10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

The year before I only got one, the shrike-tits (Falcunculidae), although if you include mammals also I finally got my lifer wombat (Vombatidae) too. Sometimes you gain armchair big ticks, like the White-tailed Blue-flycatcher I saw in Uganda in 2005 which later turned out to be in the Stenostiridae, a recently erected family.

Family

10,000 Birds

JULY 22, 2014

The Cattle Egret is native to Africa, where it is a familiar sight among herds of large mammals. The decline of farming, combined with reforestation across the region have been noted as potential reasons for decline. I’d like to introduce you to a diminutive heron, the Cattle Egret Bubuclus ibis.

Cattle

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 14, 2021

The access road passes the Lake Manyara NP and through communal farming lands within Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Other wildlife includes 60 mammal species, 13 primates among them, Chimp tracking, Forest Elephants too. Photo ZGF / Wikimedia Commons. Serengeti National Park is located 325 km / 200 mi or 8-hour drive from Arusha.

Africa

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 16, 2014

The only mammal species I have observed here were the Brown Hare and Least Weasel , but Golden Jackals and even Wild Boars are present, too. Access: The Veliko Blato lake is being run by the Mika Alas fish farm company, so one needs to ask for a permit in advance ( management contact ), but I have not heard of any birder ever being rejected.

Serbia

10,000 Birds

JUNE 11, 2021

In the English countryside, an elder tree rooted alongside a cottage or farm was thought to prevent lightning strikes, while in his De materia medica , the first-century Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides declared that drinking wine steeped with elderflowers counteracted snake venom.

France

10,000 Birds

MARCH 16, 2017

But on modern farms, cattle are being kept indoors and if the pasture becomes overgrown, ground squirrels disappear. A few are on sentry duty, standing on their hind legs and watching for eagles. Susliks are becoming rarer: they need cattle to graze and keep the grass short.

Eagles

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 19, 2024

Memorable encounters with Mammals Part II It’s generally reckoned that there are more deer in Britain today than there were in the Middle Ages, a fact that is almost certainly true. It’s a common mammal in the countryside around my home, and I see them frequently. Rather more are killed in collisions with cars.

Fur

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 29, 2022

In the 1960s, Efraín Chacón constructed a dirt trail [from San Gerardo de Dota] to the Pan-American Highway, and brought his family to build a house, to farm and fish for trout. Like most of the lodge, this bathroom has a glass wall, this one overlooking the feeders and my lifer mammal, my first opossum ever.

Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

JULY 2, 2020

Usually, maize is on the menu, only occasionally carrion or dead trout from a nearby fish farm. In those few days in the park, I observed about 35 birds, including European Honey Buzzard , Grey-headed Woodpecker and the numerous Mistle Thrushes and Eurasian Bullfinches , and half a dozen mammals, European Pine Marten among them.

Bears

10,000 Birds

MAY 11, 2012

For two years — years when I was learning to walk, talk, and name the animals that lived in the woods behind my parents farm, years when the roots of my own engagement with the environment were planted — the black-footed ferret was North America’s premier extinct mammal, gone forever with the Passenger Pigeon and the Great Auk.

Ferrets

10,000 Birds

JULY 11, 2012

New Zealand has been the recipient of a higher than average number of introduced species, in particular a range of mammals from elk to mice. This is quite a big deal for an island group that had no mammals save bats for millions of years. This is a very serious business here in New Zealand.

Animal Rights

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 16, 2012

I had noted that if you took a quick look around you’d think there were a lot of birds and very few mammals. Of course, a lot of the mammals would be hiding. These cats come along with farms. Farms are enormous in their effects on birds. Which brings us to the present post, in which we ask “How many birds are there?”

Cats

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2022

Into the souvenir shop for some local coffee, chocolate and cocoa, then a coffee mug with an image of a Three-toed Sloth and the Field Guide to the Mammals of Costa Rica, and off we go. Driving around the bamboo thickets on a small island in the lake, Mercedes spotted it! At least one Boat-billed Heron awaited us in the thickets.

Costa Rica

10,000 Birds

JULY 23, 2014

There were no mammals, little game, and not many birds either. Blackbirds and Song Thrushes were also problematic for fruit growers, but it was rabbits that quickly became enemy number one for the fledgling colony, as they striped the ground bare in farm after farm. Part of the world they wanted to transport was natural.

New Zealand

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

At first this plan worked well but eventually the peat dried out leading to underground fires, causing farm equipment to sink into the ground and the land was unusable for agriculture. On top of that, your guide interprets and ids birds and mammals over the loud speaker.

Israel

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 2, 2024

The selections appear to largely reflect Hauber’s personal experiences around the world and he does occasionally bring himself into the essay, reflecting on a European Robin he observes at dusk in northwestern Germany or searching for American Robin nests on a tree farm in the Midwestern United States.

Barn Owls

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2012

The animal rights movement is (rightly) closely associated with protesting things like factory farming, dogfighting, etc…basically, the mistreatment of animals. Unfortunately, once we discuss anything beyond this basic point, people vastly disagree on what is right and wrong. This makes perfect sense.

Animal Rights Movement

10,000 Birds

MARCH 13, 2012

After one 3 year stint, they left with 131,405 specimens including birds, mammals, reptiles, plants and even human remains (which were only recently repatriated for burial in Africa!) Thomas Ayres arrived in 1850 and farmed in Cowies Hill near Durban, as well as collecting birds for additional income. Image by Adam Riley.

Mozambique

10,000 Birds

MARCH 19, 2013

They are a commensal species, meaning that they are a wild animal that lives in close association with humans, not as a pet or as a farm animal but more like a parasite, to the extent that it is hard to find them in truely wild settings, and it is hard to find human settlements without them. We are not counting insects.)

Killing

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 22, 2022

I am sure it has some value, but would I really want to spend a few months or even years on “Ticks on Crested Francolins and on the vegetation on a farm in Limpopo Province, South Africa “ ? Mostly just oversized grey mammals there, not too many birds. .” I wish I had this kind of optimism. UysI and G.

South Africa

Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

For example, Carl Cohen, who has argued at length that animals don’t have rights, admits: If animals feel pain (and certainly mammals do,), we humans surely ought cause no pain to them that cannot be justified. It is not in dispute that, in modern factory farms, animals are raised in massively overcrowded, unnatural warehouses.

Vegetarian

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 28, 2015

Duncan chose a mammal! Buttonwood Farms was nearby and didn’t require an appointment. Not to put a depressing note on the end of the year, holiday season, bird of the year post or anything…. A missing Common Loon? What a horrible thing to happen in Minnesota ! The gall of some people! My Best Bird of the Year is… Not a bird.

2015

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 21, 2022

Some 200 kilometres from the coast and an equal distance north-east from Brisbane it is an island of upland rainforest surrounded by plains dominated by farming. The Bunya Mountains is an attractive destination but also a great birding location.

Parrots

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2014

For good reasons the paths are not open if there are no flowers, and this limits visitors to a busy mountain road, although there is a small orchid and butterfly farm on the road up. Oh, and mammals like Bornean Orangutans, B ornean Gibbons , Banded Civets , Bearded Pigs and Maroon Langurs.

Bats

10,000 Birds

MARCH 20, 2023

A very recent one (2023) involving Elliot’s Laughingthrush follows the same trend: “Asian Koel removes nestlings of Elliot’s Laughingthrush from their nest: farming or retaliatory mafia behavior? To illustrate my frequently made point that mammals are kind of evil, here is another piece of evidence. Well, you know, mammals.

Mammals