10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 20, 2014
'The magnificent history and diversity of birds on Earth came into sharper focus this month with the publication of 28 new scientific papers in Science and other journals. How birds came to be what they are today — all their dazzling triumphs over time, oblivion, and gravity — is a much more interesting story than most of us had imagined just 20 years ago. ( American Flamingo photo by Dick Culbert).
4 The Love Of Animals
JUNE 11, 2014
'Hopefully you will never need to know how to perform CPR on your dog or cat, but it is important to know how should the worst happen. Pet choking and cpr [Infographic] by the team at Kurgo. The post Pet Choking and CPR Infographic appeared first on 4 The Love of Animals.
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 7, 2014
'The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ) — that towering icon of modern anthropogenic extinctions — was a pigeon. Not, as Linneaus thought, an ostrich, nor even, as later scientists concluded, a distant cousin of pigeons deserving of family rank, it was an honest-to-goodness pigeon, deeply embedded within the family Columbidae. In fact, the Dodo belonged to a clade (sometimes called Raphini) of 15 remarkable, bizarre, intriguing island-adapted pigeons, some of which are still alive today, but
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 15, 2014
'Glue traps: For compassion’s sake, please do not set, place, or hang them. Here’s why. Sentient people recoil at the idea of leg-hold traps, those medieval–torture devices which cause so much pain and suffering before their victims eventually die, are killed, or (very occasionally) are rescued. However, many people who wouldn’t dream of setting a leg-hold trap use glue traps, which accomplish the same thing – just on a smaller scale.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 17, 2014
'It was our third day in high elevation Hemis National Park, we had awakened before dawn and chugged down a mug of life-giving coffee before ascending a few hundred yards to a knoll above our tented camp in the Rhumbak Valley. Our group watching the first Snow Leopard from a knoll above our camp in Hemis National Park. At this very spot, on our first afternoon in the park, and within half an hour of officially beginning our Snow Leopard search, our expert local spotter had exclaimed “ Shan !!
10,000 Birds
NOVEMBER 30, 2014
'Everyone, the Painted Bunting needs your help. There’s a new proposal before the American Ornithologists’ Union’s North American Classification Committee to split Painted Bunting into two species (yay! — maybe, more later) and to name the new species “Eastern Painted Bunting” and “Western Painted Bunting” (no!).
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10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
'Nobody knows and I’m not going to pretend to tell you. However, in this post, I’d like to lay out the basic numbers as we pretend to know them about overall bird mortality, human related causes of mortality, and somewhere in there I’ll note that the number of birds that are killed by windmills is so small that it says “zero” on my pie chart.
10,000 Birds
MAY 20, 2014
'The first time I saw a puffin, it was a revelation. I’d seen pictures of them, of course – the stocky, flamboyantly-beaked little seabirds who always seem to be wearing expressions of sympathetic concern – but I’d never seen one “in bird” (the avian equivalent of “in person”). I was returning from Rockport, Maine, having retrieved my daughter Skye and her friend Bau-Hien from a photography workshop.
10,000 Birds
JULY 21, 2014
'How do you solve a problem like the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB)? With all due respect to Maria von Trapp, combating the greatest infestation that U.S. forests have ever seen may not be as simple as learning to sing “do re mi.” These bark-burrowing beetles, which apparently hitched a ride in cargo shipments from their native Asia, have been starving the ash trees of eastern and midwestern North America to death for a dozen years now.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 24, 2014
'I am not anti-hunting. I won’t pick a fight with hunters, as long as they eat what they shoot and don’t use lead ammunition. However, I will pick a fight with the Rip Van Winkle Rod and Gun Club in Palenville, New York, which is sponsoring their fourth annual “Crow Down” March 29-30, 2014. The “Crow Down” is a “hunting contest” where both adults and children slaughter as many crows as they possibly can in two days.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 23, 2014
'Big news about a small bird broke earlier this month when bird researchers from several nations announced that the species formerly known as Spotted Wren-Babbler ( Spelaeornis formosus ) — a tiny, secretive bird of montane forests from the eastern Himalayas to southeast China — is not a Spelaeornis wren-babbler at all. Instead, it appears to be the sole member of a very old family ( Discovery of a relict lineage and monotypic family of passerine birds , Alström et al.).
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
'The W hite-winged guan ( Penelope albipennis ) was thought to be extinct for 100 years. The Guan had never been seen in the wild after Polish Naturalist Wladyslaw Taczanowski collected one individual in 1876. The story of the White-winged Guan , in some ways resembles the re-discovery of some species thought to be extinct. Nineteenth and early twentieth century naturalists collected birds on long and arduous exploratory expeditions in the New World.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 3, 2014
'One of the reasons I enjoy about reviewing books is the opportunity to read titles I wouldn’t ordinarily encounter, not because they aren’t good but because they don’t fall easily into a category. Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record by Errol Fuller is one of these books. Yes, it is about extinction, a popular topic in the Year of the Passenger Pigeon.
10,000 Birds
APRIL 10, 2014
'Featured photo: Alfredo Fernandez. The Hornby’s storm-petrel ( Oceanodroma Hornbyi ) is a fairly common bird along the coast of Peru and Chile. Most, if not all pelagic birding trips in the region record this species, often by the hundreds. But as common as they may be, nobody knows where they nest. The Hornby’s (or ringed) storm-petrel occurs along a relatively narrow band on the Pacific Ocean.
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10,000 Birds
MARCH 3, 2014
'Birders have been eagerly anticipating The Sibley Guide to Birds, Second Edition , since it was announced that David Allen Sibley was working on it. The first edition, I think it is fair to say, has been pretty much become the go to field guide for North America in the years since it was first published back in 2000. We have all been wondering if the second edition would live up to the high expectations set by the first and as review copies have dribbled out over the last month some of our ques
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 20, 2014
'What happens when you visit one of the best birdwatching sites in the region with the highest number of endemic bird species in the Americas in the world’s birdiest country? Your mind gets blown. How else can I describe two days at Cerro Montezuma in Colombia. Cerro Montezuma or Montezuma Peak lies within Tatama National Park in Colombia’s Western Cordillera.
10,000 Birds
MAY 20, 2014
'Bird Navigation is an amazing, mysterious thing. For years, birds have outsmarted scientists over this issue, mainly I think because people looking into navigation originally made the incorrect assumption that birds are birds and there is a navigational method that they use. However, we now understand that birds vary in how they navigate, and many if not all bird species use multiple approaches to navigation.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 3, 2014
'Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville, Florida, is an amazing destination to see a wide variety of wildlife including, of course, birds! And while I didn’t lead any field trips to the refuge this year during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival I did visit the refuge on a couple of occasions. In addition to the usual stops at the visitor’s center (where it seems like every winter there are Painted Buntings coming to the feeders) and doing the wonderful auto
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 10, 2014
'Across the world’s northern oceans, 24 species of auklets, murres, puffins, guillemots, and related seabirds make a living catching food beneath the waves and breeding, often in large colonies, on coastlines and islands. Together, these birds compose the family Alcidae , and they share adaptations that we recognize as penguin-like: an upright stance on land, black-and-white plumage, and — most important — wings that propel them underwater in pursuit of prey ( see them in actio
10,000 Birds
JUNE 11, 2014
'Nature lovers, rejoice! The National Park Service is finally going to remove the feral cat colony from Plumb Beach, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. Signs like the one above went up late last week. Seeing as Plumb Beach is a known stopover area for large numbers of shorebirds, a known breeding area for a variety of saltmarsh species, including Clapper Rails , and habitat for a wide variety of mammals, reptiles, insects, and other bird species, this is a long overdue move.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 24, 2014
'So you want to dip your feet into the murky, highly questionable waters of the Birdosphere eh? Well, although I am hard at work being the leading world birder, I’ve somehow had the time to become an old hand at this blogging stuff as well. Among the things that more and more birders have mentioned to me over the years is their urge to start their own birding blog, but they just don’t know how to go about it.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 22, 2014
'Back in January, when I was enjoying my attendance at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival down in Florida, I had an enchanting encounter with our national bird , the Bald Eagle. The setting was the Viera Wetlands, a marvelous location that uses the ultimate waste product, sewage, and turns its processing into an incredibly rich wetland environment chock full of a variety of birds, an environment that is also greatly appreciated by a host of birders, photographers, and general nature l
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 14, 2014
'Can you remember the world before blogs? I’m tempted to say I’ve been blogging for all of my adult life, but if you’ve seen the gray in my hair, you recognize that statement as, at best, exaggeration. And yet the nature blog feels like something we’ve always had and enjoyed. Just like Facebook. And eBird. And cellphones that take decent landscape shots.
10,000 Birds
JUNE 6, 2014
'This is a story of how an evil corporation was … I’d like to say “was brought to its knees,” but will settle for “was forced to endure a setback.”. Last week the poison manufacturer Reckitt-Benckiser announced it would pull 12 of the most toxic forms of D-Con, its popular rodenticide, from store shelves. This was more than 30 years after these types of anti-coagulants had first been implicated in the deaths of protected wildlife and pets, as well as the sickening of children.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 12, 2014
'The 19-teens were not a good time for North American birdlife. Not more than four years following the final breath of the last living Passenger Pigeon , and at the same facility – the Cincinnati Zoo, whose place in ornithological history is morbidly established – the last Carolina Parakeet died. It was called Incas. And with it the existence of the northernmost species of parrot in the world, the only native parrot in the United States whose provenance is not questioned, and a piece
10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 2, 2014
'This Rufous-capped Warbler was seen and photographed without the aid of playback. It was a very pleasant experience. Florida Canyon, AZ. Not long ago, my dear colleague Seagull Steve (Global Birder Ranking System’s U.S. #7) had a blog post that got me thinking. Here are a couple excerpts. [The Rufous-capped Warbler] quickly skulked off, but I was happy.
10,000 Birds
JULY 24, 2014
'Germany is underrated as a birding destination. Nestled right in the middle of Europe, we have a little bit of everything, a nice cross section of Europe’s avifauna. We have, for instance, very beautiful birds, like European Bee-eater , Blue Tit , and Kingfisher. Then of course, we have amazing birds such as Wallcreeper , Hoopoe , and Black Woodpecker.
10,000 Birds
APRIL 29, 2014
'We birders in the northeastern United States are unbearable in April. All we do is complain about the lack of migrating birds so far and in New York City if southeast winds are blowing we are nearly despondent because southeast winds mean that the birds are moving north but the easterly component of the winds keep usually keep the bulk of birds to our west.
10,000 Birds
SEPTEMBER 13, 2014
'When Costa Rica becomes a topic of conversation, we don’t usually hear the word “extinction” being thrown around. You might hear talk about beaches, zip lines, lack of traffic signs (seriously), and volcano visits but extinction? Come on! Must be a joke, right? But how about when the Costa Rica conversation involves a birder? Instead of going on about zip lines and other modern, adventure tourism attractions, the birding crowd talks about taking photos of Resplendent Quetzals
10,000 Birds
JULY 24, 2014
'New Year’s Day 2014. With binoculars around my neck, I am leaving home, wondering which will be the first species on my year list. On a parking lot, I pass by an invisible bird and continue to my local patch of the Ada Huja Danube Riverbank , where my first bird becomes the Rook. And yet, I have passed by one before that. The one I do not count.
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