article thumbnail

Out Birding to Help an Endemic Sparrow in Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

Today, along with teams in a few other parts of Costa Rica and elsewhere, I will be birding for a cause, watching birds to help one that only lives in Costa Rica, the Cabanis’s Ground-Sparrow. Around the size of a Song Sparrow or Chaffinch , maybe a bit bigger, this mini towhee forages near the ground in dense scrubby vegetation.

article thumbnail

New York City Park Department Contractor Tears Up Imperiled Sparrows Home

10,000 Birds

A New York City Parks Department contractor just wiped out a breeding population of sparrows in tons of trouble already, on land owned by the parks department that was supposed to be protected as “Forever Wild.” It looks to me like they drove a crane straight through this section of what’s called Four Sparrow Marsh. Not anymore.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Birding Shanghai in May 2022

10,000 Birds

But the stars of the month were some breeding Eurasian Tree Sparrows. Taking the famous statement that Mao was 70% right, 30% wrong (Deng Xiaoping), his decision regarding sparrows certainly falls under the second category. But indeed they vanish somewhere once the people pretending to try and catch fish appear.

Birds 147
article thumbnail

Grassy Green Space in the Central Valley- Trash Habitat or Prime Real Estate for Oddball Birds?

10,000 Birds

In the erstwhile sanctuary, common species like Red-billed Pigeon , Blue-black Grassquit , and Rufous-collared Sparrow abound. Recently, I was surprised to have a family of Stripe-headed Sparrows , birds typically associated with dry habitats of the North Pacific slope. It now occurs in various sites in the Central Valley.

article thumbnail

Frontiers in Costa Rica Birding

10,000 Birds

In addition to discovering more vagrant sparrows and warblers, I hope we can also get more coverage for such regions and situations as these: Long Range Pelagic Trips in the Pacific. Expeditions to Remote Parts of Protected Areas. A few trips have been done to those distant waters but we need a lot more. What else is out there?

article thumbnail

What to Do at High Island When the Winds are South

10,000 Birds

Fortunately, as I found out over the next four days, High Island, the Bolivar Peninsula, the whole east Texan Gulf coast area is a place of diverse habitats, some protected, some accidental, all offering fantastic avian opportunities. Seaside Sparrow. Corps of Engineers to protect Galveston Bay at the end of the 19th-century.

Houston 205
article thumbnail

Honestly, How Much Could It Rain?

10,000 Birds

My camera and binoculars, protected by the light coat I had packed, were wet but fully functional. The Song Sparrows were wet. And the White-crowned Sparrows were very, very wet. It would have been a typical rainy California day for, say, the month of January, with steady drizzle punctuated by more substantial showers.