A first-winter Red-breasted Goose at Cley, North Norfolk As a general rule, geese are birds of subtle, even dull, plumage. All the so-called grey geese – Greylag, Bean, White-front, Lesser White-front, Swan – look very much alike, and it takes experience to identify them by their calls and their shape and size. The black geese […]
In his book Tales of a Tribe, author Mark Cocker describes an unfortunate event befalling a friend. One night while camping in the Himalayas, the birding friend hears a Satyr Tragopan calling. He leaves the camp to look for the bird, and has never been seen again. Non-birders will ask: what has happened, did they […]
John Whitehead (1860-1899) was a British explorer who once a year starting in 1885 tried to climb Mount Kinabalu and finally succeeded in 1888, the first person to do so. When not climbing, he collected species, and thus a number of birds are named after him. Three of them can be found on Mount Kinabalu, […]
The word “endemic” has always seemed rather vague to me. Oxford Languages offers this definition: 2. (of a plant or animal) native and restricted to a certain place. When a birder uses the word, we usually refer to a species that canbe mostly or exclusively found in a single country. Which means that the large […]
While I have visited a few birding sites around the Netherlands during the course of my Bachelor studies, I did not go birding a lot around the city where I lived, Maastricht. This makes sense as the area is not that interesting for birding, but I also was not aware of some of the opportunities […]
The Varied Tit is a rare species in Shanghai – this was the first time I ever saw one, even though it is relatively common further North in China. Shanghaibirding reports that the species was seen in Shanghai in 2012, so it is not the first time but still a rare event for Shanghai birders. […]
Memorable encounters with Mammals: Part I Most birdwatchers enjoy seeing mammals, but the trouble with mammals is that they tend to be much more challenging to see than birds. Only in Africa is it really easy to see a big variety. I remember the guide on my first Kenyan birding safari remarking that “birding groups […]
Last week, David Tomlinson wrote about the excitement of that first birding outing for the year, when every bird is new again. One always wants to see as many species as possible in a single day, whether on an ocean island with few species, or in Suffolk, England. It was in this latter region that […]
I promise that this is the third and last in a series of posts covering a recent trip to Afghanistan. As the previous two posts, it is light on birds and birding (basically only at the very beginning of this post). It contains a lot of non-bird photos of this area and ends with some […]
Work brings me regularly to Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, northern Mexico. Monterrey is a big industrial city, with industrious people. It is a special city because the surrounding Parque Nacional Cumbres de Monterrey redeems the city’s many environmental sins. The city proper is butt ugly, but if you are like me or MC Hammer, that […]
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