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Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY, April 2010 Everyone knows that New York City is an extremely expensive place to live.  If one is lucky enough to find a place that one likes one must often pay in rent per month what would easily be a mortgage payment in a more sane part of the [...]

“Purple Martins” first appeared in print in Carl Sandburg’s 1920 collection of poems, Smoke and Steel, published six years after he rose to prominence following the publication of some of his poems in the famed Poetry magazine.  Though one thinks automatically of Chicago when one thinks of Sandburg if one thinks of anything at all [...]

Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) nest in large colonies that may contain as many as 3,500 active gourd-shaped mud nests. They are currently heading south on their yearly migration to South America where they will winter, and during this migration, they can often be seen in large flocks with other swallows numbering in the hundreds or [...]

A type of birding experience that I greatly enjoy is one of those moments where I’ve come across a simply huge number of birds. It can be during migration, in an enormous nesting colony, or with a very gregarious species. As I mined my old birding photos, I recalled one such experience at the Palekhori-Kambi [...]

Part 3 The birder walks across the bridge. She’s not birding. She’s headed for the farmers’ market. She read that it’s supposed to rain, maybe thunder, any time now. That’s one of the reason’s she’s not birding. But she’s birding even when she’s not birding. Right now, while she’s not birding, it’s not raining. The [...]

The use of digital devices to attract birds is getting more and more attention. It’s been brewing on birding listservs for years. I wrote about it for WildBird Magazine a few years ago and recently David Sibley tackled it in his blog. However, it’s now getting the attention of mainstream media via this article in [...]

The national bird of Estonia is the Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica.  Of course, in Estonia the bird is not called Barn Swallow.  In Estonian the term is Suitsupääsukese which, when translated by Google, comes out as Smoke Swallow.*  According to a report by sixth-graders at the International School of Estonia Suitsupääsukese was chosen as the national bird [...]

Swallows are a sure sign of spring the world over. The famous swallows of San Juan Capistrano are Cliff Swallows, but for me, Tree Swallows signal both the end of winter in March and its new beginning around October.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe poem clearly perceived the connection between swallows and spring, which he memorialized in a poem [...]

Whenever I see Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) I know that Spring is upon us. I have witnessed small groups of these gorgeous aerial acrobats twice, from an excellent vantage point, engage in what seems to be a courtship or pair bonding display. Here you see, what appears to be an adult male clinging to a [...]

The famed swallows of Capistrano, Cliff Swallows that yearly return to the historic church in southern California, have chosen not to build their mud nests at the Mission San Juan Capistrano this year.  Instead, they chose a nearby country club.  Even among birds, apparently, there is no accounting for taste.

We here at 10,000 Birds love our Welcome Wednesday guest posts – partly (we admit) because it means that we don’t have to fire up our few remaining brain cells and write something ourselves, but mostly because readers send us some REALLY good posts and some REALLY good photos and we’re delighted to have the [...]

were found in Arkansas.  While conjoined twins would not be big news were they mammals, among birds conjoined twins, formed from a double-yolked egg, are a serious rarity.  The specimen (the birds did not survive) will be sent to the Smithsonian.

Being upstate is great.  Not only do I get to see my folks, swim in their pool, and enjoy the great outdoors, but I also get tips about the locations of cool birds.  But I really shouldn’t have needed a tip to know the location of the Cliff Swallows I’ve checked out a couple of [...]

I’ve always been an enormous fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I love everything they’ve done, but of their movies, I’m most enamored of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. What other comedy manages to lever its jokes off as proud and noble a straight-man as King Arthur himself (played by the late, great Graham [...]