Critter News

JULY 10, 2010

A Union County grand jury has decided the owner of a Union County dairy farm caught in an abuse scandal should not face criminal charges.on The Union County sheriff's office said it had four veterinarians with experience in large-animal care review the tape. "In From the Columbus Dispatch.

Farming 100

Farming AETA Columbus Animal Welfare 100

Animal Person

MARCH 24, 2009

I' m concerned about Maple Farm Sanctuary , whose founders are two of the seven subjects in our new film , and I was wondering if you'd be willing to reach out through your blog to let people know that the sanctuary is in a financial tight spot right now. Late last night I received this message from Jenny Stein.

Farm Sanctuary 100

Farm Sanctuary Sanctuary Farming Goats 100

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

But the species is most often encountered here in New York as a seasonal visitant as they return year after year to fallow farm fields and frozen marshes across the state to overwinter. Around Albany, the best places to see these amazing birds is the Washington County Grasslands near Fort Edward, about an hour north of the state capital.

Owls 206

Owls New York New York City Cuba 206

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2021

If you do happen to see one way up there in the canopy, since it’s more like watching a dark bug flying around than admiring the shifting colors of a dark velvet chocolate hummingbird, the Snowcap experience deserves to be enjoyed at ground level. The site is just down the road from the Rainforest Aerial Tram.

Costa Rica 264

Costa Rica San Jose Birds Farming 264

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 28, 2014

This land has gone through extensive ecosystem destruction from farming cattle and soybeans. Gonzales the greater the size of soybean farming fields and our expectations to see birds on this road trip had quickly died and turned into a boring flat-land ride. My first heat thumping experience came when I saw the Crested Hornero.

Argentina 184

Argentina Farming Chile Birds 184

10,000 Birds

JULY 26, 2015

I was well satisfied to travel through farm country this weekend and count the many American Kestrels perched predatorily above the fields. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. Was your weekend pleasingly full or pleasurably empty? What was your best bird of the weekend?

Honduras 161

Honduras 2015 Farming Birds 161

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 11, 2015

I enjoyed a nice selection of sparrows and raptors in Pennsylvania farm country, with a pair of bold and noisy Red-shouldered Hawks taking the prize. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. A beautiful weekend for watching birds demands beautiful people watching birds.

Pennsylvania 151

Pennsylvania 2015 Farming Birds 151

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 14, 2019

We share our experiences, good and bad. I am going to make a big assumption and put it to you that it migrated north during the summer and has returned to the farm for the winter, picking up a flock along the way and leading them back here. Does anyone have experience of similar hybrids? We share our love of birds and birding.

Geese 155

Geese Sheep Canada Farming 155

10,000 Birds

MAY 6, 2015

From the 1913 USDA Farmers Bulletin #513, Fifty Common Birds of Farm and Orchard: “The bluebird is one of the most familiar tenants of the farm and dooryard. Its favorite nesting sites are crannies in the farm buildings or boxes made for its use or natural cavities in old apple trees.

Tenant 161

Tenant Farming Illinois North America 161

10,000 Birds

MAY 9, 2020

No matter where you live, city or farm, birds will be on the move and some will be calling just before dawn. I don’t expect a whole lot in the urban area where we reside but the riparian zone out back still hosts various birds and a nearby coffee farm has others. Catch the dawn chorus.

Costa Rica 202

Costa Rica Barn Owls Farming Owls 202

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 11, 2016

This weekend, we all enjoyed the sight of a Bald Eagle perched in a farm field along the highway, an uncommon spot for an uncommonly charismatic avian. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas either… I’m dreading it.

Bald Eagle 134

Bald Eagle 2016 United States Birds 134

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

In common with so many other volcanoes, Poas also houses farms, people, and forests full of birds. The following examples are some of the birding experience that awaits on Poas Volcano, Costa Rica: The Voices of Understory Birds. Poas Volcano isn’t just a mountain built with magma.

Costa Rica 258

Costa Rica Birds Cows Hunters 258

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2016

But if I have to pick a living bird, American Kestrels hunting along farm roads always work for me. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. Pretty swanky, right? What was your best bird of the weekend?

2016 100

2016 Birds Farming Hunting 100

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 3, 2009

From the perspective of the land ethic, the immoral aspect of the factory farm has to do far less with the suffering and killing of nonhuman animals than with the monstrous transformation of living things from an organic to a mechanical mode of being. That immoral something is the transmogrification of organic to mechanical processes. (

Factory Farm 40

Factory Farm Factory Farming Factory Farming 40

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012

Corey had an embarrassment of riches to choose from this weekend for his Best Bird of the Weekend but he settled on his sighting of Buff-breasted Sandpipers while he birded the sod farms on eastern Long Island, a flock of five that flushed at a distance and then settled, for some inexplicable reason, twenty meters in front of him.

2012 164

2012 Falcons Birds Farming 164

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

I saw some sweet fall warblers this weekend down in Pennsylvania farm country, but was most impressed with the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds hanging on despite a mild frost. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. What was your best bird of the weekend?

2012 172

2012 Pennsylvania New York Birds 172

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 2, 2024

The selections appear to largely reflect Hauber’s personal experiences around the world and he does occasionally bring himself into the essay, reflecting on a European Robin he observes at dusk in northwestern Germany or searching for American Robin nests on a tree farm in the Midwestern United States.

Chicago 178

Chicago Barn Owls Penguins New Zealand 178

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2016

I did a bit of wind farm surveying, which forced me to spend hours at the same point. They explained that Japanese Great T**s “experience a number of threats, and in response to predators, they give a variety of different calls. So I managed to finally understand what were they chatting about – me!

Sweden 176

Sweden Research Japan Germany 176

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2020

I savor the timeless experience of scanning these tropical waves for storm-petrels and lost jaegers. Local guide and birder David Mora Vargas has been spending much of his time at his family’s farm in the Sarapiqui lowlands. Check it out: Juvenile Tiny Hawk Show in Sarapiqui.

Costa Rica 211

Costa Rica Birds Thailand Family 211

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 20, 2014

On the same day that I journeyed out to eastern Long Island to enjoy birding Shinnecock Inlet in the fog I also explored the fields of Riverhead, where large flocks of geese congregate and where a Yellow-headed Blackbird had been reported recently amid a large flock of icterids at a Buffalo farm. Is it just me? ” What a bird!

Canada 190

Canada Killing Buffalo Geese 190

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 10, 2012

There is no better place to find grasspipers in New York State than the sod farms on eastern Long Island in autumn. This year is no different and the sod farms in Riverhead have been loaded with birds which means that the roads around them have been loaded with birders.

Farming 158

Farming Argentina South America United States 158

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2015

That experience along with additional opportunities to explore the property with guide Ismael Torres established what we expected all along: Finca Luna Nueva is very birdy with a reserve list of over 240 species. The higher purpose of the lodge attracts visitors interested in biodynamic farming. But I also love Gray-necked Wood-rails.

Costa Rica 249

Costa Rica Birds Farming 2014 249

10,000 Birds

JULY 22, 2012

While I’m used to most of the birds of farm and field in Potter County, PA, meadowlarks have mostly eluded me there until now. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. What was your best bird of the weekend?

New York City 171

New York City 2012 Chickens New York 171

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

By the end of February, the American Woodcocks at Mason Farm near Chapel Hill have been calling on territory for the better part of two months. My woodcock experiences in the state have exclusively been of the inadvertent variety. To find the woodcocks, you go out after dark.

Farming 160

Farming Game Experience Experiments 160

Animal Ethics

APRIL 23, 2009

Here is the latest from Farm Sanctuary.

Experience 40

Experience Experiments Farm Sanctuary Sanctuary 40

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Though Corey had a host of good birds to choose from (again) he has decided that his Best Bird of the Weekend was the one he found because he took the time to scope through a ginormous flock of Canada Geese : a diminutive Cackling Goose at Blue Chip Farm in southern Ulster County, New York.

Polar Bears 167

Polar Bears 2012 New York Geese 167

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2017

Selva Bananito was actually founded in the seventies but back then, it was a sizeable farm like any other. However, some time between then and now, the children of the original farm owner convinced their father to leave the stands of primary forest alone, to let precious mahogany trees just be and keep on growing.

Costa Rica 157

Costa Rica Birds Parrots Farming 157

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 26, 2014

The farm roads nearby host roadrunners too , and the fencerows and pastures look slightly more appropriate for the species. I don’t expect that any bird down the road will allow for an experience as surreal as this one though. It’s getting harder for me to pick up new Missouri birds on my semi-annual returns.

Missouri 203

Missouri Mississippi Agenda Rodents 203

Animal Person

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Today's New York Times gives us Adam Shriver's Op-Ed " Not Grass-Fed, But at Least Pain-Free ," which presents its dilemma at the end: If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Factory Farm 100

Factory Farm Factory Farming Animal Factory 100

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2018

Nonetheless, a birder’s initial experience in Honduras sets him or her on an inexorable course towards the only species currently named for this gem of a country. Guests at the Cabañas de La Aguja , a gorgeous mountain retreat amidst farms and forest, heard something spooky in the night from a coffee and banana plantation.

Honduras 137

Honduras Birds Farming America 137

10,000 Birds

JUNE 27, 2012

This title basically means I get paid to watch birds (like the above Indigo Bunting I digiscoped with my iPhone and Swarovsksi Scope) before wind farms, solar panels and pipelines go under construction (or sometimes I get to id bird parts found post construction). So, how about you, how do you define ornithologist?

Arkansas 188

Arkansas Science Research Farming 188

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 13, 2011

Bird watching Recinto 23 de Junio is always a great experience. As a result the new plan promotes the places that are well established and well funded and ignores the DEVELOPMENT portion of the plan which should benefit the un-benefited Ecuadorians that own a large percentage of the forest that is being destroyed and used for farming.

Ecuador 166

Ecuador Birds Industry Farming 166

10,000 Birds

JULY 11, 2018

Now, dont get me wrong, there have been some nice birds, and locations in between, but these two experiences are just so hard to put out of my mind. The Bellymac Farm turned out to be the location that the birds choose to gather in.

Puffins 100

Puffins Wildlife Reserve 2003 Farming 100

10,000 Birds

MAY 28, 2015

After that experience, I stopped complaining about their hides, realising that they are as good as they ever will be. Not far from here, the last of the photographic hides with non-reflexive glass was erected six metres above the ground on a private farm, overlooking the breeding colony of Red-footed Falcons. And so did I.

Serbia 242

Serbia Birds Spain Hungary 242

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 2, 2018

Audubon Associate Naturalist, have led this tour many times, through tornados, droughts, questionable restaurants, and, sadly, the advent of fracking, and every one of my friends who has participated over the years has raved about the experience and the birds (in fact, one member of our group was on his third or fourth trip, I lost count).

North Dakota 138

North Dakota Birds Sparrows Blackbirds 138

10,000 Birds

JULY 9, 2019

Getting to actually see four species, in the last two weeks, and to hear two more is almost unheard of in my experience. While they are located on a pretty quiet farm road, there were still a couple dozen cars and trucks went by while I was sitting they. It all started in getting to photograph the Northern Pygmy-owls in Madera Canyon.

Owls 150

Owls Arizona Tucson South Africa 150

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 3, 2019

I counted them very roughly, but I do have a lot of experience estimating flocks. With one Black Stork near them, some 80 LWfG were foraging in the distance, where the sun was just now clearing the mist. Then 20 more joined them, so I entered 100 in my notebook.

2018 117

2018 Serbia Falcons Greece 117