Last week I was doing a birding tour of the east and west slopes of Ecuador and encountered some warblers that have already made it to Ecuador.  It is really amazing how far and how fast they can fly to improve the living conditions that assure their millenarian survival.  Here are a couple of pictures [...]

Tanzania is without a doubt the quintessential African safari nation. Nowhere else in Africa do the preconceived ideas of the continent really exist in such living detail; tall, red-robed Maasai herding their skinny cattle, endless grasslands studded with flat-topped Acacia trees and grazed by herds of zebras and wildebeest, and dramatic volcanic calderas brimming with [...]

Friends, birders, and globe-trotters, lend me your ears. Better yet, offer up your eyeballs because we have a powerhouse post here that deserves, nay demands your full attention. Adam Riley, owner and managing director of Rockjumper Birding Tours, is a world birder if ever there was one, but has a special place in his heart for [...]

As someone who has a spent a week this August on a family vacation in Seattle I think that I am eminently qualified to write a full blog post on how to bird Seattle.  Actually, I am not really qualified but I can give some impressions of an East Coaster birding Seattle in August which, [...]

By the time you read this post I will still be in New York but I’ll be looking forward to leaving for the 2011 Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, Ohio.  Kind of.  Mostly.  Why would I not be wholeheartedly gung-ho about going to what is unanimously and resoundingly considered an excellent, fun, exciting, star-studded, bird-filled, [...]

Long before I moved in New Zealand, or visited or even knew much about the wildlife here, way back then I knew about the Poor Knights. I knew about them because I was a scuba diver. I started diving as an undergraduate in Southampton, and being unable to travel frequently at the time I consumed [...]

If there is one thing that Kiwis care about, it’s birds. No, wait, not birds. Rugby. Kiwis care about rugby. A lot. Rugby Union, to be specific (not Rugby League) and most particularly they care about the national team, the world famous All Blacks. This makes it a particularly exciting time in New Zealand as the [...]

The Front Range of Colorado offers unique birding experiences from top to bottom. It is actually more strange than anything because each area is vastly different for multiple reasons and the sites I am thinking of are in relatively close proximity to each other. Fort Collins offers the most water in the northern tier of [...]

Here I am, back from my first ever visit to the Pacific Northwest.  We had a blast, the family and I, and experienced some amazing natural places, to say nothing of the fine city of Seattle.  To go by the numbers, I saw 79 species of bird while in Washington (150 county ticks), 21 of [...]

By the time this blog post goes live Daisy, Desi, and I will be in the Jet Blue terminal at JFK International Airport waiting to board the plane that will whisk us across the country to the land of temperate rain forests, grunge music, overpriced coffee, and Seahawks.  Because none of us have ever visited [...]

There are quite a few species of duck that nest in cavities. Most people are familiar with Wood Ducks nesting in tree cavities but Common and Hooded Mergansers, Barrow’s and Common Goldeneyes and Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola) are also cavity nesters. Buffleheads, being the smallest North American diving ducks, are able to nest in cavities created by the Northern Flicker with an [...]

Birdwatching and visiting the Enchanted Islands is a dream that can be materialized by many more people than one would guess. The fact is that the entire tourism industry benefiting from Darwin’s discoveries want you to believe that you must spend a small fortune to be able to realize your dream. In fact this is [...]

I often wonder what the true first colonists of Colorado had running through their minds when they first encountered the Colorado Rockies. The Native Americans had already been experiencing this poetic mountain range for generations. I imagine these explorers had the same reaction as the Lewis and Clark expedition as they moved from the tallgrass [...]

After last week’s big Brit wedding bonanza I couldn’t help but chuckle at the news that one of the RSPB’s premier nature reserves in the North of England has opened itself up for weddings. Leighton Moss lies within the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is more famous for its breeding Bitterns [...]

O beautiful for whistling ducks! a tropical delight! Even in the Brazilian Amazon, I’ve never seen this many whistling ducks together–there were sixty at a manmade lake behind the Brevard Community College near Titusville, Florida. Phoebe, Liam and I went down to work (and play) in January 2011 at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife [...]

“The most outstanding binoculars I have ever seen” and “unexpectedly comfortable and stable”.  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this recently. Which is a good thing. It helps me sleep and puts my little heart at ease. The last couple of weeks have been nuts. The EL50 Swarovisions went in to [...]

I ate escargot for the first time a few months ago. That I didn’t enjoy it probably had to do with the fact that Aderman, my videographer, ruined the experience by telling me that snails “are like snot in a shell”. I spared myself one of his too-detailed explanations by NOT asking how he came [...]

We have just returned from a 3-week camping holiday in Tasmania and it was every bit as good as our last visit 2 years ago, which was for a month. We had such a good time then that we just had to return and this is the best time of year to visit from a [...]

Everywhere we went in Tasmania on our last trip two years ago we had to look up to see birds! Around Broome we don’t really have many tall trees, as we live in cyclone territory. You really notice the difference when you go somewhere else birding and by the end of the first day you [...]

Whilst I have left the comforts of a salary long behind me by leaving the airline I worked for, fortunately (I suppose, he says grudgingly) two of my birding mates are still there putting in the long hours and seeing some fantastic birds. One of them, Redgannet, is a ‘Beat Writer’ here on 10,000 Birds, [...]