10000 Birds

This post is republished in our “From the Archives” series, featuring highlights of our vast back catalogue of more than 10,000 birding-related posts published over the last 15 years or so. Originally published on October 11, 2013. It required a bit of an ethical adjustment. Here I was, sitting patiently in a blind, watching a tethered European Starling on a string. When a ha...

Most birding trips to Namibia treat Windhoek as a place to pick up the rental car and move further afield. But Windhoek’s high elevation of about 1,700 metres asl and thornveld surroundings mean birding within city limits can be surprisingly rewarding. I recently spent a few days in the city between stints of human-elephant conflict research that I was conducting in the north...

By Faisal Rehman Faisal is a backyard bird-feeding enthusiast from Pakistan who writes practical bird-feeding guides at BirdFeedly. If you picture backyard birding, you probably picture a tube feeder, black-oil sunflower seeds, and a chickadee. My backyard looks nothing like that, and that is exactly why I love it. I live in Pakistan, in a town where the streets are narrow…

“Experiencing nature-fueled joy in our everyday lives may be the surest hope we have of fostering peace with other species”. Priyanka Kumar I recently read an advanced copy of, The Grassland Queen, An Avian Love Story in the American Plains by Priyanka Kumar. I was familiar with Ms. Kumar’s previous work, Conversations with Birds and was excited to learn of her next offering....

If you want to provoke an argument among birders, simply mention the word cat. One of my regular birding companions is a cat lover who dislikes dogs. In contrast, I have always had dogs, and do not share his enthusiasm for felines. We agree on most things, but we never discuss cats. Some years ago I wrote the following article for the newsletter of my local wildlife group.