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10,000 Birds Month in Review: February 2008

February 29, 2008 by Corey 2 Comments

This leap-year twenty-nine-day month has been a marvelous one for the 10,000 Birds bloggers. We got together for an historic first-ever day of birding as a group. And it snowed. And sleeted. It was fun nonetheless. We gave away two copies of Audubon Backyard Birdwatch for the Great Backyard Bird Count and participated in it as well. We also crowned the humble chickadee as the most beloved backyard bird of 2008. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg…

This month had not only the usual birds but comics and poetry. Charlie educated us by letting us know how to tell coots apart, how to tell a Bohemian Waxwing from a Cedar Waxwing, how to distinguish between second-winter-plumaged and fully adult winter-plumaged Ring-billed Gulls, how to tell an Oriental Skylark from a Eurasian Skylark, and what exactly is meant by splitting and lumping, while Mike grilled us with a weekend warrior waterfowl quiz and I added my ABA life list to the blog and celebrated my one-year blogaversary.

In addition to educating us Charlie reported on trips to California, California, and California (ok, it was the same trip but he saw so many birds that he had to do three reports and that last one had better shots of some of the same birds I had pictures of that I hadn’t used). Charlie also birded with a guy who can’t stop bothering kittens and saw some astounding birds in Mumbai, India (especially check out the pigeon and the bird with the googly-eyes). He also got some great shots of a Horned Lark.

I spent time birding on a train, birding Manhattan, birding the Bronx, birding Fort Edward, birding Greene County, and seeing a lifer in the snow.

Mike launched his second great website in as many months, introducing the Best Birding Tours toplist site to the interwebs even as the Nature Blog Network continues to grow.

We had some great Welcome Wednesday contributions this month from Chrissy Guarino, Alison Kent, and Curt McDermott. And we participated in the two most recent editions of I and the Bird, #68 and #69 which Mike ably introduced, as always.

Most importantly though, Charlie has set up The Peter Mowday Conservation Fund in honor of his best friend and ardent conservationist who passed away in November of last year. Please consider donating: all money received before April of this year will go to support the great work Birds Korea does in monitoring shorebird populations.
What does the next month hold in store for the 10,000 Birds bloggers? Come back every day to find out! Seriously, please do, and tell your friends and family to do so as well…we have to stay ahead of the Zick somehow, right?

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.