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Another typical CITES meeting - economics rule, intelligence withers on the vine: “Opposition grew today against a proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna, with several Arab countries joining Japan in arguing it would hurt poor fishing nations and wasn’t scientifically justified.” What a quotation, what a farce. Surely, rational people might ask, [...]

This is one of those ideas that might be a total train wreck, but might be a train wreck that one would want to watch.  I’m generally not a fan of pigeon racing, especially because losing birds are often abandoned or killed, but at least they are domesticated animals and not wild birds being captured [...]

You really must click through to see the image of this extraordinary leucistic Atlantic Puffin.  Seriously, click through right now; this puffin is too cool to miss!

While we’re talking about Spoon-billed Sandpipers it would be remiss of me not to point out the series of (typically) superb posts on David Sibley’s blog Sibley Guides. There are videos, original sketches, photos, and David’s original insights from his recent trip to Thailand. Let’s just hope that with big guns like David and Graham [...]

Jez Bird, Alex Lees & Sayam Chowdhury are surveying in Bangladesh, and Sayam has mailed the OB group to say, “I am extremely delighted to let you know that we found a minimum of 25 Spoon-billed Sandpipers last week at Sonadia Island (in addition to other rare wader species including 24 Nordmann’s Greenshanks and over [...]

How cool is this? Adventures with Birdman: Ecuador-Jocotoco Antpitta has been chosen as an official selection of the 2010 Going Green Film Festival, one of only 30 out of more than 500 film submissions. If you’ll be in the Beverly Hills area from April 2–4, you should consider supporting Birdman Tim Barksdale and the inclusion [...]

It was way back in 1973 that the AOU lumped together the Myrtle Warbler and Audubon’s Warbler, creating the Yellow-rumped Warbler, or, more affectionately, good ol’ Butterbutts, much to the dismay of listers everywhere who lost a species from their various and sundry lists.  Now, as Nate of The Drinking Bird reports, the lump might [...]

The Cabo Rojo Salt Flats – a 500 ha National Wildlife Refuge within Puerto Rico’s Suroeste IBA – have been designated as the Caribbean’s first site of regional importance for shorebirds by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. The Salt Flats support over 5% of the Caribbean breeding population of ‘Snowy’ Plover Charadrius alexandrinus tenuirostris [...]

The 2010 State of the Birds Report on Climate Change has been released.  Go check it out!

If you’ve been following this blog for the last few months, you know that I really enjoyed birding in Jamaica and loved staying at Hotel Mocking Bird Hill. Believe it or not, you can enjoy the same sublime experiences for FREE! My friends at Hotel Mocking Bird Hill are running a competition for a 4-day [...]

The Important Bird Areas (IBAs) of three of Brazil’s most diverse areas are now covered in a new publication Important Bird Areas in Brazil: Part II – Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal. Of 237 Brazilian IBAs now identified, only 21% are protected, 39% are partially protected, and the remaining 40% have no official protection at all. [...]

USA Today has a short article on the practice of finch fighting, which apparently is becoming more popular in the United States.  The sickos that participate usually use Saffron Finches Sicalis flaveola because the males are extremely aggressive when it comes to wooing a female.  How does it work?

In the wild, they don’t fight to [...]

If you are a person who mixes up homemade suet, known by some as “Zick Dough” for the indefatigable Julie Zickefoose, who popularized her own recipe, you might want to know that a new, improved, “Zick Dough” recipe is up on her blog - a recipe that will not cause gout in bluebirds (hopefully).  Seriously.  [...]

Rather splendidly a rare mining bee, Andrena marginata, could help thwart plans to build nearly 200 homes in part of Scotland’s magnificent Cairngorms National Park. There shouldn’t be plans to build homes in the ecologically-rich Cairngorms NP in the first place, but if a mining bee can halt Muir Homes in their clodhopping tracks maybe [...]

So, yes, there is a controversy about climate change.  Are deniers in it for the money or because they hate the planet?  Or both?  Check out this list of organizations that think climate change is a fact and those that don’t and try to figure out the motivation behind the deniers…

In an unfortunate decision, the Department of the Interior did not designate the Greater Sage Grouse an endangered species, though the bird’s status will be reviewed yearly, because scientists at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service had determined that the bird is endangered, but not as endangered as other species, meaning that the grouse [...]

Lillian Stokes has some great pictures of birds catching fish at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Stokes Birding Blog today.  Enjoy!

I’ll declare my interest straight away: I volunteer for the Great Bustard Group and really, really want the species to breed commonly in England again. ‘Great’ news then (see what I did there?) that the first display of 2010 was filmed and posted on the GBG website yesterday. Shake those feathers, young man, and may [...]

The politics around whaling stinks like a rotting corpse. While the world knows (but is apparently unwilling to act on the information) that Japan is the ‘Vieux Bologne’ of the whaling world, it turns out that Denmark is its European equivalent, being to European whaling what Malta is to the illegal hunting of migrant birds. [...]

We all know that birders, with our high-priced optics, tendency to travel, and obsession with field guides, spend way too much cash on our hobby. But how much, exactly, do we spend?  And how much would be willing to spend, collectively, to help the birds?  Both of those questions will be closer to being answered [...]