10,000 Birds

Bird Names, Geography, and Reality

Kai Pflug — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Christopher Columbus and his distorted sense of geography, Native Americans came to be known as Indians. A few bird species share a similar fate. The Turkey is a bird native to North America.The excuse: Its English name likely came through confusion with guineafowl and Turkey-linked trade. The Muscovy Duck is native to the Americas, not Muscovy.The excuse: Muscovy may be a corruption of “musk.” For the Far Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis), the scientific name points to Madagascar.The excuse: This is reportedly an error for Macassar (Makassar), Sulawesi. The Bohemian Waxwing is the wild card: the name may refer to a supposed Bohemian origin—or to the bird’s wandering habits. For the sake of this post, let’s call it another mistake. Thank you. Photo: Bohemian Waxwing

Three Photos: Camouflage

Kai Pflug — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Photos of Oriental Scops Owl taken by Kai Pflug at Nanhui, Shanghai on Oct 02…

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Finally, Summer is Over

Peter — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:00:03 +0000

Surely the most horrible season: summer. Birds are moulting and quiet, pre-dawn rising is at 3:00 hrs and there are ticks and biting insects everywhere. And then add the minor issues of glaciers melting, trees dying and major rivers not having enough water to float a ship. Thankfully, in the northern hemisphere it seems to be over now. While walking my dog, I realised Mother Nature had dumped a lot of European Robin and Great Tit on my local park. This could only mean one thing: migration had started in earnest and whatever I had planned for Friday morning was now much lower priority (who needs a coronary bypass when birds are around?). I needed to get to the coast and check out the Kapittelduinen before the wind would turn north and send all the birds to warmer climes. Marvelous it was: less than 10 minutes out of the metro and I had already seen or heard Meadow Pipit, Hawfinch, Greenfinch, Chaffinch and Woodlark. Large swarms of Starlings flew over the dunes, followed by Eurasian Siskin (picture by Kai) and Common Linnet. A few Eurasian Goldfinch popped up in the shrubs and thus I had seen a full suite of finches within the hour. I crossed the dunes onto the beach and checked out a group of gulls. Backlit by the lovely industrial landscape of the Europoort, I spotted Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull of various ages and some Black-headed Gull flying over. Common Ringed Plover kept their distance, both from me and the gulls. I walked a few steps towards them to get a better picture but they immediately ran away. No surpise as we learned recently on this very website. You will have to settle for the header picture’s quality since I didn’t bring a competent photographer with me. A juvenile gull was checking out the recycling bin for edible morsels or PET bottles with unclaimed deposits. Walking back into the dunes and towards the station, a Tree Pipit and a pair of Skylarks bid me farewell. What these birds lack in colour they do make up in manners. Such nice birds, and a fitting end to a well-spent Friday morning with a grand total of 33 species in 90 minutes.

Saving a New Zealand Icon

Duncan — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

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. This weekend we made an escape to the Waiarapa, the wine region nearest to Wellington. The purpose of the trip was nothing to do with birds, it was to get some badly needed rest and relaxation. The resort we stayed at was close to Mt Bruce, however, so on Sunday we popped over before heading back to Wellington. Mt Bruce, since you ask, is the Department of Conservation’s premier endangered bird breeding centre. The centre now encompasses native bush into which some of these endangered species have been released. (It also sounds like the area was discovered by Australian explorers. “I’m going to name this area Mount Bruce, and over here I’m going to call this Mount Sheila”) A Kaka at Mt Bruce The refuge was lovely, as usual. Long-finned Eels swam in the rivers, and in their pens the breeding Blue Ducks where whistling away. But the highlight of the visit was visiting the Kiwi House. Kiwi, as I have vouchsafed on this website before, acn be quite hard to see in the wild, and in fact the first kiwi I ever saw, before I ever one in the wild. And on this visit, we were there in time to see feeding for the kiwi chicks the centre was raising. Interestingly, however, the chicks, while hatched at the centre, were not bred there. So what was going on? North Island Brown Kiwi chick It goes like this. Kiwi, New Zealand icons par excellence, are rather endangered. The suite of predators introduced to New Zealand, on the whole, can’t do to much damage to adult kiwi. The stoats, weasels, rats and the like, are unable to kill the big guys but can make short work of the chicks. Kiwi chicks are rather unusual in that they have no period of parental care; having been incubated for two to three months, they are on their own once they have hatched. So much so that only 5% of chicks that hatch reach adulthood, which is a terrifyingly low number for such a slow breeding bird. To deal with this peril to one of New Zealand’s most important birds (or family of birds, there are five species of kiwi), one bank has been spearheading a campaign to save those chicks. BNZ has been running the Kiwis for Kiwi (I’ve spoken before about how New Zealanders are known as kiwis), a programme that collects the eggs of kiwi from the wild just before they hatch, hatch them in captivity, then raise the chicks until they are large enough to fend for themselves (amongst other projects). And it was one of these very young chicks, a little North Island Brown Kiwi, that we saw at Mt Bruce. A friend of mine, before she moved to New Zealand, thought that kiwi would be the size of kiwi fruit, a lemon sized speciality of the area. They aren’t, to her disappointment, but I’ll be sure to direct her towards kiwi chicks, which are utterly adorable. I’d recommend any visitor to New Zealand check out a kiwi house raising kiwi chicks, even if they plan to see kiwi in the wild, as they are worth a look even if they don’t “count” in a ticking sense. Birding isn’t about ticking, and these little guys being saved from extinction are a better sight than a hundred wild birds.

Cabranosa’s autumn delights

David T — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:59:00 +0000

Monte da Cabranosa sounds rather more impressive than it really is. It’s a low, pine-clad hill, just a short distance away from Cabo São Vincente, the south-western most point on the European mainland. In the autumn migrating raptors tend to be funnelled towards the Cape (Cabo), due to the rising coastal plateau and the main coastal valleys. When they get to the Cape they invariably turn back…

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Species Spotlight: Light-vented Bulbul

Kai Pflug — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The Light-vented Bulbul is ubiquitous in Shanghai. I once used its characteristic call as the ringtone for my mobile phone but had to abandon this idea as it was simply too confusing to decide whether I received a call or just heard a bird. (Masochistic sidenote: Not sure if the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has a characteristic call and whether it has ever been recorded, but its use as a ringtone should limit confusion considerably). The HBW sounds almost a bit negative about the species: One of the commonest birds in S China, especially in cultivated and settled areas; abundant in many regions … Being commensal with man, this species requires no conservation action; it is favoured by deforestation and tolerant of highly degraded habitats. For this reason, its range is spreading. I guess they like their birds to be a bit more obscure. Bulbuls craving the attention of ornithologists better choose university campuses as habitat – for example, the campus of Hainan Normal University in Haikou. Some individuals which used this approach successfully are featured in a recent paper describing their novel behaviors. One involves climbing up trees in the manner of a woodpecker, searching for insects. The other describes foraging for insects, aggregating under artificial light at night. The researchers describe both behaviors as examples of birds adapting to urban environments – though frankly, I do not quite see how the first one fits that description (trees are not a highly characteristic feature of urban compared to non-urban environments). A better example is that, apparently, the nesting material used by Light-vented Bulbuls depends on the type of land they used as habitat. The proportion of anthropogenic materials such as plastics, paper pieces, cloth pieces, nylon particles, and threads increased significantly in more urban habitats. The researchers take a massive leap of faith speculating that this is due to an increase in the availability of anthropogenic nesting materials toward the urban core. Better access to a greater variety of nest-building materials is not the only advantage of city life for the bulbuls. Yet another study found that more urbanized habitat was linked with earlier nesting, increased frequency of feeding the chicks, and less predation. What’s not to like? My guess is that it is young urban Chinese who are particularly attracted to bulbuls. To my surprise, the Chinese translation of an old post of mine on bulbuls has received a large number of views on Chinese social media. Apparently, quite a few young Chinese, to some extent, identify themselves with bulbuls. With the help of ChatGPT, I figured out why: The Chinese word for pessimist, beiguan zhuyizhe, starts with the same sound (but not the same character) as the Chinese word bei for bulbul. So when Chinese people call themselves beiguan zhuyizhe (with the bulbul bei), they are identifying with the bird and with pessimism. Which thus is both a pun and an expression of a weary or downbeat mood through a cute bird identity.

The Favorite Birds of Our Profiled Bird Guides

Editor — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

In our series on bird guides, so far, 131 profiles have been published. To start the interview, we asked each of them the same question: What is your favorite bird species? Not surprisingly, given that our bird guides are from 50 different countries, there was very little overlap in the answers. A total of 128 species were mentioned, but only six species were mentioned more than once. And more than once just means they were mentioned twice: Bee Hummingbird Cuban Tody Doherty’s Bushshrike Pel’s Fishing Owl Resplendent Quetzal Shoebill If I were in a better mood, I would now explain how this little overlap demonstrates the amazing and fascinating variety of the avian world. Instead, I will just give you the names of species that were mentioned just once: African Crowned Eagle; Alpine Swift; American Flamingo; Andean Condor; Andean Cock-of-the-rock; Bar-bellied Pitta; Barred Buttonquail; Bay-breasted Cuckoo; Bengal Florican; Bicolored Antpitta; Black-and-white Monjita; Black-bellied Seedcracker; Black-billed Capercaillie; Black-capped Kingfisher; Black-throated Tit; Black-backed Grosbeak; Blue-headed Quail-Dove; Bornean Banded Pitta; Bornean Bristlehead; Bugun Liocichla; Chaco Owl; Chestnut-headed Partridge; Chinese Monal; Cinereous Vulture; Cock-tailed Tyrant; Common Raven; Crested Tit-warbler; Ceylon Bay Owl; Drakensberg Rockjumper; Egyptian Nightjar; Egyptian Plover; Esmeraldas Woodstar; European Honey-buzzard; Eurasian Bullfinch; Eurasian Roller; Fire-tailed Myzornis; Florida Scrub-Jay; Florida Crested Caracara; Glistening-green Tanager; Golden Eagle; Gorgeous Bushshrike; Great Blue Turaco; Great Gray Owl; Great Hornbill; Great Philippine Eagle; Green-breasted Pitta; Green-bearded Helmetcrest; Green-tailed Towhee; Gray Hawk; Gray-throated Chat; Grey-crowned Crane; Hooded Siskin; Hoopoe; Iberian Imperial Eagle; Indigo Flycatcher; Ivory-breasted Pitta; Kirtland’s Warbler; Lear’s Macaw; Loggerhead Shrike; Magellanic Woodpecker; Maroon-fronted Parrot; Marvelous Spatuletail; Mountain Tailorbird; Multicolored Tanager; Nile Valley Sunbird; Narina Trogon; Oahu Elepaio; Orange-breasted Green-Pigeon; Orange-breasted Laughingthrush; Oriental Scops Owl; Ornate Hawk-Eagle; Pennant-winged Nightjar; Peregrine Falcon; Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan; Red-and-yellow Barbet; Red-billed Firefinch; Red-billed Tropicbird; Red Bird-of-Paradise; Red-cockaded Woodpecker; Red-ruffed Fruitcrow; Red Warbler; Red-backed Shrike; Reeve’s Pheasant; Ring Ouzel; Rockrunner; Rufous-tailed Jacamar; Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo; Sarus Crane; Scaly-breasted Illadopsis; Secretarybird; Semi-collared Flycatcher; Sword-billed Hummingbird; Spotted Palm Thrush; Spoon-billed Sandpiper; Sri Lanka Frogmouth; Sri Lanka Green-Pigeon; Straw-headed Bulbul; Sulawesi Dwarf Kingfisher; Sumatran Ground-Cuckoo; Swallow-tailed Kite; Syrian Woodpecker; Tamarugo Conebill; Three-banded Courser; Three-toed Woodpecker; Uirapuru; Ward’s Trogon; White-crested Laughingthrush; White-tailed Cisticola; White-tailed Kite; White Wagtail; White-winged Duck; White-browed Tit Warbler; Whitehead’s Trogon; White-backed Woodpecker; Western Tanager; Whooping Crane; Yellow-eared Parrot; Yellow-headed Picathartes; Yellow-shouldered Amazon Parrot; Yellow-throated Toucan; Yucatán Jay; Zapata Wren.

Demotivational Posters for Birds (LI)

Kai Pflug — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Occasionally, chicks visit our editorial offices and ask why our posters paint such a negative picture of bird life. We have noticed that adult birds never ask us the same question. We therefore see no reason to revise our editorial policy.

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