You are browsing the archives of 2006 January.

Long-eared Owl, rear view
Close views of our friendly neighborhood kestrel yesterday morning along with the welcome weekend warmth augured well for our annual pilgrimage to Croton Point Park in northern Westchester. Croton Point is an essential waypoint on the New York winter birding circuit because of the amazing variety of birds of prey that congregate [...]

Yellow-billed Babblers Turdoides affinis affinis
Chennai, southern India. 18 January 2006
 
The nominate form of this common babbler is found only on peninsular India (roughly south of the Krishna River), and differs from the Sri Lankan form taprobanus by its paler crown, darker body feathers, and darker tail tip. Both forms show a pale grey panel in [...]

Watching wildlife is a delightfully stimulating activity, one that can be enjoyed thoroughly from youth to senescence.  However, the choice regarding which specific creatures to watch is one that should not be undertaken lightly.  While the selection of a suitably numerous, beautiful, and accessible class of organisms will ensure a lifetime of pleasure, the wrong [...]

Now that Seattle’s football team is an NFL powerhouse, I’m getting a slew of inquiries asking, “What kind of bird is a seahawk?” Good question, sports fans!
Seahawk is but one of many nicknames for the awesome Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). This large, long-winged bird of prey cuts a striking figure, dark chocolate brown above and white [...]

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
18 January 2006
 
I’ve not been to Chennai (or Madras as it used to be known) in Tamil Nadu, south-eastern India, for many years. Our trips here are very short with just one free day available, and that coming after a long flight that only gets into Chennai at some horrible time [...]

Call at The Clog Almanac did a search engine survey of various religious stereotypes based on the Google-powered Prejudice Map. Very interesting! I already know how harshly I’m judged as a secularist. What I wonder instead is how I’m stereotyped by my interests:
According to Google, birders are known for…
…picking apart records sent to them, counting [...]

Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Spotted Greenshank. Chinese Egret. Far eastern Curlew. Black-faced Spoonbill. Saunders’s Gull. Great Knot.
If you’re a regular reader of this site, chances are good that you’ve never seen any of these birds. Most likely, you never will. But I want you to care about them anyway.
A vast expanse of tidal flats called Saemangeum is [...]

I get very little feedback on my views about Poultry Flu (or “Bird Flu” as people will insist on calling it).

I don’t know whether anyone agrees with my assertions that people across Europe and Asia are now so far removed from wildlife that they view birds with suspicion and fear rather than affection and [...]

Savannah Sparrow Passercula sandwichensis
Panoche Valley, San Benito Co, California. January 2006

The Savannah Sparrow is a variable species with a very broad range. During the breeding season it is found in open habitats across Alaska and Canada south to the middle United States and in the west south to Mexico. In the tundra at the northern [...]

The “Burger King” Round Trip, Panoche Valley, central California. 03 January 2006
 
The “Burger King” Round Trip (so-called because the trip proper begins when my good friend Jack Cole meets up with fellow-birder and other good friend Ed Frost in the car-park of the Gilroy BK) follows a circuit roughly from the town of Hollister along [...]