Archive for Conservation


Sharpe’s Longclaw Project - some fantastic news!

By Charlie September 6, 2008 3 comments

Less than a month ago 10,000 Birds launched a fund-raising project aimed at providing funding - in the form of the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation” (SAFC) - to a young Kenyan called Dominic Kamau Kamani who comes from the Kinangop Plateau near Nairobi. The Kinangop Plateau is the core area of the Endangered and […]

Caption Competition - the winning entries

By Charlie September 2, 2008 No comments yet

More fun to support “The Small African Fellowship for Conservation” our serious campaign to help save the Sharpe’s Longclaw (the what now? click right here to find out). I asked last week for your ’snarky’ or otherwise captions to the photo below (me and a whale on the kind of diet plan that most […]

Win a book, save a Longclaw - another 10,000 Birds Give-away!

By Charlie August 26, 2008 12 comments

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 […]

Do it for Dominic

By Charlie August 19, 2008 9 comments

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 […]

Ye Olde Birds at the Renaissance Faire

By Corey August 18, 2008 2 comments

Sunday was a day with Daisy’s family, and what better way to spend it than with bawdy lasses, courageous jousters, hilarious jesters, and strong mead?  No better way, of course, which is why we headed to Sterling Forest in Tuxedo, New York, to the New York State Renaissance Fair.  For those who don’t know, Renaissance […]

Vultures, Diclofenac, Rabies, and Ecological unravelling

By Charlie August 14, 2008 6 comments

A friend of mine just mailed me and asked me to blog about the latest research regarding the disappearance of India’s vultures. As it’s something I get particularly excised about I’m happy to do so. We’ve actually posted a number of times about the catastrophic decline in the population of India’s vultures - according to […]

Sharpe’s Longclaw, 10,000 Birds, and the Small African Fellowship for Conservation

By Charlie August 10, 2008 20 comments

 
A Conservation Project is born.

In June (2008) I was fortunate enough to be on a short birding trip in Nairobi with Shailesh Patel and George Kamau. Amongst the birds Shailesh and George were able to show me was one that I had never seen before and knew almost nothing about: the Endangered and highly range-restricted […]

It All Adds Up - announcing a 10,000 Birds conservation project

By Charlie August 4, 2008 8 comments

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 […]

The Grand Canal: South Korea’s Grand Folly

By Charlie July 25, 2008 4 comments

As Mike mentioned in his Where are you birding this final weekend of July 2008? post, I’ve been wearing one of my other hats for the last two days as a co-founder of the conservation organisation Birds Korea. I was extremely happy/pleased/honoured to be able to help organise the UK part of a Europe-wide trip […]

Canada… The Conservation Capital of the World

By Mike July 22, 2008 2 comments

Did you hear this incredible news? The Canadian Province of Ontario announced last week that it will conserve a huge swath of the province’s northern wilderness, the area we frequently reference as the Boreal Forest. The promise to permanently protect at least 225,000 square kilometers of the Canadian Boreal Forest has been universally lauded by […]

Planning on Visiting Washington DC This Thursday?

By Mike July 8, 2008 1 comment

You might want to drop in on the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans Oversight Hearing…
The House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans will hear from experts including American Bird Conservancy’s Vice President for International Programs Dr. George Wallace and others to further investigate the factors affecting stressed bird populations and bird habitats, and […]

So where did birds come from - and where are they going?

By Charlie June 28, 2008 16 comments

There’s an interesting article doing the rounds at the moment that looks at the early history of bird evolution and speciation by studying avian genetics. Simply put (which is the only way most of us CAN put it, I suspect) geneticists have analysed the make-up of specific slices of DNA from 169 species and then […]

Bird Biodiversity Good for Humans Too

By Mike June 25, 2008 2 comments

It appears that our friends at the College of William and Mary are on a roll. Hot off the epic expedition of Winnie the Whimbrel comes a fascinating study that helps promote biodiversity in the only context most people can understand: human self interest. In essence, a healthy, diverse bird population is also good […]

Sharpe’s Longclaw: an Endangered Kenyan endemic

By Charlie June 22, 2008 10 comments

Sharpe’s Longclaw Macronyx sharpei
Magumu (north of Nairobi), Kenya. June 2008
 
Occasionally I get a ’sharp’ reminder that while I’m flying around the world having a great time and building up a reasonable year-list, some of the very birds that I’m fortunate enough to go looking for are declining rapidly and are seemingly heading unstoppably towards […]

Motherly Love Penguin-style

By Charlie June 1, 2008 10 comments

I’m just back from a superb two days birding in Cape Town, South Africa (just two days? For those who don’t know I work for an airline - I come, I go, what can I say…) with Brian Vanderwalt. It’s going to take me the best part of next week to work through all the […]

Suikerbosrand NR in winter

By Charlie May 22, 2008 5 comments

After a few hours birding on the morning of May 15th at the excellent Marievale Bird Sanctuary I headed over to one of my favourite places anywhere - the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve. Just a thirty minute drive from Marievale, Suikerbosrand NR protects a superb area of the highveld sandwiched between farmland and townships, an undulating, […]

Marievale Bird Sanctuary

By Charlie May 18, 2008 1 comment

Right. Hands up all those of you fed-up with Mike and Corey’s posts on tens of thousands of wood-warblers migrating through various parks and forests in New York. Anyone? Do I see a hand, any hand…just one would do…how about you sir, over in the corner? No? There must be someone…? I guess not - […]

World Migratory Bird Day 2008

By Charlie May 10, 2008 1 comment

I started a recent post (Magic Hedge, Chicago) with the following paragraph: “There are few times of the year more exciting in the North American birding calendar than the middle weeks of May. Why should this be? The spring sales in birding stores perhaps? The best time to get a bargain on new binoculars? Maybe […]

Arbor Day = Ecological Devastation?

By Mike April 24, 2008 10 comments

So here I am, innocently trying to figure out why we need both Earth Day and Arbor Day in the same week when yet another shred of my ecological innocence is torn asunder. No, it wasn’t the revelation that Arbor Day always falls on the last Friday of April in the U.S. that horrifies me. […]

Earth Day is Our Day

By Mike April 22, 2008 4 comments

I’d be remiss if I didn’t wish you all, on behalf of the 10,000 Birds team, a very happy Earth Day. However, I’d also be remiss if I didn’t take the time to point out that Earth Day is not at all about the Earth. Earth Day is about us. George Carlin said it best:
…there […]