May 2012

Digiscoping Flying Buzzards

Thumbnail image for Digiscoping Flying Buzzards by DaleForbes 27 May 2012

Digiscoping flying birds is not exactly the easiest of things, but it has an appeal for a good deal of digiscopers. Having spent time trying to take digiscoped photos of birds in the heat of the day at massive distances, most people slowly come to the realisation that one has to get really close to [...]

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Jamaica’s Endemic Birds Part 5

Thumbnail image for Jamaica’s Endemic Birds Part 5 by Rich Hoyer 23 May 2012

These final six endemic species of Jamaica fall at the end of the taxonomic order of birds (as listed by the American Ornithologists’ Union) and all but the last are part of the group known as the “nine-primaried oscines.” At one time they were even placed in the single giant family Emberizidae, but current practice [...]

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Friendly Feathers

Thumbnail image for Friendly Feathers by Alex Vargas 21 May 2012

Every winter season (November – April) we get the colorful visit of many nice birds in Thailand, but none as friendly and showy as the Mugimaki Flycatcher and the White-throated Rock-Thrush in Khao Yai. I was very exited the first time I saw and got some lousy images of a White-throated Rock-Thrush in 2007. Then, [...]

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Jamaica’s Endemic Birds Part 4

White-chinned Thrush by Rich Hoyer 15 May 2012

This week I’ll discuss another five bird species endemic to Jamaica, the first half of the oscine passerines. Also called songbirds, these more “advanced” passerines don’t all actually have nice songs, though when analyzed, their voices are usually quite a bit more complex than those of subsocines. On Jamaica, however, some of these have wonderfully [...]

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World Series of Birding Movie

Thumbnail image for World Series of Birding Movie by Gunnar 12 May 2012

I have arrived at Cape May after a lovely week at the Biggest Week of American Birding.  Many lifers, both birds and birders. Lifers were Greg Miller, Kenn and Kim Kaufman, Dawn Fine, Linda Rockwell, Doug Gochfield, Birdchick, Mark Beaman, Adrian Binns, Mike Watson, Lena Samsonaenko, Nemesis birders, etc.  Also several year ticks such as Jeff [...]

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Biggest Week alerts to your cellphone

Thumbnail image for Biggest Week alerts to your cellphone by Gunnar 7 May 2012

There is a new service called If This Than That which basically creates RSS feeds for different internet services and which works like a charm for Twitter hashtag alerts sent as SMS to your cell phone. Learn how to use it!

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Jamaica’s Endemic Birds Part 3

Thumbnail image for Jamaica’s Endemic Birds Part 3 by Rich Hoyer 4 May 2012

The next five Jamaican endemics I’ll talk about are all suboscine passerines. I’m a compulsive categorizer of everything, and it is so gratifying to know how birds sort themselves out into families and orders, if not so cleanly into species. So if you’re not familiar with the concept of “suboscine passerine,” a very quick lesson [...]

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Spring mania

Thumbnail image for Spring mania by YoavPerlman 2 May 2012

Yoav Perlman shares his exciting spring migration experiences from southern Israel Israel is world-famous for the huge volume and variety of migration, as entire populations flying between Eurasia and Africe funnel through the country twice a year. This amazing phenomenon is what makes Israel so great for birding, and as a young birder I grew up [...]

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