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Have you ever tackled a project so ambitious, yet potentially ill-advised that, when the dust finally cleared, you still couldn’t believe you nailed it? The whole 10,000 Birds team has got to be wearing sh*t-eating grins right about now because we actually did it… POOP WEEK was awesome! Our collective goal was to examine every [...]

A waterfall on the St George’s Society Cliffs. We have an embarrassing richness of cliffs up here where I live. The landscape is dramatic to say the least.  We also have a richness of falcons. Within 4 kilometres of where I live there are two active aeries, a Gyrfalcon’s and a Peregrine Falcon’s. Extend that [...]

The next time a bird poops on your car, think carefully before you act. Consider who the rightful owner of this rich resource might be and weigh the consequences of hasty action. Now a car manufacturer might suggest that you remove the caustic substance immediately with a soft cloth, but are they really the right people to [...]

This week’s Poop Quiz was answered in record time.  And I thought it was so diabolical.  One just never knows … Congratulations to Matt O’Donnell for his correct answer ! The clues and their answer: 1. Back in the 60’s, there was a TV commercial for Certs mints that went something like this, “It’s two, [...]

It’s Poop Week on 10,000 Birds and Sewage, though far from glorious, is great fertilizer. And the water treatment facilities built to support them are kept wet throughout the year, even in the blistering heat of summer in Cyprus. Or at least that’s why I think that the Larnaca Sewage Works is a great location [...]

Mark Carter is an independent professional birding guide and wildlife surveyor living in Alice Springs, Central Australia. Originally from Scotland, Mark has lived and worked in continental Europe and North Africa before settling in Australia’s “Red Centre” to work for the Northern Territory Parks Service. In 2008 Mark founded the annual Red Centre Bird Week [...]

not compatible with the aspiration for an outstanding urban waterfront The city of Newcastle is England’s most northerly, perhaps most famous for not winning very much at football for many years as well as being a big weekend party destination for the young (and those that are still fooling themselves they are).  In recent years [...]

. “Poo Ponds” are normal here, but what happens everywhere else? Do you all help out the birds when you go to the toilet? Clare M, in a recent mail to all the beat writers   Yes, it is true. This, above, and of course Clare M’s fine original post about her poo ponds (not [...]

Birds evacuate waste in many ways. It doesn’t all go out the rear end, some of it comes through the front end and these are known as pellets. It’s not fecal material, but parts that are not digestible like fur, bones and the exoskeletons of insects.  Birds will barf them back up out of their [...]

I don’t know how many of you ever raised chickens but the old joke went something like this.   Question: “Hey, do you know what that white stuff is on the top of the chicken shit?”  Answer: “Nope.”  Reply: “That’s chicken shit too!” Well, as it turns out, it’s really uric acid (the white part of the [...]

There is a very distinctive smell found on seabird colonies, where thousands upon thousands of birds come to breed and, coincidentally, deposit large quantities of waste. It is a smell, however, that I am barely able to smell anymore, as three years of working breeding seasons on seabird islands of the Farallones in California have [...]

In this post, I shall elaborate on what bird poop is. I’ll stick to the basics and keep it simple, because all I know are the simple basics. However, I will still include typical scientific poop slang, words like excretion, defecation, feces and the like. So here’s a fair warning: if this isn’t your thing [...]

  or, How bird poop can get you a degree in Homeopathy. As a teenager, my uncle bought me a t-shirt with a bird poop ID system printed on the front. 20 bird poop splats and their respective names. Essentially a quick-guide to bird poop identification. Amazing what you find at flea markets. Anyhow, whenever [...]

If you have birded for any length of time you know the nightmare scenario.  You are far from any kind of facility where you might take advantage of modern, or even primitive, plumbing.  Your stomach is doing backflips and twists and making all kinds of disturbing gurgling noises.  You try to hold out, walking with [...]

It’s Poop Week on 10,000 Birds so this quiz is definitely poop-related.  I am a happy soul. If you’ve read my quizzes before, you know better than to expect from me an easy quiz with clues like these: “What’s white and smelly and you’ve seen a million birds expel some and it’s dropped on your [...]

I first met Paul Guris, owner of See Life Paulagics, fittingly enough, on a pelagic trip out of Freeport, New York in February of 2006.  It was my first pelagic trip, we nearly swept the east coast alcids, we saw a Western Gull, and I had a great time.  Paul is a great trip leader, [...]

    This is all you usually see of a shitepoke. They’re shy.   My father had stories he’d tell, time and time again, and one of them was from his one-room schoolhouse when he was a farm boy in Iowa. The teacher asked the kids to make a list of all the birds they [...]

Australia is a dry continent and as such all bird-life needs to take advantage of any fresh water that is available. During wet years the bird-life has the incredible adaptability to find fresh water lakes in the middle of the continent. There are many theories on how they can possibly know that a natural rain [...]

As the children’s book says, everyone poops.  People poop.  Birds poop.  People who look at birds poop – sometimes from the excitement of looking at a bird, or so I have been told.  Pooping is a simple fact of life and we here at 10,000 Birds are not going to let any topic – no [...]

Poop Week will start tomorrow and run through next Saturday.  Are you prepared for the classiest week in bird blogging history?