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This quiz might have been too hard.  My father even mentioned that he agreed with Jack, the first guesser in this near-impossible-to-answer quiz when Jack typed “The challenge here is not to ID the first bird, but to find it!”  So those who guessed incorrectly should feel good despite their wrongness that they managed to […]

I’m going to pretend for a bit that the identification of drably-plumaged, migrating fall warblers moving through treetops, hiding behind leaves, and using the sun against the birder isn’t hard enough.  You know, because finding and identifying warblers with sometimes-cryptic field marks while trying to avoid the pain of warbler neck is simply too easy.  […]

We regularly sweep clean our main 10,000 Birds Clinic page and compile the questions and answers into a handy, bite-sized “round-up” which we archive online (you never know when then these things might come in useful after all…).

Please feel free to add additional comments to the published answers - we’re all on the same learning […]

The jammy finger has made a mess of my laptop screen for the final time (I hope) and the winner of the fully-loaded iPod in the ten-letter anagram “what bird does this make?” part of our “Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America” GREAT give-away is….(drum roll)…

Debra Ross (and family). Congratulations, enjoy your […]

That’s too bad for me, because I can’t - but for the next twelve hours YOU still can win an iPod in the last half-day of our GREAT “Smithsonian Field Guide” give-away competition (thanks again to our generous chums at HarperCollins). How?

Work out the URLs that have made up the answers to the “GREAT give-way” […]

We’ve had a fantastic response to our latest give-away competition, and the emails have been pouring in. Sadly, though, a few cynical readers/visitors have hinted in those emails that they think that things are not all - well - ‘above aboard’, that we may have ever so slightly ‘bent the truth’ in the way that […]

A few weeks ago I posted a very enthusiastic review of the new “Smithsonian Guide to the Birds of North America” published by HarperCollins, calling it ‘genuinely excellent’ and loads of other really nice things (the full review’s right here if you missed it), and - almost casually - mentioned that HarperCollins had offered us […]

10,000 Birds Clinic round-up #1: 19 April - 26 April

Every week we sweep clean our main 10,000 Birds Clinic page and compile the questions and answers into a handy, bite-sized “round-up”.

Please feel free to add additional comments to the published answers - we’re all on the same learning curve round here - and if you’ve […]

On a weekend that is, at least around here, cold, gray, and dreary, it’s entirely possible that not everyone is exercising their avian observation muscles to the fullest. Here’s a waterfowl workout for you weekend warriors… aficionados from either side of the Atlantic can and should play along:

Easy, right? I’m sure you don’t need it, […]

There really are some wonderfully-named birds out there - but how many of those twenty would you find in a bird book and how many were made up by a blogger stuck in a traffic queue?
 

Blue-winged Leafbird. Yes, it’s real. Leafbirds are found from India across south-east Asia to China, and are a beautiful group […]

I’ve just spent a rather interesting morning wandering round the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge in Philly (a trip report is coming soon) before working a flight back home to the UK in the early evening. Under cloudless skies (after a somewhat foggy start) I’d found some great birds, including such Nearctic beauties as Parula Warbler, […]

With the thoughts of birders all over the northern hemisphere turning to migrant shorebirds, I thought I’d post a photo I took a few years ago of a shorebird that really got me stumped for a while. Once you know what it is the identification becomes very obvious (like one of those trompe d’oeil paintings […]