January 2011

Stunning Agami Heron

The most beautiful of the Neotropical Herons. I got these stunning pictures from Rafael Cortes – a Mexican birder now based in Bogotá – Colombia. The pictures are taken by […]

The Evolution of Feathers

The closest living relatives of birds, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs are crocodilians. Although these scaly beasts obviously do not have feathers today, the discovery of the same gene in alligators that is involved in building feathers in birds suggests that perhaps their ancestors did, 250 million years ago, before the lineages diverged. So perhaps the question to ask, say some scientists, is not how birds got their feathers, but how alligators lost theirs.

Puffin Passion

One of the members of the Auk family,  Atlantic Puffin Fratercula arctica, is one of my all time favourite birds and probably the most photographed seabird in the world – […]

The Crazy Mix- Birds and People

I have had some interesting encounters in recent days. Some scary. Some wonderful. And they are all around observations in  the strange middle ground where humans and birds meet. The photo of feathers above was one such case. But just  for fun- can […]

Short-tailed Albatross breeds on US soil

Short-tailed Albatross back from the dead Although it is far too soon to say danger is over, the Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus has made a remarkable recovery. In 1949 it […]

Xeno-canto featured on Treehugger

The popular bird song data base has just been featured by TreeHugger – one of the most popular eco-sites in the world. Treehugger.com has over 300.000 unique visitors per day – 1000 times more than Birdingblogs. It will be a massive boast of traffic for xeno-canto.

Stunning bird photography.

Flying birds at 1/8000s. Roy Hancliff takes shots of birds at 1/8000s speed. It freezes the picture. Roy explains: When I take the shot its so quick I don’t see […]

What A Turdus!

I have just seen a new post ‘ A Tremendous Turdus’ uploaded today by Ian McKerchar on the Manchester birding website. This post is an account of the incredible sighting […]

Featured Bird Blogger of the Week

Dawn Fine presents this weeks birdblogger: Jerry Jourdan – who is not only a fantastic digiscoper. …but also generously share his best digiscoping tips in free tuturials. Jerry Jourdan’s birding adventures are illustrated with beautiful bird photos.

Feels so empty without Lee!

The Punkbirder are famous for (among many things) putting birding lyrics to popular songs. Remember, the Gyr Crakes video “Thou shalt always bird” we shared a couple of months ago. The […]

Interview with the Digiscoper of the Year 2010

The results for the Swarovski Digiscoper of the Year 2010 competition have just been announced: https://digiscoperoftheyear.com/ This year’s winner is the biologist Óscar J. González Hernández, of Salamanca in Spain, […]

The Fauna and the Fora

In this guest post, Greg Neise from North American Birding gives a break down of the benefits of using a forum for connecting with other birders – and how to use them.

Featured Bird Blogger of the Week

Howdee all, Hope you are all in a tropical environment and staying toasty warm. If you aren’t then I feel for you. As I type this, snow covers the ground […]