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A Birdy New Year! This article is about the parrots we have, not the ones we wish we had. Here in Germany, we don’t wish we had. Because we never have had. But now that we do have, and while we may or rather should wish we had not, we might as well roll with [...]

We birders north of Mexico used to have a parrot to call our own, a sun-faced, spike tailed jewel called the Carolina Parakeet that traversed the southeastern United States preceded by the adrenaline inducing ear piercing squeals that haunt the fever dreams of any birder lucky enough to have made the journey to the Neotropics.  [...]

As introductions to tropical Pacific birding go, you could do a lot worse than Fiji. Their combination of isolation and size makes them a great place to see lots of local and Pacific endemics. More importantly the airport in Nadi (pronounced Nandi) on the main island of Viti Levu is a major air hub and [...]

Just a quick one this week as life is crazy and rattles relentlessly onwards. Since everyone loves parrots, I thought I’d  post some pictures of one of New Zealand’s many interesting species. The Red-crowned Parakeet is one of three species known also as Kakariki - literally small kaka. One of the small parrots in the Cyanoramphus radiation, the species was recently split [...]

Were one to draw up one of those lists of “top ten x to see before you die”, a formula that is perhaps a morbid way to phrase quite a jolly question, and you were to examine which ten birds you had to see in life, I would imagine the question would divide people endlessly. [...]

Keep an eye to the sky if you happen to be in Darwin, Australia, at the start of the wet season because that is when Red-collared Lorikeets are most likely to be getting drunk on fermenting fruit. “It’s definitely a seasonal thing because it’s linked to what they are at at the start of the [...]

Last month, I wrote about hypothesized relationships between passerines, parrots, falcons, and seriemas, noting a need for further research on the subject. The post stimulated some great discussions but not really any additional commentary on the science behind these proposed relationships. But later in August, Alexander Suh at the University of Münster emailed me about [...]

Robert Gallardo is well-known to many readers of 10,000 Birds as an outstanding Neotropical nature guide, author, and manager of La Chorcha Lodge. He is also the Vice-President of the Honduran Ornithological Association. A Spanish version of the following article appeared in the 9/4/11 edition of the Honduran publication, La Tribuna. Everyone talks about human [...]

Here’s a prediction: Parrots, falcons, and seriemas are on their way to new positions in your checklists and, eventually, field guides. Oh yes, change is a-comin’. Crimson-fronted Parakeet (Aratinga finschi), Moravia, Costa Rica © David J. Ringer Proposition 491, recently submitted to the American Ornithologists’ Union South American Classification Committee (SACC), bears the esoteric title [...]

Who doesn’t love a macaw? Big, bold, beautiful parrots full of character and charm, macaws make us long for some of the world’s wildest places and assure us that, as long as they fly free, those magical wild places are still intact. One of the most majestic macaws is the Hyacinth Macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), a [...]

Seth Ausubel is one of the best birders in Queens, New York, and Corey is ever-so-thankful that Seth does not use eBird because that way Corey can pretend that he is the top lister in the borough.  Seth is generous with his knowledge, and, knowing this, Corey cajoled him into providing this post about one [...]

Last week I discussed the somewhat dated kakariki taxonomy used in the recent edition of the Parrots of the World by Jospeh Forshaw. My second grumble about these small parakeets and this book is not actually particularly restricted to the book, it’s actually a ubiquitous problem related to the name of one of the species [...]

One of the joys of blogging for a widely read blog is that it gives one a platform on which to moan and complain about subjects which interest the blogger and no one else in particular. In that particular spirit I hope to set the record straight on two separate issues that revolve around a [...]

Some of the most popular birds in the world are parrots, particularly the large, multi-coloured Ara Macaws. Found throughout South America in ever-dwindling numbers these extremely beautiful birds – threatened by habitat destruction and collection for the wild bird trade – are often difficult to see and hard to find. UNLESS that is you get [...]

One of the things about being a birder is that you become, in the eyes of your non-birdy friends, the “bird guy”. In my case that means that whenever they have friends and family visiting from abroad I end up being the guy that is asked to take people on tours of nearby bird reserves. [...]

Duncan Wright, who lives in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, has contributed a guest post before (in Aug 2009, Birding Wellington, NZ) packed with superb photos and birds that – frankly – some of us had never even heard of! When Duncan mailed me last week saying that he thought I “might enjoy showing some [...]

The following article, written by Monica Engebretson, author and senior program associate at Born Free USA, appeared on Opposing Views (http://www.opposingviews.com/) earlier this month and provoked a fire-storm of comments. Should we be re-posting it here? The article is well-written and discusses some very important issues concerning avian welfare; Monica is a well-informed, committed conservationist [...]

Can you imagine visiting your local park only to find noisy packs of wild pink parrots cavorting in the grass? That scene might sound like something out of Dr. Seuss but is perfectly natural in the Land Down Under. Reader Shane Martin graciously shared this gallery of Galahs found at a local park in Brisbane, [...]

A week or so ago (time is flying by so fast these days it may have been months ago or yesterday I’m no longer sure) we were contacted by Duncan Wright, a Wikipedia editor asking us if we’d post an article on 10,000 Birds on the merits of Wikipedia as a birding resource – too [...]

In January 10,000 Birds held a ‘Parrot Month’ theme (http://10000birds.com/tag/parrot-month), and I’m ashamed to admit one of the posts I didn’t get around to formatting – not because it wasn’t any good but because it was so long – was written by Nick Sly, erudite and learned author of the Biological Ramblings blog, who has [...]