10,000 Birds
MAY 20, 2020
I have commented before in my posts that most of our Warblers here in central Mexico never actually warble. This tendency is so marked that the Spanish name for Wood Warblers, Chipe, comes not from their mating songs, but from their typical feeding calls: cheep… cheep… cheep. Still, there are a few notable exception to this rule, even here in Michoacán.
10,000 Birds
MAY 18, 2020
May delivers one of those amazing times of the year when we’re too busy looking at birds to sit around talking about them. Let’s make this quick… I managed to catch up with many of my favorite spring migrants at most of the usual Rochester hotspots, yet my best bird actually came to me; I stuck my head out of my home office window only to find myself essentially eye level with a Blackburnian Warbler.
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
The last weekend of September doesn’t herald the end of this cycle of migration but rather a run to its peak. The best fall/spring birding weekend in your part of the world may still be weeks away, but you won’t regret getting out right now. I regret having to work a lot this weekend but still hope to find myself where the songbirds are flying fast and furious.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 12, 2020
Every place has its hawk. At least it seems that way. A generalist raptor that can keep on living in a human dominated landscape. These are the neighborhood raptors that make do, even thrive, by preying on the wildlife of an urban landscape. Granted, the more urban, the less likely that a raptor can make it (except for maybe pigeon connoisseur Peregrine Falcons or garbage disposal Black Kites and vultures) but allow enough green space to persist and some raptor will usually find its place.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
For the first 30 something years of my life, fall migration was when the warblers “sipped”, “chipped” and “seeped” in the tired, late summer leaves. It was when I searched for migrant birds on gorgeous days of September, usually near the Niagara Gorge, sometimes while fishing for salmon in the powerful green waters.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Faithful fans of 10,000 Bird will know that each Friday Mike invites us to comment where we plan to go birding that weekend. On Friday, September 18th of this year, I commented that I planned to go try out a new site, Las Mesas, which my biologist friend Jonathan Vargas had noticed on Google Maps. All we knew from that page was that there was a small reservoir just below the tiny town of Las Mesas, about ten miles east of Morelia, and the town itself is just short of the same large swath of pine
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
In late July, I travelled a half hour north of Morelia to Lake Cuitzeo (kweet-SAY-oh) to see if our two inevitable first migratory species from up north, Baird’s Sandpiper and Wilson’s Phalarope, had begun arriving. At that point, neither species was yet present, and there wasn’t much of a lake, either. A month later, I found large numbers of Phalaropes and a few Baird’s Sandpipers , but no other migratory species had yet arrived.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 18, 2020
Any time of year that features skies filled with birds pretty much all day demands attention pretty much all day. If your neck is sore from being on a swivel this weekend, may I suggest swiveling with your hips to get through the rest of the month? I spent a good amount of the weekend on the road and beheld more roadside Belted Kingfishers than I’ve ever seen.
10,000 Birds
JANUARY 1, 2020
I’m guessing that most people these days communicate on social media through one or more chats. I myself am on several. But only birders know that you can communicate on a chat about… Chats. Back in 2013, as I was gradually getting back into birding, I found myself trying to ID a tiny bird that had visited my garden. (It turned out that my ancient Aves de México guide, by Roger Tory Peterson, only showed what was then considered the eastern race of the White-collared Seedeater, and m
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
September is a classic shoulder season, not yet finished with what has passed but still subtly teasing what is to come. Change is good, particularly because it always brings new birds. After one failed attempt after another, I finally added Ruddy Turnstone to Monroe County list after tracking them down to Ontario Beach. The reward for my long vigil was catching one still in its calico plumage.
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 12, 2020
China is not that well-known for its hornbills, but in Yunnan province, on the border to Myanmar, some species can be found. While they used to be hunted, they nowadays benefit from the locals having recognized them as a source of income – building hides and charging birdwatchers (mostly Chinese, but a few foreigners like me as well – these are usually the only ones not smoking inside the hides) to observe them.
10,000 Birds
MAY 21, 2020
The coronavirus has locked us all in, literally, doing something that was totally unthinkable only a few months ago: it has prevented us from birding abroad! And now we are all dreaming about new destinations to explore, once airports are working again and borders re-open. Only this time, you do not feel like inhaling the same air circling through the plane on a ten hour flight.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 13, 2020
The third anniversary of Hurricane Maria barreling its way through Puerto Rico was a few weeks ago. In the aftermath of Maria, I had wondered why both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were not part of the ABA Area. After all, both are U.S. territories and their residents are U.S. citizens. I later made the case for expansion of the ABA Area to include both Puerto Rico and the U.S.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 1, 2020
You may remember – though I am pretty sure you do not, because who would – that my second-to-last blog post ended on a slightly disappointed note. The hero of the post (if you can accept the role of a hero given to an underemployed, middle-aged management consultant) failed to see a Fairy Pitta at his local spot at Nanhui, Shanghai. So, you (that is, those who remember that post, which I am sure nobody does) will be relieved to hear that I saw the pitta several times this month.
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10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 30, 2020
In a normal year, we’d enter the final weekend of October thinking of trivialities like tricks, treats, and maybe costume parties. Instead, a cloud of dread hangs over most of the world. Be strong! There are certain days, specific moments when each of us has the potential to change the world for the better. When those moments come your way, rise to the occasion for yourself, your loved ones, and your planet.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
“Sit under a fruiting tree and birding shall be fruitful.” After spending the last couple months chasing migratory shorebirds, I was aching for some forest birding. And what better way to do it than to fortuitously come upon a fruiting tree being attended to by a multitude of species? Birding on its own is rewarding enough, but when you can pull out your folding chairs, sit back and sip coffee and have everything come to you without any effort whatsoever – it almost seems too e
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
When I saw the NL Pure in a webinar for the first time, immediately – before the webinar ended, I asked my Swarovski sales rep for a pair to test. Later I remembered to ask for another pair, of ELs, so I could compare them. I kept them in my backpack until yesterday, didn’t want to hold them, to get any impressions… I wanted to test them as a tabula rasa (a clean slate).
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 21, 2020
Every weekend seems to be wild from the perspective of human history. To every bird, though, mid-September remains what it’s always been: a good time to feed, mass, and move ! Corey and I caught plenty of restless migrants at Fort Tilden this weekend. On a nineteen warbler morning, Prairie Warbler stood out for me because I never get to see them upstate.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
Tiaozini is a coastal place about a 3-hour drive north of Shanghai. It is famous for its mudflats that are used as a refueling stop for Spoon-billed Sandpiper. This is a bit of a dilemma for local authorities – on the one hand, they would presumably like to protect the birds, on the other hand, they also want to draw as many tourists to the place as possible.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 9, 2020
Birders who submit their checklists to eBird likely know that their data may be used to conduct research on avian migration, range, or population. But eBird data is not just for ecologists and ornithologists. It has also been used by researchers from other fields, such as economists. Recently, an interdisciplinary group published a paper using eBird data in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.
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.
10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 3, 2020
If you are old enough, you will remember birding without a phone? Not too long ago, it was the norm. Then I started to carry a phone just in case my car stopped or something. Later I carried it because of a stash of bird songs I compiled in it. And now I carry it for the same reason, only now they are a part of the bird ID app. Yesterday, I carefully packed my scope and binoculars and left home, only to realise, still in a car park, that I had forgotten the bloody phone and my notebook.
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.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 23, 2020
I have written about this before, and I’ll probably write about it again. Birding in Mexico is not like birding in the United States… especially when it comes to interpreting unusual sightings. For example, when Corey gets the thrill of seeing a Black-throated Gray Warbler in Queens County, New York, he can be almost 100% sure that he is seeing a one-time vagrant, and not a previously undiscovered population.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
I promise this will be the last article (for a while at least) on this wetland that’s so close to where I live. Truth is, we’ve been getting so many migrants passing through that there hasn’t been much of a need to bird elsewhere. Plus, laziness kicks in pretty often and a 20 minute drive to see relatively rare birds like Nacunda Nighthawks and Glossy Ibises is a definite no-brainer.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
Our current travel restrictions in Western Australia allow us to roam around our own state. We are lucky that we live in such a huge state with so much to offer for the nature lover. The government has promoted tourism throughout the state with a call out to us all to “Wander out Yonder” It does feel like everyone headed north to Broome, but beyond Broome the highway traffic eases off.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 27, 2020
There is a thing parents know very well – how important it is to choose the right name for a child. E.g. one Croat birder I know, Vedran – I never met a guy so well described by his own name, which loosely translated as “joyful”. Or Fleming – he has chosen “Bond”. It seems to me that Lynx Edicions must know Vedran, too, and it was with him in mind that their authors, David W Winkler, Shawn M Billerman and Irby J Lovette, chose the “Bird Families of the World: A Guide to the Spectacular Diversity
10,000 Birds
MAY 7, 2020
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” Like many of you, I had plans for this year’s spring migration: to bird the very best tour of the Balkans, heading for northeastern Greece. First, 800 km of driving from Belgrade through Bulgaria to very NE corner of Greece and the Dadia Forest National Park with its 36 species of diurnal raptors, out of Europe’s 38.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 27, 2020
The end of September doesn’t necessarily mean the end of what you might enjoy about September birding but it definitely signals the beginning of what you love about October. Hopefully, you’re looking forward to the month ahead! I was shocked to still find a number of shorebird species up at Braddock Bay, perhaps because of how much productive mud the dropping lake levels have exposed.
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 21, 2020
Golf is a good walk spoiled. — Mark Twain. Once, and only once, a while after I became a bit crazy about birding, my long-suffering wife decided to go along with me and see what it was all about. Now, my wife is extremely conscientious about exercise. Every day she walks one hour, to the minute. If anything interrupts her walking, she paces in place until she can get back to her serious business.
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