August in the Northern Hemisphere, as the days shorten and the first chilly nights occur, is a transitional month.  The beginning of August is still summer with shorebirds being the only birds on the move and any birding expedition is slowed by heat and biting bugs.  At the end of the month kids enjoy the last […]

Our campaign (in partnership with the National Musems of Kenya) to raise funds for the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation” - in essence to support the admirable Dominic Kamau Kamani in his struggle to promote awareness amongst his own community of the threats facing the Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw - is going very well, thanks to […]

I can’t imagine staying at a hotel in the US, Europe, or the Far East without being able to plug in and broadcast (via 10,000 Birds of course) a stream of words and photos to a waiting world - I’m exaggerating of course, but that’s what I like to pretend to myself sometimes - and […]

Charlie, Corey, and I have been so busy of late that we completely overlooked the fifth blogaversary of 10,000 Birds. Can you believe that this blog is already five years old? Believe it.  On 8/12/2003, I started 10,000 Birds as a way to combine twin interests in birding and blogging. On 8/13/2003, having appeased the […]

We’ve been saying some bold things lately about how we’d like 10,000 Birds to become involved in genuine conservation initiatives, and how we’d really like to support local “community-based” conservation projects. Time to put our blog where our mouths are, so to speak…

So, okay, if you add up the following, what do you get?

Sharpe’s Longclaw […]

July.  Summer heat and sweat.  Breeding birds go silent and migration hardly exists until the end of the month when shorebirds start to move.  It is a time to savor air conditioning, cold beer, and vacations.  It is not a great time to bird, well, unless you are some kind of sadist.  Nonetheless, we 10,000 […]

I recently wrote an enthusiastic review of “A Guide to the Birds of East Africa: a novel” by Nicholas Drayson (you’ve not read the review? You should - it’s a great book!). I really enjoyed this charming and highly entertaining novel - but did highlight a few mistakes I’d found concerning a couple of the […]

 
“I and the Bird” is three years old! That’s amazing. I remember the conversation Mike and I had when we first met back in 2005 (we went to Jamaica Bay if you’re interested) and he talked about an idea he’d had for a new blog carnival he was launching called “I and the Bird” (IATB). […]

For the upcoming 3rd anniversary edition of I and the Bird, we’re asking a rather direct, if not altogether awkward question: Why are you still bird blogging?
Did that touch a nerve? We’d rather it got your wheels spinning or, better yet, those blogging juices flowing! After all, most bloggers leap at the opportunity to write […]

After the frenzy of birding that accompanies May migration June seems sleepy.  Most birds have arrived on their breeding grounds and the flood of migrants slows to a trickle and then virtually stops.  June, at least in New York, is time to search out breeding birds, check out bugs, and try to stay cool.  Mike […]

The new-look 10,000 Birds may not be so new anymore but there are still plenty of fun features to explore. I’m particularly enamored of our comments section, or at least with its potential. You see, some of us get cool postage stamp portraits next to our comments…

…while most others get a faceless […]

May has been kind to we 10,000 Birds bloggers. Once again the number of visitors and page views set monthly records: in fact the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend was the only day that brought less than 1,000 visitors to the site. And though it is doubtful that the numbers will bear this […]

Following closely on the heels of Mike’s hosting of “Festival of the Trees” we here at 10,000 Birds are proud and delighted to host another Carnival, and what an intriguing title it has: “Learning in the Great Outdoors”. When I first heard of “Learning in the Great Outdoors” I half wondered (I’ll be honest) if […]

I’m thrilled to be hosting this edition of the world’s greatest aggregation of arboreal blog brilliance. It should come as no surprise that I spend plenty of time looking at trees. In fact, over the next few weeks, I plan on scanning the canopy with an intensity that will undoubtedly result in either eye strain […]

April might be the cruelest month but here at 10,000 Birds it has been nothing short of marvelous! The big news for the month here, in case you haven’t noticed, was our complete makeover with a new theme. Charlie gave a hint of what was to come with his well-thought out essay The […]

I think that I shall never see
a sight more lovely than a boatload of submissions for
the next edition of Festival of the Trees
That bit of verse really trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? What can I say, I’m inspired by the knowledge that I’ll be hosting the May edition of Festival of the Trees and […]

We’re very fortunate here at 10,000 Birds that our blog attracts a good number of visitors - in 2008 we’d had over 100,000 visitors by mid-April - and very grateful too (no-one likes to get really excited about a project only to find that no-one else gives a damn of course). We’re also fortunate that […]

Welcome to the new face of 10,000 Birds! Those of you reading this via a feed reader or e-mail are missing a dramatic revision of the layout and look of our modest blog. The most obvious change is the color scheme; nothing says “badasses of birding” quite like charcoal on black. We’ve carried over […]

10,000 Birds received an email this week from Cornell asking if we’d like to receive their newsletters (which they normally just send out to the traditional media outlets) as part of a trial to determine how effective bird/nature blogs might be in getting their information out. We said yes. Normally I’d not be in favour […]

It is said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.  This March 10,000 Birds both came in and went out like a lion: we broke our records for most visits and page views in a month!  Big news this month included Charlie getting well over the halfway point of […]