Charlie has birded all over the world for twenty years. He has finally grown-up after years of having way too much fun and is now trying hard to be the writer/conservationist he's always said he wants to be. Blogging with 10,000 Birds is like chatting to hundreds of friends every day and suits him perfectly. Really - do birders get much more fortunate than this?

Bird Studies Canada and Nature Canada have launched a new website for the Canadian Important Bird Areas (IBA) Programme. The main goals of the IBA Canada website (www.ibacanada.ca) are to raise awareness of the IBA Programme, to share information about Canada’s IBAs, and to empower more Canadians to reconnect with nature as volunteers for the [...]

On January 18th we posted an Aside about a new music CD called ‘Music and Migration’ on the ‘Second language‘ label. Put together by Martin Holm of BirdLife Denmark to raise awareness of BirdLife’s critically-important ‘Born to Travel‘ campaign, the 21 exclusive tracks are “a showcase for the finest in contemporary post-classical composition, idiosyncratic folksong [...]

Did you ever wonder why you never see dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica? Craig at SABirdNet has provided the answer…
It is a known fact that the penguin is a ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life. They have a very strong community bond, are very committed to their family and [...]

BirdLife Malta have produced a heart-breaking and highly effective video to promote their petition demanding the Maltese prime-minister ban illegal hunting. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0SgNMBvVoQ. Watch it, think about it, sign the petition. Please.

There was a narrow window of beautiful, bright weather yesterday morning, and I headed up to Great Sleight, a large, rolling field at the southern end of the Great Chalfield estate where I saw my first local Northern Lapwings and Golden Plovers on a similarly cold, clear day back in December last year.

It was a [...]

I wonder how many of us birders have ever given much thought to the production of a birding magazine? I certainly hadn’t. Someone writes a few articles, someone with a computer makes it look nice, maybe someone else prints it, and somehow it all arrives at my house nicely wrapped. It’s a bit like turning [...]

Kenn Kaufman has written five superb field-guides (that’s about five more than 99.9% of the world’s birders) - and in a competition arranged with his wife Kim we are going to be giving away THREE sets of ALL five books to three 10,000 Birds Conservation Club members next month. Was a 25USD investment EVER such [...]

Q: Which well-known birder has just produced a book of Frequently Asked Birding Questions (FABQ)?

A: Blogger, writer, radio personality, Science Editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and well-known font of birding knowledge Laura Erickson.

To quote from ‘Introducing “The Bird Watching Answer Book” (’TBWAB’) page on ‘Round Robin’, Cornell’s bird blog, “One of the most-visited [...]

The justification used by Japan that the Minke Whale population is booming and thereby stopping other whales recovering is - as a rational person might suspect - a pile of complete doo-doo. A widely reproduced report shows that the Minke population has remained relatively stable and that the idea of ‘culling’ them for scientific research [...]

The weather is set to be fairly awful (again/still/typical/whatever) in the UK this weekend so why not sit by a window in a comfy chair and take part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch? I will be - and then sending in my sightings to help the RSPB ascertain the state of the UK’s garden [...]

Life has been a little turbulent of late so I’d just like to say thanks to Alan Tilmouth (http://dustybins.blogspot.com) for taking time to give me some good advice and encouragement which has substantially helped smooth the waters. I’m very grateful.

Volunteers are needed for the second annual Rusty Blackbird Blitz taking place January 30 through February 15. Participants report sightings via the eBird program led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The blitz is coordinated by the International Rusty Blackbird Technical Working Group at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center along with the Cornell [...]

I’ve recently taken up a voluntary post as Editor of the Great Bustard Group’s magazine ‘Otis’ and hopefully having one person putting what is often described as their ‘distinctive’ style (thanks Martin F) on the articles and design will at the very least give the publication the consistency it’s perhaps been lacking. I’m really uncomfortable [...]

The international petition against illegal hunting in Malta which we highlighted last week has received over 22,000 signatures in just one week. “Although the BirdLife partnership is primarily targeting its members with this petition and it has been only a week since we launched it, support is pouring in from all corners of the [...]

Did I or did I not write that January would be an interesting time for the 10,000 Birds Conservation Club? (I’m sure I did, I’m just not sure where now…)

Anyway, January is proving to be a cracker for what is essentially still a relatively new conservation initiative (we only launched in November 2009).

Just a [...]

Conservation Measures for Falco eleonorae in Greece is a concise and very interesting website which includes a Google Earth map overlaid with the surprisingly different routes taken by four migrating Eleonora’s Falcons flying from Greece to Madagascar. The site is in English which makes everything a lot easier to follow for most of us I’m [...]

Join BirdLife Malta’s conservation camp to stop illegal killing of birds this spring

11th April – 30th April 2010
 

 
What is Spring Watch Malta about?

Spring Watch Malta is a conservation camp which forms an integral part of BirdLife Malta’s fight against illegal spring hunting. This camp is being organised during the peak spring migration period in Malta [...]

As I wrote the other day, we’ll be running a series of give-aways and sending a bunch of new birding stuff to 10,000 Birds Conservation Club members over the next few weeks.

We’re kicking off this run with a competition to win a highly-acclaimed and beautifully-illustrated book by award-winning nature-photographer Steve Hutchcraft which is aimed [...]

A message from Tim Cleeves of Slender-billed Curlew fame: “The first of Ann Cleeves’ Shetland books, RAVEN BLACK, will be BBC Radio 4’s afternoon play on January 23rd (14.30-15.30). Dramatised by Iain Finlay MacLeod, it also has music by Chris Stout. If you miss the broadcast you can get it from the BBC website [...]

Like much of the northern hemisphere the UK has been shivering during an unusually prolonged cold-snap, with temperatures falling well below freezing for days on end (no laughing now Clare, I know it gets waaay colder where you are but we’re not used to it here). However, I was driving back home at dusk on [...]