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The Roseate Spoonbill lives up to its name, spectacularly. The bird is, after all, roseate, and, not only that, but it has a big honking circle on the end of its bill that sure looks like a spoon. Platalea ajaja is a marvelous bird and I was delighted to make its acquaintance - for only the second time in [...]

The air was thick and clammy, and mosquitoes were biting along Louisiana’s Mermentau River last Thursday morning, the final day of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. A lone Black-bellied Plover quietly worked the flats amid hundreds of other shorebirds. Black-bellied (Grey) Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, in California CC-BY Alan Vernon Remarkable birds, Black-bellied Plovers, winter refugees [...]

For many birders a highlight of birding the southeastern United States, maybe even the definitive birding experience of the region, is taking in the great numbers and diversity of long-legged wading birds.  The epicenter of large, charismatic, and often photogenic, fish-eating birds is in Florida, at places like Everglades National Park and Ding Darling National Wildlife [...]

After admiring the gannets of Cape Kidnappers and the wine of Hawke’s Bay Nicole and I took a few days to reach the next destination of interest, the Coromandel Peninsula. This chuck of land lies between New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, and the Bay of Plenty, and is a popular tourism destination due to its [...]