in tropical Central America, but at 2100 m / 7000 ft a.s.l. in the Casa Tangara dowii boutique lodge and reserve – a birder’s dream venue, mornings are quite cool.

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Recommended Reading: An Australian Birding Year

10,000 Birds

I believe that writing is easy. Everyone can do it. So easy that I am writing, too, in my second language that I learned only in my 20s. Then, why am I so surprised when I encounter a good writer?? R. Bruce Richardson is a good writer. His words touched something in me at page 1, and by the end of the book, he still had my undivided attention. Now, that’s a rarity.

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Test Webinar 4/14/22

Speaker: Test

This is a webinar to test the attendee data event.