10,000 Birds

APRIL 18, 2017

Way back in February when I was enjoying a family-and-friends vacation on New Providence in the Bahamas I wisely hired the best – and the only – bird guide on the island, Carolyn Wardle , for half a day to show me around some of the hotspots and help me find endemics and other species I wanted to see. It is unclear when, exactly, the Pied Imperial Pigeon became established on New Providence in the Bahamas other than it happened in the last decade.

Bahamas 50

Bahamas 2017 Papua New Guinea Guinea 50

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 21, 2014

The duller Bowerbirds in the Bowerbird family produce much more elaborate bowers and the Great Bowerbird is rather dull compared to some of the more colourful Bowerbirds in Papua New Guinea. The new bower will only be a few metres away from this one once it is reconstructed and so we can watch the progress next year when it moves the “gifts” across to the new location.

2014 63

2014 Papua New Guinea Guinea Collecting 63

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

I bought a new rucksack yesterday and the first thing I checked when I brought it home was, how easily my spotting scope with a mounted window clamp fits in – test passed with flying colours.

Asia 91

Asia 2020 Papua New Guinea Elephants 91

10,000 Birds

APRIL 9, 2013

The amazing Ribbon-tailed Astrapia of Papua New Guinea sports the longest tail in proportion to body size of any bird in the world. These large seedeaters (belonging to the weaver family) are so named for the generally black plumage of the adult male, resembling a widow in mourning. The 9 species of whydah are brood-parasitic seedeaters belonging to the Indigobird family. A family of Red-faced Mousebirds take a drink in Namibia.

Africa 82

Africa 2013 Papua New Guinea Zimbabwe 82

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 6, 2011

Families that are endemic to the continent include such strange birds as Shoebill , Secretarybird , Hamerkop , mousebirds and rockfowl ( picathartes ) and delightful groups including bushshrikes, sugarbirds, rockjumpers, woodhoopoes, turacos and hyliotas. Besides these truly African families, Africa abounds in a wealth of species in other more widespread groups; weavers, barbets, kingfishers, sunbirds, rollers, bee-eaters, and dare I mention them, cisticolas!

2011 81

2011 Madagascar Equatorial Guinea Papua New Guinea 81

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2020

It’s the bird family that most people don’t know is a bird family. The speaker turned out to be Tim Laman, and the topic was the incredible research he and Ed Scholes had spent years doing on birds of paradise in New Guinea.

2020 87

2020 Guinea Papua New Guinea 2017 87

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

They studied skins in museums around the world and worked with the artists of Lynx to update the illustrations from Handbook of Birds of the World and to add new ones. Working in an area for which there are few official checklists, no governing taxonomic body, and much new information on species relationships coming in, the authors were faced with a multitude of questions about family sequence, genus arrangements, English common names, and species taxonomy.

2017 62

2017 Brunei Indonesia Papua New Guinea 62

10,000 Birds

APRIL 8, 2012

Birds called catbirds include two species in the New World family, Mimidae, four from the bowerbird family, Ptilonorhynchidae, and one from the Old World babblers, Timaliidae. It is the only species in the genus Dumetella and most likely the only catbird most birders will ever see; the Black Catbird Melanoptila glabrirostris , also of a monotypic genus, is found only in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, and is the only other species of catbird in the New World.

2012 77

2012 Papua New Guinea Ethiopia Guinea 77

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2015

The ABA series currently lists guides on New Jersey (Rick Wright), Florida (Bill Pranty), Arizona (Rick Wright), Colorado (Ted Floyd), and California (Alvaro Jamarillo). These include Pennsylvania (George Armistead) and, the one we 10,000 Birds beat writers are really looking forward to, The ABA Field Guide to Birds of New York , by Corey Finger. Mack tells the story of how he set up a research station, and a life, in Papua New Guinea.

2015 64

2015 Papua New Guinea 2014 Penguins 64