Shai Mitra is a birder-extraordinaire, a wonderfully patient teacher, a member of the New York State Avian Records Committee, and editor of The Kingbird, the peer-reviewed publication of the New York State Ornithological Association.  He was also nice enough to give directions to good birds in Suffolk County when a pair of bird bloggers headed [...]

Just yesterday, 3 July, I headed north out of the city by bus, met up with more birders in New Paltz, and continued all the way up to the town of Root in Montgomery County, New York, all in order to see my first-ever Mississippi Kite (Ictinia mississippiensis).  Present at the location, at the intersection [...]

Okay, we’ve had unborn babies and re-united twins on 10,000 Birds in the last few weeks - and now we’re doing houses…yes, it’s another non-birdy post, but I hope readers will forgive me because I woke up in a Wiltshire paradise today, and after the stresses of moving (box after box after box after box [...]

July is the traditional time of year in the United States to purchase the new Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, better known as the Duck Stamp. These non-postage stamps serve dual duty as both migratory waterfowl hunting licenses and entrance passes for National Wildlife Refuges where admission is normally charged.

If you’ve never heard of [...]

On the last day on Kazakhstan as we drove from oasis to oasis, birding spot to birding spot, I was amazed at how variable and beautiful the landscape was.  On one ride in the van of a little over an hour we went from semi-desert to some hilly country back out to flat desert steppe.  [...]

The lot of the Big Lister is far from easy. In order to add the majority of the world’s 10,000 or so bird species to your life list, you need to dedicate your life to traveling to the ends of the Earth, mastering field ornithology for thousands of habitats, and unraveling the evolving mysteries of [...]

Hen Harriers in England continue to be persecuted both in the breeding season and at communal roosts in the winter, and especially on areas managed for Red Grouse. Their recovery as a species hangs in the balance as a result, according to Natural England’s national ‘Hen Harrier Recovery Project’. Hunters or Harriers? I wonder which [...]

As we continued east from Almaty the air got drier and drier and the landscape got more and more desolate.  We passed a town that was almost completely abandoned in the midst of scrub vegetation, and the most common living things we saw were livestock, though how anyone raises animals in such an inhospitable place [...]