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African Spoonbills

By Charlie • March 15, 2009 • 3 comments

The world’s six species of Spoonbills are all large, long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, which also includes the Ibises. All have large, flat, spatulate bills as adults (young birds are born without the ’spoon’ and more closely resemble ibises until their bill grows) and feed by wading through shallow water, sweeping the partly-opened [...]

Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary, southern India. 04 Dec 2008

By Charlie • December 12, 2008 • 13 comments

Vedanthangal (pronounced Ved-uhn-tangle) Bird Sanctuary is about 85km south-west of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, southern India (which sounds all sounds very exotic don’t you think?), and is centred around a 30ha ‘tank‘, an artificial lake used for crop irrigation, that is visited by tens of thousands of breeding waterbirds in late-winter.

It’s actually India’s [...]

Asides

The Birder’s Report becomes a Species Champion

Excellent news from Larry Jordan, the force behind The Birder’s Report: he’s joined BirdLife’s ‘Preventing Extinctions Programme’ as a Species Champion. The PEP focusses on saving the 192 most threatened birds on the planet, and with supporters with the conservation creds of someone like Larry perhaps it will become far better known in North America than currently. Let’s hope so - and who’ll be next to join I wonder?

First Bird of 2010

What was your first bird of 2010? Let us know in the comments…and, if you wrote a blog post or have a picture of your first bird of the year online somewhere, well, leave a link in the comments too.
Happy New Year from all three of us at 10,000 Birds! And here’s hoping you see many great birds, including lots of lifers, in 2010!

‘Mermaids’ battered by boats

“Each year, about 87 manatees are killed by collisions with boats, the single greatest cause of premature mortalities. This is more than seven times number of manatees that the Fish and Wildlife Service estimates can be killed without impairing the species’ recovery. Meanwhile, boating in Florida is at an all-time high and increasing with more boats in the water…”. Another good example of why the International Year of Biodiversity ought to matter.

Residents Crying Foul…

…over Common Peafowl. Seems that Longboat Key, Florida, has way too many of the gorgeous gregarious birds and has to continually cull the flock. And Longboat Key isn’t the only community in the U.S. with a peafowl problem: apparently California and Texas locations have had issues as well. So introducing non-native birds because they are pretty might not be the best idea? Who would’ve thunk it?