Up until today Mike has always written our month in review posts. He has done an excellent job. For some reason, maybe it was the threatened beatings, maybe it was the promised beers, I have agreed to shoulder the load of summarizing our month in bird blogging for your reading pleasure. So, without further ado, I present you with the 10,000 Birds Month in Review: January 2008 (please write nice things in the comments or Mike might hurt me, or, worse yet, my binoculars, and Charlie certainly doesn’t have the firepower to stop him).

While 2007 was certainly a wonderful year for us 10,000 Birds bloggers 2008 has been no slouch thus far. During our brief technical difficulties Mike turned lemons into lemonade by using our down time to upgrade to the most recent version of wordpress and switch to a new web host. While he was busy doing that Charlie got off to a great start on his Old Friends, New Friends 2008 World Tour, and I got to work on my Anti-Global Warming Big Year. And those are just a few of the more than forty posts we published in January!

In addition to Japan, Charlie has traveled to, and seen great birds in, Kenya, India, Florida, and, of course, his home country, England. In between his exciting trip reports he has taken time to teach us how to tell pipits apart, ranted a bit about gunning down muppets, and shared his photographs of a Black-legged Kittiwake with half-grown primaries. Oh, and did I mention that one of his blog posts was chosen for inclusion in The Open Laboratory 2007, which is an anthology of the best writing on science blogs? This should be no surprise to our regular readers.

Mike certainly had a busy January as well. In addition to launching the Nature Blog Network he nicely summarized his bird listing for 2007, the cornucopia of nature blog carnivals available for your perusal or participation, and interviewed David Ringer about David’s recently launched web-based listing tool, Birdstack. Mike also made sure everyone knows what a merganser is, stoked controversy with his Pileated Pronunciation Poll, and reminisced about his favorite duck. Not only that, but he went birding too.

And me? Well, I was on vacation in California, so, you know, I hardly saw any birds at all (though some rare mammals were cool). I did, however, try to stump our far too educated readers with a couple of diabolical ID quizzes and eventually gave the answers. Once I returned to New York I birded very locally and chased a rarity.

We also participated in many carnivals, all of which were highlighted in Mike’s aforementioned post on nature blogging carnivals. The Infinite Sphere‘s hosting of Oekologie’s one year anniversary was nice, as was Tangled Bank 97: the Frozen Bank over at The Inoculated Mind. But that certainly wasn’t all: we also participated in Linnaeus’ Legacy #3 at Greg Laden’s Blog, Carnival of the Blue #8 at I’m a chordata urochordata, and Learning in the Great Outdoors #8 at Alone on a Limb.

And I would certainly be castigated rather severely if I forgot to mention I and the Bird #66 and I and the Bird #67 hosted, respectively, by John at Born Again Bird Watcher and Trevor at Trevor’s Birding and introduced marvelously by Mike.

And our only Welcome Wednesday of the month wasn’t a carnival but Jory’s look back at his New York State Big Year. Why haven’t you written something for Welcome Wednesday?

Another highlight of the month’s bird blogging did not occur here at 10,000 Birds but in Germany where Jochen of Bell Tower Birding returned to blogging after some time off due to the birth of his son. I’m sure all of us bird bloggers are glad to have him posting again. Congratulations Jochen! May he grow up to be as good a birder as his proud papa!

Did you have a highlight in your month of birding?

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.