10,000 Birds

AUGUST 7, 2021

When you see a photo of a Snowcap, it’s easy to see why this species is a perennial top target for birding trips to Costa Rica. However, as with so many other bird species that must be seen to confirm their improbable existence, the Snowcap can be elusive. I’m sure several other species also occur.

Costa Rica 264

Costa Rica San Jose Birds Farming 264

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

At least most of the resident species can still be seen right along the road, you just have to keep an eye out for cyclists and vehicles on their way up and down the volcano. The following examples are some of the birding experience that awaits on Poas Volcano, Costa Rica: The Voices of Understory Birds. Just keep watching!

Costa Rica 260

Costa Rica Birds Cows Hunters 260

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2019

Based on how naturally parrots and leafbirds (the real ones in Asia, not the figments that plague birders in every country) blend into foliage, I’d imagine that most arboreal avian species would want the same advantages. The first Turkey Vulture of the year is definitely the best one! How about you?

2019 114

2019 Asia Turkey Parrots 114

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2019

I found myself in fine company on the hawk watch platform at Braddock Bay, where streaming flocks of Turkey Vultures were infiltrated by a variety of hawk species. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. Did you join the party? What was your best bird of the weekend?

2019 114

2019 Turkey Birds Experience 114

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 1, 2023

It is home to four diverse forest ecosystems (deciduous, mixed, boreal, and lowlands), experiences seasonal weather systems ranging from cold dry Arctic winters to humid, thunder-storm filled summers, and, according to the latest official checklist, hosts four professional sports teams with bird names.* state and Canadian provinces.

North America 213

North America Birds Owls Canada 213

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2013

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can ease up on the turkey talk. I do regret that I saw no Wild Turkeys this weekend, only subdued, succulently prepared ones. Corey had way too many birds to choose from for his Best Bird of the Weekend, with exactly 100 species for the four-day weeekend. How about you? How about you?

2013 154

2013 Turkey New York Owls 154

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2017

Corey spent all day on Saturday blitzing across Queens with Carrie Laben and it was a wildly successful day with 87 species spotted including a Great Horned Owl that seemed not to know that owls are supposed to be hidden away during the day, fifteen Wilson’s Snipe (a new high count for Queens), and a Piping Plover. How about you?

2017 101

2017 Turkey Owls Birds 101

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 19, 2020

I don’t consider my little garden to be a terribly birdy patch, although years of observation have resulted in my seeing 59 species there (64, if you count the White-throated Swifts , Black and Turkey Vultures, Red-tailed Hawks and Common Ravens that may fly high overhead). Días de precipitación = Days of precipitation.

Nashville 168

Nashville 2015 Mexico Turkey 168

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Do you ever have those moments when you’re supposed to be paying attention to something serious, but you’re immeasurably distracted by the bird species around you? For me, that experience encompassed an entire trip to Picayune Strand. Located near Naples, FL, Picayune Strand is part of the wider Everglades.

Birds 133

Birds Turkey Florida Experience 133

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2015

The count totaled 119 species, which is historically a very good number. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment. How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed.

Bald Eagle 101

Bald Eagle 2015 Nashville Pelicans 101

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 20, 2015

This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. I used to live in Botswana, where there are about 450 bird species in an area a few dozen miles from the capital; then somewhat naively moved back to Serbia with mere 250 species around the capital.

Sri Lanka 257

Sri Lanka Botswana Africa Serbia 257

10,000 Birds

MAY 16, 2017

We spent a day on the beach, a morning on Turkey Creek, and took walks around the neighborhood. I remember my first months of birding; the excitement when discovering a new species, the challenge of recognizing field marks in my Sibley guide, the novel way I began to look at the world. I love hanging out with new birders.

Florida 100

Florida Fish 2013 Turkey 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 19, 2017

I go somewhere new, I’m excited about the experience, I write about it. In the summer, my bird lists mostly consist of mockingbirds and the ever-aloft Turkey Vultures , but winter in Florida is an excellent time to look for different avian varieties: the songbirds are back. But all birders know the value of your home turf, a.k.a.

Birds 100

Birds Turkey Woodpeckers Florida 100

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2019

It would be uber cool to lay eyes on a rare lifer, on species that only seem to live on the pages of a field guide but isn’t that somewhat discriminatory? And why spend time only looking for one or two species when those hours could be used to put binos focused on a few dozen? Aren’t all birds worth watching?

Costa Rica 203

Costa Rica Panama Birds Eagles 203

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 23, 2014

New World vultures of the genus Cathartes ( Greater Yellow-headed , Lesser Yellow-headed and Turkey Vultures ) look much alike. Greater and Lesser Yellow-headed Vultures are so similar that for a long time were thought to be the same species. European Kestrels are known to see the urine trails their prey leave.

Mice 166

Mice Killing Turkey Mammals 166

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 18, 2020

The prospect of identifying a certain number of species in a given amount of time pushes us to pay more attention to birds no matter what the circumstances (although I suggest keeping the exclamations about species identifications to yourself during such solemn situations as funerals, graduations, and watching episodes of The Sopranos).

Costa Rica 261

Costa Rica 2020 Morals Farming 261

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 3, 2019

eBird doesn’t offer such an option, so I used the second best: the species was observed in one month only. I counted them very roughly, but I do have a lot of experience estimating flocks. What qualifies a bird to be included in the top-5? My first criterion was that I observed it only once during the year 2018.

2018 117

2018 Serbia Falcons Greece 117

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

It’s fascinating stuff. Most of the chapters in The Bird Way focus on one or two scientists who has done extensive research on ‘outlier behavior.’

Research 225

Research Birds Science Costa Rica 225

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 8, 2014

People asked me what target birds I had in mind, but really I had very few; I’m not a list-ticker and my goal was to experience the raptor migration. As a child and teen, growing up in England, I had an informal mental list of birds I’d seen in books but which I believed to be out of my reach. Trips hawkwatch raptors Spain'

Spain 170

Spain Ostriches Africa Canada 170

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2017

We might not get the variety of a New Jersey autumn but we do get major numbers of species that winter in South America. However, this year, we opted for a site that could also give a chance at Great Jacamar and a few other key resident species in addition to migrants. Some were feeding on the ground.

Costa Rica 160

Costa Rica Birds Parrots Farming 160

10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2015

The feature distinguishes birds from other species; All birds have them, no other species do. Beaks vary across different kinds of birds, and this great diversity in beaks is part of the great diversity of the 10,000+ species of birds that exist today; Beaks thus facilitated the diversification of birds. So how did beaks evolve?

Alligators 214

Alligators Chickens Research Birds 214

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Hundreds of both Glossy and White Ibis commute overhead, along with Great and Snowy Egrets , Little Blue and Tricolored Herons , and Black and Turkey Vultures. Suddenly, the entire trail system comes alive as birds begin their day. Snail Kite may also be spotted leaving their roosts near this trail during this time of year.

Wildlife 130

Wildlife Florida Alligators Miami 130

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The birds themselves were not any species that would be entirely out of place where I live in North Carolina, but the geography of the peninsula is such that huge numbers of individual birds course southward with the wind at their backs this time of year. Something to work on, I guess. The raptors were great fun, though.

Virginia 144

Virginia North Carolina DC Louisiana 144

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 4, 2016

I was very pleased to discover that we had chosen to stay in a place smack dab in the middle of a juniper-pinyon forest, which meant that finding one of my main two target species of the trip, a Juniper Titmouse , was amazingly easy. You couldn’t miss them if you tried, despite their incredibly bland appearance.

Birds 101

Birds Mules Utah Deer 101

10,000 Birds

JULY 10, 2012

More than 150 bird species are known to have become extinct over the past 500 years, and many more are estimated to have been driven to extinction before they became known to science. The Gray Crowned-Crane is a new addition to the list of the world’s Endangered species, creeping up a category from Vulnerable.

Endangered Species 191

Endangered Species Species Morocco South Africa 191

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2013

The core of the book are the Species Accounts, 190 accounts by 52 authors, some names that readers will easily recognize, others birders and ornithologists well-known in Pennsylvania. You can see the Species Account for Henslow’s Sparrow above, in the banner photo. The second page is the map page. Brauning and Andrew M.

Pennsylvania 230

Pennsylvania Breeding Birds Sparrows 230

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2022

Both Trinidad and Tobago share over a hundred species but within the mix are many that are found on one island and not the other. The disparity in species could be stark, for example if one were to bird on different sides of the planet. I don’t keep lists but one of my guests did and the final tally was 166 species.

Trinidad 257

Trinidad Turkey Squirrels Species 257

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 23, 2016

This year, visiting Niagara Falls until January 6th gave me the chance to experience a bit of both latitudes. Back in Costa Rica, walks through coffee and fields near the house, and a few other day trips have upped the list to 250 species. Wild Turkey – Meleagris gallopavo; Niagara county, 2-Jan. White-eyed Vireo! .

Costa Rica 101

Costa Rica 2016 San Antonio Sparrows 101

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 26, 2022

And I did manage to see a large number of new birds — 45 new species, to be specific. A surplus of quality birding experiences kept me from making my reports, which is embarrassing. I will start by telling you about encounters in Turkey with two special bird families. Turkey can get really hot in the summer. (It

Turkey 162

Turkey Spain Mexico Agenda 162

10,000 Birds

JUNE 6, 2020

149 checklists were submitted, accounting for 465 species. These are included as part of the summary and are maintained in the list, despite objections by some purists, to give the full, rich experience as enjoyed by your lucky, lucky beats. Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura). Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea).

2020 152

2020 Sparrows Niger Woodpeckers 152

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

When I got back into birding about six years ago, I would not have predicted the personal bonds a birder can form with certain species. While all birds bring us joy, and we certainly want to see as many as we can, some species just seem more… special. I’ll start with two species that are especially hard to find.

Mexico 157

Mexico Birds South America Turkey 157

10,000 Birds

APRIL 11, 2023

Indeed, even though I just celebrated 40 years of living in Mexico, we have never been to Cabo San Lucas, and our only experience with Cancún was going though immigration in that city’s airport. It used to be considered a single species with the Broad-billed Hummingbirds that visit my garden in Morelia every day.

Birds 242

Birds Mexico Turkey Species 242

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 29, 2019

I recently despaired of ending this calendar year without seeing a single Wild Turkey when that species used to be so reliable in my part of New York. Luckily, we spied a large flock of turkeys from the highway between Syracuse and Binghamton. What was your best bird of the weekend?

2019 138

2019 Nevada Turkey New York 138

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2011

Turkeys, 3 or 4 species of woodpeckers, all kinds of song birds grace our view constantly. Stop by our blog for some nice shots and share the experience!! We feed them year around here and are “blessed&# to have a wild variety and abundance of birds. Almost time for hummers to make there appearance.

2011 150

2011 Deer Birds South Dakota 150

10,000 Birds

MARCH 29, 2021

Now this is not the first time Facebook has or is being used to showcase beautiful pictures of birds, to allow conversations between birders and to highlight the location of uncommon or rare bird species. Obviously the winner for each year has taken pictures of the greatest variety of bird species within the zone in the calendar year.

Birds 264

Birds 2020 Australia Species 264

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2023

My book of choice for this time of year is Jerry Liguori’s Hawks At A Distance: Identification of Migrant Raptors, a brilliant tutorial on how to recognize raptors by shape and flight style, distilling years of experience and expertise into 216 pages. The number of plates per species varies, which makes a lot of sense.

2011 100

2011 North America 2005 Eagles 100

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

And I have lots of experience with my long lens drawing attention. I suspect that if I could have stood still for a bit, or even (gasp) wander away from the group, I could have seen many more species. But my bird of the day was a member of the wheatear genus, which I had recently met in Turkey. And yet, concerned they were.

Jordan 147

Jordan Birds Turkey 147