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Bobolinks are among my favorite birds.  It is impossible to hear their silly song being sung from on high without growing a grin on your face.  And what kind of bird is black beneath and pale above?  The Bobolink is an absurd bird and any birding outing is made better when one spots Dolichonyx oryzivorus.  Unfortunately [...]

Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) are robin-sized blackbirds found in prairie and mountain meadow wetlands of the western and central United States and Canada.  They are conspicuous not only because of the male’s bright yellow head and breast and their highly social behavior, but they produce some pretty strange calls as well. You can hear the Yellow-headed [...]

Here at 10,000 Birds we think it is very important that we tackle the big issues of the day, the issues that can effect everyone, birder or not.  And if there is anything that is constantly on everyone’s mind in recent days (and that we are constantly getting email inquiries about) it’s the inside of [...]

Grackles are of the Icterid family, the New World family of birds that includes blackbirds, orioles, oropendolas, meadowlarks, caciques, the Bobolink, and cowbirds.  The word grackle derives from the latin word graculus*, which describes the small European corvid, the Jackdaw, which some grackles vaguely resemble.  There are eleven species of grackle, or, there were, but [...]

I’ve recently discovered that if I hustle out of my office for my lunch hour, jump on the uptown C train and get off at 72nd St I can spend some time birding the west side of Central Park while I work my way north to 81st St to get on the downtown C train [...]

This weekend while I was exploring the Shawangunk Grasslands in Ulster County, New York, with my parents (more on that later) we came across a juvenile Brown-headed Cowbird that was positively begging to be photographed.  Actually, it wasn’t begging at all, which is a good thing, as I hate seeing these greedy little monsters begging [...]