10,000 Birds

MAY 19, 2022

In the end, I opted for the Tamis River floodplain, north of Belgrade, and its fish farms, some non-operational, some selling daily angling licenses. Driving with open windows (to hear the birds) becomes unbearable and I am heading out of this fish farm.

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Breeders Mules Farming Fish 201

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

Known as Calle Los Viquez , this sizeable area of farm fields flanked by housing, its coffee bushes, hedgerows, and weedy fields has become a haven for birds. In the erstwhile sanctuary, common species like Red-billed Pigeon , Blue-black Grassquit , and Rufous-collared Sparrow abound. The habitat looks good for it!

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Costa Rica Sparrows Birds Rodents 249

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2019

Back in the old place, there were more birds in the nearby coffee farm but it wasn’t easy to bird because I couldn’t see it from my door and there were stray dogs. Looking a lot like a Carolina , this one tends to be harder to see if just as loquacious, and is common in coffee farms and other low, brushy habitats.

Costa Rica 164

Costa Rica Barn Owls Stray Dog Blackbirds 164

10,000 Birds

MARCH 2, 2024

The grazers are glorified farm animals, but they have been labelled by some very irresponsible people as “wild”. but walking to the Schollevaar hide I saw Common Chaffinch, Eurasian Tree Sparrow , European Stonechat , Eurasian Blackbird , Eurasian Blue Tit , Common Kestrel and even a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Beavers 140

Beavers Netherlands Eagles Geese 140

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.

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Tenant Farming Illinois North America 160

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. A beautiful weekend for watching birds demands beautiful people watching birds. Were you out there?

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Pennsylvania 2015 Farming Birds 151

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 27, 2021

These smart looking birds are tropical sparrows. As for quetzals, this is still a very good area for them, we saw and heard some on the main road through the aptly named Quetzal National Park and on a side trail to a farm where planted fruiting trees attract these spectacular birds.

Costa Rica 214

Costa Rica Birds Farming Litter 214

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 10, 2020

On the northern birding calendar, October is a time for sparrows, cool weather, and tired fall leaves. It’s when Orange-crowned Warblers share the Goldenrod with lisping and chirping sparrows, when hardy Yellow-rumped Warblers dominate the Parulid scene. In Costa Rica, the tenth month is when birds pass through in droves.

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Costa Rica South America Colombia Paraguay 262

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 19, 2015

Lincoln’s Sparrow for example. Heck, I still need it for my country list along with other “super rare” sparrows like Lark Sparrow , the needle in a sugarcane field Clay-colored Sparrow , and the extremely elusive Chipping Sparrow. Oh, how that would be a nice year bird.

Costa Rica 161

Costa Rica Birds Panama Sparrows 161

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 17, 2019

The raising of the bins took place along roads through semi-shaded coffee farms and on the grounds of Villa San Ignacio , a hotel with big old wonderful trees and regenerating forest. Euphonias, sparrows, warblers, and tanagers. Less common but still expected were looks at White-eared Ground-Sparrow and Red-crowned Ant-Tanager.

Costa Rica 191

Costa Rica Birds Parrots Sparrows 191

10,000 Birds

JUNE 9, 2014

In addition to the Veery I saw or heard a pair of Yellow-billed Cuckoos , some cooperative Eastern Kingbirds , Swamp Sparrows , Warbling Vireos , Wood Thrush , Cedar Waxwings , a Worm-eating Warbler , and, well, you get the idea: it was awesome! Grasshopper Sparrows don’t seem to sing terribly loudly but their song carries a long way.

Breeding 152

Breeding New York Breeders Downers 152

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

Leaving Fall River, past the local Bank Swallow nesting site , we head over to Rat Farm Road, a hot spot for raptors, leading to Horr Pond and Big Lake. Back at Fall River Lake a Swamp Sparrow ( Melospiza georgiana ) had been reported hanging out for the past few days, but it had been hunkered down and difficult to find. LUCKY ME !

California 103

California Sparrows Birds Philadelphia 103

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 2, 2018

I love sparrows, so seeing a feather-worn Vesper Sparrow this past July filled my heart with joy. We saw sparrows–a total of 14 species–and we saw many other great prairie birds, and we often saw them perched on posts. Baird’s Sparrow was one of those elusive creatures.

North Dakota 135

North Dakota Birds Sparrows Blackbirds 135

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2015

White-crowned Sparrow. The road was lined with scrub and short trees, and I spotted not one but two new sparrow species. White-crowned Sparrows are possible winter sightings where I live in North Carolina, but not at all common, while Savannah Sparrows has been one of my nemesis birds for quite some time.

Seals 181

Seals Elephants Whales Whaling 181

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Turf farms in wooded regions are wide open oases for grasspipers and other species adapted to natural lawns. With much of the airport inaccessible and most of our looking limited to fall migration, how many Grasshopper and Savannah Sparrows visited the airport during the winter months?

Costa Rica 162

Costa Rica Ecuador North America Peru 162

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Mason Farm is one of the best places for birding in the region, and arguably in the state. All four seasons had something to enjoy, from impressive neotropical migration shows in the fall and spring, to scrub filled with sparrows in the winter, to nesting Prothonotary Warblers and Yellow-breasted Chats in the summer.

North Carolina 165

North Carolina Salamander Farming Tennessee 165

10,000 Birds

JUNE 10, 2011

Carrington, North Dakota is farm and ranch country. The wide-open spaces of the prairie and the land it takes to make farming or ranching pay means that folks can get kind of isolated—especially in winter. It might make them stop to help a stuck birding van along a farm road.

North Dakota 238

North Dakota West Virginia Farming Alaska 238

10,000 Birds

APRIL 11, 2020

Fortunately, our yard list rather near the airport in the Central Valley is boosted by a riparian zone and a few farms within ear shot and is why we have detected such species as Barred Antshrike and White-eared Ground-Sparrow. Barred Antshrike.

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Costa Rica Birds Mississippi Woodpeckers 247

10,000 Birds

APRIL 5, 2019

Escaped partridges, quail, and pheasants are never as abundant or harmful as the much-maligned big three invasives – Rock Pigeons , European Starlings , and House Sparrows. And because of the resemblance they bear to their New World cousins in the family Phasianidae , they even look the part of an “authentic” wild bird in North America.

North America 113

North America Vermont America Farming 113

10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2020

Where can I see Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow followed by a fantastic meal ? Local guide and birder David Mora Vargas has been spending much of his time at his family’s farm in the Sarapiqui lowlands. As it learns to hunt and live on its own, the young bird has taken up residence in a tree right in front of the farm.

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Costa Rica Birds Thailand Family 205

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 27, 2015

The list includes Bachmann’s Sparrow , Red-cockaded Woodpecker , Crested Caracara , Snail Kite , and, oddly, Whooping Crane. The first farm on the left, where all the cattle are? I reached the end of Joe Overstreet Road, turned left on Canoe Creek Road, and pulled over when I reached the cattle farm. He likes it there.

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Cattle Florida Bald Eagle Endangered Species 192

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 10, 2016

We also feel that unique sense of togetherness by knowing that each of us is out there concentrating on the birds and covering the ground even when our lips ache from pishing, House Sparrows fail to become real sparrows, and we can’t help but wonder to ourselves, “Um, why am I doing this”? Gulls on the cold Niagara.

Costa Rica 235

Costa Rica 2016 Eagles Belize 235

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2014

Okay, that choice is something to be expected, but how about this: some seven years ago I was guiding another British couple to a nearby fish farm where I was happy to show them the Great White Pelican – the only one I have ever seen in Serbia! Spanish Sparrow – still ill-numbered but, since recently, breeding near the city.

Serbia 173

Serbia Eagles Birds Sparrows 173

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 28, 2017

While birders up north are pishing up sparrows, digging the Autumn weekend at Cape May, or twitching vagrants, we are busy with kingbird flocks during our height of migration. Selva Bananito was actually founded in the seventies but back then, it was a sizeable farm like any other.

Costa Rica 153

Costa Rica Birds Parrots Farming 153

10,000 Birds

MARCH 19, 2013

In 1898, Hermon Bumpus published a paper about change in the morphology in a population of House Sparrows that he proposed was an example of Darwinian Natural Selection in action. House Sparrows ( Passer domesticus ) are introduced birds over most of their very large range. Where has all the road kill gone? 2013.02.023.

Killing 191

Killing South Africa Nebraska Collecting 191

10,000 Birds

MAY 10, 2015

The first, the embarrassing heretofore unseen SAVANNAH SPARROW was a consolation prize for my FOY Grasshopper Sparrow. I headed out to the corner of the county, a place I’d known from a survey I did on an organic farm. 10 minutes later I was on a Lincoln’s Sparrow.

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2016 North Carolina 2015 Raleigh 141

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2018

I was at Baranda fish farm, north of Belgrade, following a short embankment without much hope: swans and ducks at the right hand side and a solar powered screamer at the left, meant to scare cormorants with sounds of shooting, reloading, shooting and bird cries (presumably in agony).

Moldova 118

Moldova Birds Serbia Greece 118

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2012

So, should we tell people not to plant anything like snowy mountain ash that the above White-throated Sparrow is eating on its migration south? Never put up a bird house?

Rabbits 154

Rabbits Killing Canada Farming 154

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2018

Anyway, the inevitable afternoon deluge poured down just as our group rolled up to EcoFinca Luna del Puente Reserva Natural Privada , a charming family farm that is becoming as popular for birds ( eBird hotspot ) as it is for chocolate and coffee. That is how the saying goes, right? What sounds spooky at night?

Honduras 133

Honduras Birds Farming America 133

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 3, 2012

So, should we tell people not to plant anything like snowy mountain ash that the above White-throated Sparrow is eating on its migration south? Never put up a bird house?

Rabbits 113

Rabbits Killing Canada Farming 113

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2019

birders choose to shrug off owling altogether and set their alarms for a more reasonable time closer to the late December sunrise, opting only to hit the field once the sparrows and chickadees are certain to be out and about. Considering all that, it’s no surprise that less hardy (or more sensible?)

2017 136

2017 Owls Game California 136

10,000 Birds

JULY 23, 2014

The first to do so was the humble House Sparrow, which was brought to help control caterpillars but soon reached such numbers it was the subject of control itself. To control the rabbit a new wave of species were brought here, and much like the song about the woman eating the spider to get the fly it didn’t end well.

New Zealand 161

New Zealand Possums Rabbits Ferrets 161

10,000 Birds

APRIL 29, 2017

After starting the morning with an unsuccessful search for Rusty Sparrow in Orotina, we hit three main shorebird sites. No sparrow but the dawn chorus was a treat. We left the highway at the entrance road to Chomes (a good birding route unto itself) and made one stop to scan the farm fields.

Costa Rica 101

Costa Rica Morals Breeders Sparrows 101

10,000 Birds

JULY 22, 2014

When you think of invasives, you think of the birds that have been helped by human beings to get where they are, such as House Sparrow or European Starling. The decline of farming, combined with reforestation across the region have been noted as potential reasons for decline.

Cattle 170

Cattle South Korea Suriname Seychelles 170

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 2, 2014

East of it, between the villages of Kostol and Mala Vrbica, there is the Mala Vrbica fish farm and Important Bird Area (the fish farm is not operational, hence the entrance is free, without the need to ask for permission). On your way back, you may try to explore the Lower Gorge and Mt. GPS coordinates of the Forgotten Road.

Serbia 184

Serbia Turtles Birds Eagles 184

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 24, 2018

Much like my visit to Malheur NWR, the actual wet Land areas are flooded once the cooperative farming is over. Nearly 30,000 of these acres is set aside as dry wilderness habitat for other birds, animals and other various living creatures. Did I mention that they were a couple of hundred yards out there?

New Mexico 113

New Mexico Mexico Tucson Arizona 113

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2019

Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow. Watch for it in coffee farms, especially with shade trees, and in riparian zones. . A very local bird with a restricted range, this finch (actually a tanager) with the big pinkish bill is most easily found in marshy field habitats in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. . Black Guan.

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Costa Rica Panama Birds Eagles 202