Charlie works for an airline and has birded all over the world for twenty years. He wants to be a writer, and thinks no-one would believe his life could be so charmed if he didn't take photos of as many of the birds he sees as possible. Blogging with 10,000 Birds fits his aims, needs, and insecurities perfectly. Really - do birders get much more fortunate than this?

As part of the ongoing co-operation between 10,000 Birds and the teams working on the ground in Kenya to plot the distribution of the Sharpe’s Longclaw, a pipit-like species confined to the Kenyan Highlands close to Nairobi, Luca Borgesio has sent through a field report from the core of this Endangered bird’s world-range. We are [...]

Of the 770 bird species occurring in the Caribbean, 148 are endemic, with 105 confined to single islands. 54 of the Caribbean’s bird species are globally threatened, of which 12 are Critically Endangered. But only around 10% of the region’s original habitat remains, and 43% of the region’s Important Bird Areas lie wholly outside [...]

Coming from the UK where our reptiles are rarely thicker than a USB cable and only fearsome if you happen to be the size of a fruit fly, one common denizen of Singapore’s wonderful Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve (which I was fortunate to visit last week) that never fails to fascinate me is the Asian [...]

When I was at Singapore’s wonderful (and, as more mangroves are cut down, increasingly important) Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve a few days ago, I came across a Milky Stork Mycteria cinerea feeding quietly in a low-tide channel in the middle of the reserve. Like (I suspect) many readers of 10,000 Birds I knew very little [...]

I spent the morning in glorious sunshine (and the afternoon in a tropical storm!) at the wonderful Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in northern Singapore (which being a small island isn’t far from southern Singapore in fact which makes access nice and easy…). Sungei Buloh protects one of the last patches of mangroves and tidal mudflat [...]

In a decision that proves how much more impressed we Brits are with money than with our natural heritage, Donald Trump has finally been given permission to destroy an invaluable piece of coastal Scotland so that people have yet another place to whack balls with sticks…the BBC News website has the sorry details.

Back on my travels again after a short break at home, and I’m off East: to Singapore and then (for a whole day!) to Sydney, Australia. And the timing couldn’t be much better, as I arrived in Singapore just a week after the 25th Singapore Bird Race. The winning team, ‘Strix’, managed to find a [...]

Last month I posted some photos of a banded/ringed adult non-breeding Mediterranean Gull Larus melanocephalus taken at Radipole Lake RSPB Reserve in Weymouth, UK. I could only make out a few characters on the band, but it did appear that the gull had been banded in Belgium and that part of the band - containing [...]

Not necessarily. Birdlife International is reporting the near miraculous recovery of a logged Sumatran lowland forest which is being protected and restored by three conservation groups working to regenerate a 101,170 hectare site on an island on which most forests have been lost to oil palm or timber plantations. Sending a message to the world [...]

The Common Buzzard Buteo buteo and the Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis are both their respective regions’ commonest ‘buteos’ and are obviously closely-related, but - in theory - they should never meet: B. buteo breeds (in various forms) right across Eurasia while B. jamaicensis is equally widespread but is found across the other side of the [...]

Yes, you got it, these protected birds were targeted illegally by hunters and one was killed - despite the presence of three police units and BirdLife Malta members! The arrogance of Malta’s ‘hunters’ is breathtaking and described by Birdlife’s Dr Andre Raine thus: “In my career, I have never seen poachers being so blunt in [...]

Thanks to the fantastic efforts of a coalition of international conservation groups (and in particular Birds Korea) the decline of Asia’s rare shorebirds due to the ill-thought out reclamation scheme at Saemangeum is still making headline news - as this report on Reuters today proves. Congratulations to all involved…

It’s pouring with rain again here in the UK (and I’ve been feeling absolutely exhausted after a bout of ‘instant weight loss the viral way’ which has seen me tied to our bathroom for the last few days), so in the absence of any birding here today I thought I’d post a few photos instead [...]

You know, if someone had asked me last year whether bloggers can actually make a difference I might have been a little equivocal - after all, despite the mushrooming growth in nature/bird-related blogs the number of animals and plants in danger of extinction rises every time the data are recalculated. However, after our first foray [...]

In a welcome moveEBay Inc will ban trading in ivory products from next year after IFAW found over 4,000 elephant ivory listings by sellers. Elephants are protected under CITES and EBay had (unwittingly) become a major market-place for illegal trades.

In just five years two Santa Cruz-based researchers found 3000 dead Loggerhead Turtles (an Endangered species) along a 43km stretch of Mexican beach - and they blame (and no surprises here whatsoever) poor fishing practices. We’re heading for the “Silent Seas” folks…

Yesterday I posted a photo (reproduced below) taken at the RSPB’s Radipole Lake Reserve (Dorset, UK) and asked whether you could find any Mediterranean Gulls Larus melanocephalus in amongst the Black-headed Gulls. Our great friend Jochen - whom we’ve seen virtually nothing of in the last few months - popped up within seconds and (correctly) [...]

Up to a million Tree Swallows have been roosting in a cornfield in California, and the local news station has a video report. It’s not quite Planet Earth but definitely worth watching.

Yesterday I posted some photos of an adult non-breeding Mediterranean Gull Larus melanocephalus I took at Radipole Lake in Dorset (right here in fact). Now that we’re all experts at Med Gull ID (yes, that was irony as I still find them pretty tough sometimes), how about a quick quiz?

I took this photo on the [...]

The genetically distinct (and rapidly declining) population of Alaska’s Cook Inlet Beluga has finally been listed as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. It’s only taken eleven years incidentally - delays caused not only by the stonewalling Bush administration, but the governor of Alaska …