10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 21, 2011
It is that special time of year when I’m out and about and someone comes up a bit sheepish and says, “You know, you’re going to think I’m crazy but I saw this bird that was red like a cardinal but had a tiny little black head. It reminded me of a vulture…was that really a Northern Cardinal ?” I’m also sent photos via email and asked the same question on Twitter and Facebook.
4 The Love Of Animals
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
When I was 12-years-old, my 6 pound Chihuahua was involved in a tragic fatal accident. It was bit of a traumatic experience for me and I vowed to never own an animal again. About 15 years later I finally began to have a change of heart. But as I began my search for a new family member at local shelters, I noticed that something was terribly wrong—I couldn’t hold the dogs I was considering adopting for more than 5 minutes before going into a sneezing convulsion.
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Critter News
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
I just don't support these tactics. I hate fur.it's disgusting. But burning a store just 1) makes us into terrorists, 2) does nothing to stop the trade, 3) probably won't even stop the store because they'll get insurance money and reopen and 4) only feeds into sympathy for the industry and the business owners. JMHO. Excerpted from Reuters. Animal rights activists claimed responsibility on Monday for a fire that caused $100,000 in damage to a Boise-area store that sells fur coats and fireworks, a
Animal Ethics
SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Moral goodness is quite distinct from and independent of rightness, which (as we have seen) belongs to acts not in virtue of the motives they proceed from, but in virtue of the nature of what is done.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
My daughter and I were exploring our yard the other day, which presented the perfect opportunity to introduce her to one of the coolest, cuddliest caterpillars of all… The wonderful Woolly Bear Caterpillar ( Pyrrharctia isabella ) is a common sight once October rolls around in temperate regions of the United States east of the Mississippi. The wooly bear, known also as the woolly worm , fuzzy bear , banded woolly bear , and black-ended bear , is reputed to signal the severity of the coming
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
Let’s just start this post with the answer someone googling this info will need: You do not need to take your hummingbird feeder in on Labor Day. It is a myth, an old wives’ tale and completely not true that if you leave your hummingbird feeder outside that you will prevent them from migrating south. I know humans as a whole are a powerful species, but really, we do not have that much control over hummingbird migration ( Trumpeter Swans , maybe, but not hummingbirds).
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 20, 2011
Ok, let’s admit that there are many people out there who think of birding as a weird and eccentric pastime. But we’re not alone. Yay. I’m overlooking Aransas Bay from Fulton Harbor as I write this. We are here to film the local HummerBird Celebration for the towns of Rockport and Fulton, Texas. Although our focal point is undoubtably the spectacle of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that gather here in astounding numbers at this time of the year, there was something else that caugh
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 9, 2011
Alex Washoe is a freelance writer and bookseller in Seattle, WA. who can be found regularly at the bird and wildlife blog Birdland West. However, he’s been known to share his perspicacious avian observations around the web, including right here! Last time, Alex asked us to Consider the Chickadee. Today, he talks about a crazy woodpecker… A couple of years ago there was a big controversy on NPR about woodpeckers.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 21, 2011
A friend of a friend named Daryl Cavallaro took this stunning shot of a Merlin snagging a snack recently at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. Bonus points to anyone who can identify the dragonfly. The photo is copyrighted to Daryl and, no, you can’t use it without permission. Merlin with dragonfly by Daryl Cavallaro (click for a bigger version) … a.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 11, 2011
Irene sends her love. As might be expected she was feeling a little weaker after crossing the Atlantic and wasn’t quite the ‘big lady’ that she was on your side of the pond. Let’s just say she’d mellowed a little on the journey over. She brought gifts of course and for those we’re mostly grateful. The name Irene may have Greek origins but as it is occasionally translated as ‘Eirene’ there is some justice that the island that shares part of her name
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 6, 2011
The moment birders everywhere have been waiting for is almost here. No, it is not an epic morning of birding full of a host of life birds but the theatrical release of The Big Year , the movie about competitive birding based on the book by Mark Obmascik. It will star Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black but I am really looking forward to Jim Parsons as a bird blogger.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 18, 2011
What to do with this jar of nectar concentrate? In a fit of preparedness, I made a couple quarts of my special hummingbird nectar concentrate. It’s one part sugar and one part boiled water, and it’s sitting here in the refrigerator, waiting to be diluted (one cup concentrate to three cups water) and put in a feeder. But I look out and there are only a couple of ruby-throated hummingbirds buzzing around the salvias and cardinal flower garden.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
Ever wanted to meet James Currie , beat writer on 10,000 Birds and star of Birding Adventures TV ? Or Mike Freiberg , beat writer on 10,000 Birds and Nikon Birding Marker Specialist ? Yeah, me too! You’ll have your chance three weekends from now, 15-16 October, at the Extreme Raptor Weekend in Hamburg, Pennsylvania. Want to know more? Check out the video below… Sounds great, no?
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 3, 2011
I have taken refuge on the high ground as Irene batters the east coast of North America and Nanmadol swamps the Philipines, Taiwan and east China, but my thoughts and best wishes are with anyone who has been affected by the storms. If Mexico City itself was not high enough, the mountains to the south rise above 12,300 feet and I was there looking for a Sierra Madre Sparrow to confirm a sighting of this rare and local sparrow from 15 years ago.
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
Lewis’s Woodpecker ( Melanerpes lewis ) In Flight, photos by Larry Jordan Driving home from work last week I finally saw my first Lewis’s Woodpecker ( Melanerpes lewis ) of the fall. Lucky for me, these beautiful and unusual woodpeckers can be found nearly year round in the oak savannah along the road I travel daily. I consider myself extremely blessed as some folks have to travel hundreds of miles to see a rare individual bird at someone else’s feeder.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Penguins. The birds that wear tuxedos and star in major motion pictures. People call them “flightless birds&# but they do in fact fly; They just do it underwater. They are almost totally restricted to the southern hemisphere (but some live very close to the equator). They eat only seafood, including fish, squid, krill and other organisms. Artists rendition of Inkayacu paracasensis There are 17 living species of penguins, which make up their own Linnean family (Spheniscidae), which is the o
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 8, 2011
Last month, I wrote about hypothesized relationships between passerines, parrots, falcons, and seriemas , noting a need for further research on the subject. The post stimulated some great discussions but not really any additional commentary on the science behind these proposed relationships. But later in August, Alexander Suh at the University of Münster emailed me about a new paper he and his colleagues have just published: Mesozoic retroposons reveal parrots as the closest living relatives of
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
There are few stories in ornithology I enjoy more than those of a Lazarus taxon, a species thought to be extinct being found alive and well in some hidden part of the world. There is a depressing finality about extinction, but knowing when for certain something is extinct is an imprecise science and on occasion we’ve gotten it spectacularly wrong.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 26, 2011
Yesterday evening I returned to Kissena Corridor Park, site of an amazing array of rare and difficult-to-see birds over the weekend, and enjoyed birding with some fellow Queens birders. We refound several of the birds that had been seen earlier in the day and on Saturday. But the wood-warbler in these images caused a disagreement as to its identification, largely due to the long range at which we saw it and the evening light made gloomier by heavy cloud cover.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 6, 2011
Robert Gallardo is well-known to many readers of 10,000 Birds as an outstanding Neotropical nature guide, author, and manager of La Chorcha Lodge. He is also the Vice-President of the Honduran Ornithological Association. A Spanish version of the following article appeared in the 9/4/11 edition of the Honduran publication, La Tribuna. Everyone talks about human rights and there exists so many groups that are either governmental or non-governmental who work toward that cause.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
Long before I moved in New Zealand, or visited or even knew much about the wildlife here, way back then I knew about the Poor Knights. I knew about them because I was a scuba diver. I started diving as an undergraduate in Southampton, and being unable to travel frequently at the time I consumed diving magazines and dreamt of visiting far flung destinations (something still do, actually).
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
By the time you read this post I will still be in New York but I’ll be looking forward to leaving for the 2011 Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, Ohio. Kind of. Mostly. Why would I not be wholeheartedly gung-ho about going to what is unanimously and resoundingly considered an excellent, fun, exciting, star-studded, bird-filled, and magnificent event?
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
The Little Blue Heron , like most (all?) herons and egrets, flies with its neck bent and its head drawn in close to the body so that it sometimes appears neckless but always looks like a heron. Except sometimes they don’t. This was the downfall of an extremely competent New York City birder who recently saw a large wading bird fly by at a distance at Jamaica Bay with its neck extended.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
“Purple Martins&# first appeared in print in Carl Sandburg’s 1920 collection of poems, Smoke and Steel , published six years after he rose to prominence following the publication of some of his poems in the famed Poetry magazine. Though one thinks automatically of Chicago when one thinks of Sandburg if one thinks of anything at all he actually wrote poems on a variety of topics.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
The boardwalk at Magee Marsh is legendary. The seven acres of swampy woods that it wends through are hallowed ground to any birder that has visited and to many that only aspire to. The volume and variety of wood-warblers that are regularly seen in spring migration there rival or best anywhere else in the world that the birds are seen. Wood-warblers drip from the trees, feed on the boardwalk, and sing at close range.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 3, 2011
Today is International Vulture Awareness Day ! Rather than go into great detail about a variety of vultures as we have in the past, I tracked down five great quotes about Turkey Vultures , or, at least, five quotes that are either about Turkey Vultures or generically about vultures. Though I had a couple in mind I never knew that it would be so easy to find such great quotes about such ugly birds.
4 The Love Of Animals
SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
Called the “Vicktory Dogs” by many, the 47 pit bulls who survived Michael Vick’s cruelty have struck a chord with the nation. The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption tells the tale of how the dogs came to be rescued, and the extraordinary lengths that some very caring people went through to make sure the dogs got a second chance.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
Shorter Steve Dale : Hey, birders, agree with me that feral cats should be left in the wild where they will kill birds. Oh, and could you volunteer to help maintain feral cat colonies? See, we can get along! Trap-Neuter-Release is a failure and leads to misery for cats and death for birds and other wild creatures. a.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
You ever notice how rare bird alerts (RBA) differ from state to state? I travel much when working for Nikon and I certainly make it a point to check out what has been seen locally. After years of reading posts and rules from other listservs I have come to the conclusion that most are inconsistent and some are just nothing more than a loose forum. How come we call them RARE BIRD ALERTS ?
4 The Love Of Animals
SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
A wonderful new series on Nat Geo WILD this Tuesday, September 13th and Wednesday, September 14. Nat Geo WILD takes viewers around the world to follow dedicated people working to save Nature’s Miracle Babies – often the last hope for critically vulnerable species. Each animal they raise to adulthood is a step away from extinction, with the ultimate challenge to return them to the wild.
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