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While Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals, and American Goldfinches will all show up at bird feeders here in the northeast and share their brilliant blue, red, and yellow visages, we have no bird at our feeders to compare to the Painted Bunting. While I have mentioned their technicolor dreamcoats before it never hurts to mention again that [...]

Limpkins are Apple Snail specialists.  That is, they eat snails of the genus Pomacea to the exclusion of all else, provided the snails are available. And while finding snails is not difficult for a long legged bird that is not afraid to wade into alligator-infested marshes it is difficult to extract the yummy snail meat [...]

By the time you read this blog post I will hopefully have checked my first lifer of the day off and be on to my second. Forgive the brevity of this post but, like with the last one, I really have neither the time nor the energy to do more at the moment. Space Coast [...]

I am having a wonderful time at the 15th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. Instead of going into the gory details at this moment, when I have been on the move constantly for three days straight and seeing lots of birds and birders and getting very little sleep, I figured I would just [...]

Does anyone have a field guide to the birds of the moon?  Of Mars?  Of anywhere in outer space?  I really wonder what kinds of birds live at such low gravity. They must be very odd indeed. I can’t wait to explore outer space at the 15th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival from [...]

Steve Walter is a New York nature photographer, birder, and long-time member of the New York City Butterfly Club.  Readers of 10,000 Birds who pay attention will remember him from when he showed Patrick and me some really cool damselflies out in Suffolk County.  This blog post is written by Steve and by writing it [...]

O beautiful for whistling ducks! a tropical delight! Even in the Brazilian Amazon, I’ve never seen this many whistling ducks together–there were sixty at a manmade lake behind the Brevard Community College near Titusville, Florida. Phoebe, Liam and I went down to work (and play) in January 2011 at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife [...]

There are a handful of sites in North America that can justifiably be considered must visits for birders.  It’s only a small surprise that a significant proportion of those sites are in Florida.  It’s no small bit ironic that between the sprawling developments and golf courses and theme parks of the general public’s perception of [...]

I was in Florida last week, the freakiest of the southeastern states.  Its peninsular shape, dipping so seductively into the neotropic Caribbean, suggest a haul of bizarre and fascinating birds found nowhere else on the continent.  All true of course.  But not only is Florida’s native birdlife pretty amazing, it also hosts strange exotics; species [...]

For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by shorebirds. Growing up within an hour of one of the world’s premier shorebird destinations – West Coast National Park in South Africa – helped for sure. For me, there’s a few things that drive this fascination. Firstly, shorebirds present a significant ID challenge. Getting [...]

During a family holiday this week, my wife suggested that other road users and pedestrians may take my erratic driving and sudden stops as incompetence behind the wheel. I suspect that this may have been a veiled insult to my driving prowess, but since she will neither drive nor navigate while abroad and stubbornly refused to help identify the [...]

I ate escargot for the first time a few months ago. That I didn’t enjoy it probably had to do with the fact that Aderman, my videographer, ruined the experience by telling me that snails “are like snot in a shell”. I spared myself one of his too-detailed explanations by NOT asking how he came [...]

One of the highlights of any birding trip to Florida’s Space Coast is watching waders and waterfowl at Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera, better known as the Viera Wetlands. These wetlands, part of the Great Florida Birding Trail, are a model of sustainable land use. Considered an integral component of Brevard County’s water reuse [...]

One of the all-day avian extravaganzas offered each year at the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival scours central Florida for the best birds this area has to offer. Considering how spectacular many of these species are, I gleefully committed 11 hours to the odyssey. Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area protects lovely pine-palmetto habitat that [...]

With mere days to go before the start of the 14th Annual Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival, I’d like to find out who among you will be there. I can’t see your raised hands, so stake your claim in the comments section. Also be sure to let me know if you’ll be at The [...]

So much of this holiday season, it seems, revolves around giving and getting gifts. My mother doesn’t even have the decency to wait until Halloween before she makes her first request for Christmas lists. But the things I, as a birder, really want won’t fit in a gift box (and still be countable under ABA [...]

James Bond had an Aston Martin DB5, suits from Saville Row and his trusty Walther PPK. John Steed, from ‘The Avengers’ preferred the Bentley, bowler and sword-stick. Even Austin Powers had a Jaguar E-type. I was finding it difficult to maintain my ‘International Man of Mystery’ image in my birding silks, riding a Mary Poppins bike [...]

Sabrina, a coworker of mine who lives in Tampa, Florida, sent me the pic below of a mystery bird that has been showing up of late and roosting all night on a beam on the roof of her porch.  Mike, Charlie, and I had wildly divergent guesses, and when Sabrina eventually got a shot that [...]

Florida, land of limpkins, oasis of anhingas, gathering place of gallinules, offers some of the most distinctive birding in the United States. Not only is the Sunshine State home to an abundance of egrets and herons unheard of in northern climes but it also dangles the promise of potential Caribbean and subtropical species. So why [...]

The biodiverse expanse of the Everglades is a lepidopterist’s delight, serving up really sensational butterfly species. However, the non-avian critter that really caught my attention during my trip to Loxahatchee NWR was the big, beautiful Lubber Grasshopper. The Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (Romalea guttata or Romalea microptera) is fairly common throughout the southeastern United States, particularly [...]