10,000 Birds

MAY 10, 2013

Heading out of Ecclesdown Road on the second day of my trip, I had nailed all of my targets save four species ( Caribbean Dove , Yellow-billed Parrot , Jamaican Owl , and Stolid Flycatcher ). A Jamaican Owl peers down at me from a tree at Marshall’s Pen. The entire grounds of her property were extremely birdy.

Jamaica 153

Jamaica 2013 Parrots Birds 153

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 21, 2017

The notion of sly birding reminds me of being a lone birding kid and noting my lifer Prairie Warbler during a grade school walk-a-thon at Goat Island. To this day, I can’t help but wonder what else was using the woods of Goat Island on that wet September, 1984 morning? Mealy Parrot – Amazona farinosa; El Tapir, 13-Jan.

Costa Rica 104

Costa Rica 2017 Woodpeckers Parrots 104

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

Broad-billed Parrot. They all went extinct since 1500 and they are only eight of the nearly two hundred species that have blinked out since then. Sure, we try not to introduce snakes, rats, cats, goats, pigs, and a host of other creatures to isolated islands. Mauritius Owl. The eight species above still exist.

Mauritius 172

Mauritius Djibouti Guam Birds 172

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

We nature lovers, celebrants of life in all its exquisite multiformity, feel more keenly than most the loss of even the most undifferentiated species. And some of the extinctions were of small animals, like the many dwarf goats and elephants in the Mediterranean. Australia’s extinct and threatened bird species. What a horror!

Marsupials 171

Marsupials Costa Rica Elephants Cuba 171