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Oriole Warbler Hypergerus atriceps
Abuja, Nigeria. July 2008

A West African endemic Oriole Warblers breed from southern Senegal to Cameroon and north Zaire (Benin; Burkina Faso; Cameroon; Central African Republic; Chad; Congo, The Democratic Republic of the; Côte d’Ivoire; Gambia; Ghana; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Liberia; Mali; Niger; Nigeria; Senegal; Sierra Leone; Togo http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/52393/all). The Oriole Warbler Hypergerus atriceps [...]

My second day-trip to Nigeria this year (the first gave me a very good morning’s birding in Abuja in July) took me to the huge coastal city of Lagos. One of Africa’s most densely-populated cities with about 8 million inhabitants Lagos is built on several islands in the Lagos Lagoon - which basically means to [...]

A friend of mine, Jo Sievers, has just sent me two photos of an unusual Cattle Egret which he took near Lagos, Nigeria the day after I’d been there birding with him (more about which soon). Taken along a coastal road east of Lagos, the photos show what looks very like a Cattle Egret Bubulcus [...]

When I was in Toronto a few days ago (I’ll get a report online at some point I hope!) I came across a small sparrow foraging in some grass that I found difficult to identify at first. It became apparent what it was when it was joined by a (very worn) adult, but to begin [...]

Our campaign (in partnership with the National Musems of Kenya) to raise funds for the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation” - in essence to support the admirable Dominic Kamau Kamani in his struggle to promote awareness amongst his own community of the threats facing the Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw - is going very well, thanks to [...]

I was flicking through Sibley (not as painful as it may sound, by the way) in a recent idle moment and came upon the description of Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus which concludes with the paragraph, “Nearly all North American records are of the paler mantled Britain/Iceland population [graellsii]. A few records apparently refer to [...]

I can’t imagine staying at a hotel in the US, Europe, or the Far East without being able to plug in and broadcast (via 10,000 Birds of course) a stream of words and photos to a waiting world - I’m exaggerating of course, but that’s what I like to pretend to myself sometimes - and [...]

I’ve been very lucky (especially for a Brit birder) to have had the opportunity to look closely at a good number of Nearctic shorebirds in the last few years, and I thought it may be useful to look at one species that I’ve seen particularly well - the world’s smallest shorebird, the Least Sandpiper Calidris [...]

Last year I hardly went to New York at all (surprising, really, given that the airline I work for has seven daily flights), but this year I’ve been enough to apply for residency. No complaints from me, of course: I really like birding the State (and up until a few weeks ago when Mike moved [...]

Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus chloropus
UK. Various dates

As its colloquial name suggests this is a common breeding bird of marshy environments and lakes with plenty of bankside undergrowth. It is sometimes a secretive bird, scurrying back into cover when disturbed, but most birders (and many non-birders) will know them as being quite tame in many areas [...]

As Mike mentioned in his Where are you birding this final weekend of July 2008? post, I’ve been wearing one of my other hats for the last two days as a co-founder of the conservation organisation Birds Korea. I was extremely happy/pleased/honoured to be able to help organise the UK part of a Europe-wide trip [...]

Pretty well, thanks for asking (and, yes, that is the best line I can come up with after just thirty minutes sleep and six hours wandering around a park in Nigeria, sorry).

I have to say I was really looking forward to this trip. My Year List has been idling rather than surging ahead (Graham has [...]

Blue Crane Anthropoides paradisea
Agulhas Plains, Cape Province, South Africa. April.

One of the smallest of the 15 crane species worldwide the Vulnerable Blue Crane is the national bird of South Africa. It’s endemic to southern Africa, with more than 99% of the population occurring within South Africa (a small disjunct breeding population of approximately 60 individuals [...]

I just realised I haven’t written a word of a visit to my home patch last week by the NY blogger and birder Carrie Laben of Great Auk - or Greatest Auk? If I visit a blogger somewhere and they don’t write about it within a few days I start fretting that I must have [...]

Sharpe’s Longclaw Macronyx sharpei
Magumu (north of Nairobi), Kenya. June 2008
 
Occasionally I get a ’sharp’ reminder that while I’m flying around the world having a great time and building up a reasonable year-list, some of the very birds that I’m fortunate enough to go looking for are declining rapidly and are seemingly heading unstoppably towards [...]

We’ve had a fantastic response to our latest give-away competition, and the emails have been pouring in. Sadly, though, a few cynical readers/visitors have hinted in those emails that they think that things are not all - well - ‘above aboard’, that we may have ever so slightly ‘bent the truth’ in the way that [...]

When I was not revelling in numerous species of terns yesterday (June 19th) I spent a happy hour on Po Toi trying to photograph some of the island’s stunning butterflies. One in particular I spent a while trying to sneak up on was the large, bright, and very active Red Lacewing Cethosia biblis: I’m glad [...]

I’ve been in Hong Kong for three days and it hasn’t stopped raining until today. And rain in HK (as us lazy types like to type it) is not for the faint-hearted. The world turns a slate-grey, the view from the hotel window disappears in a cloud of drizzlymist (that’s just for you Corey!), and [...]

Just for a change I thought I’d take a field trip in the UK last weekend. And just for a change it wasn’t birds I was looking for, but orchids. Yes, occasionally a young man’s fancy turns to flowers and what better flowers to look for than orchids - those beautiful and exotic plants that [...]

Rooiels and Betty’s Bay
30 May 2008
 
Getting up early after such a previously great day’s birding (Birding the Cape: the west coast) is not all that difficult - actually not difficult at all - and when my guide Brian arrived at 07:30 I was raring to go. Unfortunately so was the rain. In fact I’d been [...]