You are browsing the archives of listing.

On this lovely Labor Day, we might do well to examine our exertions, motivations, and the fruits thereof. In my daily inquiries into how to further maximize my happiness (like the bluesmen of old, I can’t be satisfied) I’ve stumbled upon a fascinating concept that explains a great deal about the insatiable nature of most [...]

Here at 10,000 Birds we are always trying to make things - including listing - easier for our readership, and having given prominence to a number of easy-peasy ways of creating bird lists in the past, I thought I’d pass on the following info from two Brit birders, Andy Musgrove and Mike Prince (the latter [...]

I finally have it up and online! But what is an ABA life list? It is the list of birds that I have encountered that meet the criteria to be included on my list in the ABA area. Wait, what? Well, the ABA is the American Birding Association, and they have [...]

What a fine time to be a web-enabled bird watcher! It seems like every week, some new and exciting resource is developed to enhance your birding experience. Some of these initiatives are, of course, bigger than others and David Ringer recently served up a whopper. Birdstack, the innovative web-based listing application, has been greeted with [...]

Standby time again and after three days of staring out of a hotel window onto a wet car park - and seeing no birds - while I waited for the airline’s scheduling team to give me a ring (it’s very glamorous sometimes this airline job of mine) I finally got a call: a ‘night-stop’ [...]

One thing I’ve learned from my birding colleagues is that it is customary at year end to ruminate on one’s previous 52 weeks of avian observation. Since I’ve already shared some of our top nature moments of 2007, I’ll eschew last year’s reminiscence of places visited and structure this retrospective more in the vein [...]

Hard as it is to believe it’s early November, and thoughts - should you be of a certain inclination - are already turning from one year to the next, or more specifically from this year’s almost non-existent attempt at a year list to next year’s more crafted endeavour at a “Year List worthy of the [...]

Back in 2003 when Sara and I first started birding, we encountered quite an odd duck in Central Park. This bird, pure white with a red, featherless mask around its eyes, was a Muscovy Duck. Originally native to South America, the Muscovy Duck is prized among farmers as a valuable meat duck. Wild Muscovies are [...]

While the title of To See Every Bird on Earth by author Dan Koeppel may get fans of birding adventure narratives salivating, the book’s subtitle, A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime Obsession, hints at the human drama that carries this memoir beyond mere spotting and listing.
I really enjoyed this book. Koeppel’s memoir describes his [...]

I didn’t realize that it was customary at year end to ruminate on one’s previous 52 weeks of avian observation, but I’m happy to take my cue from folks like Nuthatch, John, Eric of Feather Weather, the Birders in Boxers, and others who looked back fondly on their birds of 2005.

Number of species seen in [...]

The birding family tree bears many twisted branches from feederwatchers to world birders. Yet, few are considered as twisted as the slavering hordes of ‘listers’ and ‘twitchers’. As a card-carrying member, I should know. You probably already know that a lister is a birder who keeps track of birds spotted through the use of checklists [...]

Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing nearly 1 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more. Avibase is a superb resource for birders everywhere. Besides its unparalleled database, the site offers checklists for countries, states, [...]