Another stunning group of birds that I really like are the secretive Fruiteaters: these sluggish, quiet, secretive, and beautiful birds form part of the Cotinga family.  These birds, like all the cotingas eat mostly fruit, and are found on fruiting trees and many times along with a feeding flock.  Although I have not seen all [...]

Approaching the Highway 44 off ramp for Turtle Bay from either direction you will find life-sized metal sculptures of Bald Eagles, like this one above, poised to catch fish jumping from the median strip. If that doesn’t catch your attention, with the completion of the bridge construction, which included a walking and bike trail along [...]

Over recent weeks we have been out to check on the local ephemeral lakes. These lakes vary from year to year depending on how wet our “wet season” is and also what happens in the “dry season”. It really has been a bad year for the lakes and the birdlife that depend on them, but [...]

Happy Christmas to all the readers and writers on the good ship 10000 Birds. Having survived the Triumvirate’s cat o’ nine tails thrashing during the kidnapping, I am now bent to their every whim and committed to their vision of traffic at any price. My alter alias, International Man of Mystery has failed to live [...]

Driving down Rupert Road you will undoubtedly see lots of birds as you make your way toward the Anderson River Park entrance. As you enter the park, across from the boat ramp, on your right, there are soccer fields where the Yellow-billed Magpies hang out. Atop one of the soccer field light poles is an [...]

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, [...]

The half-day we spent at the Antisana Ecological Reserve in the highlands of Ecuador was one of the great highlights of our eight-day trip.  The birds were great but what this post will focus on is the sheer grandeur of the landscape, a landscape that is difficult to describe with just words.  Antisana Ecological Reserve [...]

Grant & I spend a lot of time outdoors and our holidays are always outdoor adventures. Even at home we spend a lot of time outdoors and we rarely shut our windows as we love to listen to the outdoors. We often come across little things in nature that you just have to smile at [...]

Just like many other place in the world where there are birds, there are birders who appreciate what birds do. I have come to appreciate the magic moments that birds live by taking pictures and video of the little gems that shine with radiating life. On a recent trip to the east slope of the Tropical [...]

There are many wonderful options for birders in and near western Montana – Yellowstone, obviously, and Glacier National Park, and Freezeout Lake and Lee Metcalf and on and on. But what if you’re not a birder? What if you are a parent with a young child, or a student with a dog and a long [...]

While most of 10,000 Birds’ writers and readers are enduring the northern winter coming early, down here in Wellington we are enjoying one of the nicest springs I’ve known. All around the city trees and plants are flowering and birds are pairing off.  Last week the weather was warm, sunny and calm (the later the [...]

Lema Ranch is one of Northern California’s birding hotspots. It is located in Shasta County, in the northern most part of the Sacramento Valley, in the city of Redding (pdf map here), about 160 miles north of Sacramento. The property is the headquarters for the McConnell Foundation, a philanthropic organization working for the betterment of [...]

It should now be clear why Ecuador is a great country for birding, if not then visit my previous blog “Ecuador Hotspots Regions”.  The new question and probably the most important question is why should you bird in Ecuador instead of some other South American hotspot? Here are some interesting facts to consider: For the [...]

One of the things about being a birder is that you become, in the eyes of your non-birdy friends, the “bird guy”. In my case that means that whenever they have friends and family visiting from abroad I end up being the guy that is asked to take people on tours of nearby bird reserves. [...]

If you did not pay attention to your geography teacher then this is your chance to excel beyond the rest of the people who really don´t know where or what is Ecuador. Well maybe I am all wrong about you, the readers of 10,000 Birds, but this is no exaggeration, it is true.  Many people [...]

By the time this post goes up onto the interwebs I will be winging my way to the South American paradise of Ecuador, which is loaded with lifers.  Some might see my nine-day excursion as irresponsible considering that I am currently unemployed, have a ten-month-old baby, and a blog that has recently added about twenty [...]

As everyone knows by now the eastern United States was hammered yesterday by a classic nor’easter which created blizzard conditions for much of the eastern seaboard.  New York City, where I live and work, was no exception.  My office near Port Authority was technically closed but I (was) volunteered to man the phones for the [...]

The 2010 International Bird Watching Encounter in Guatemala is just drawing to an end. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend the Encounters in 2008 and 2009, both of which stand out among my most cherished travel experiences. Alas, I couldn’t make it this year so instead, I’m sitting on the sidelines waiting to hear whether [...]

Despite its epic species diversity, Ecuador possesses but a pittance of mainland endemics to its name. Sure, the Galapagos Islands own a veritable franchise in the business of speciation but the continental birds seem to recognize few borders. This is why Endemic Bird Areas (EBA), as described by BirdLife International, are so useful in understanding [...]

Some readers may have noticed that I haven’t been myself lately, that my blogging output has diminished, to say the least. While the safe money on why my brain is a bit mushy would certainly be on an excess of book reviews in December, I have a much more reasonable explanation: I am going to [...]