This is the first part in a series of blog posts about the Champions of the Flyway event. A staggering 2,500,000 birds are illegally hunted, trapped and killed on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus each year. Birders from all over the globe are coming together to make a difference during Champions of the […]
Read MoreArchive for March, 2015
Wood Stork Feeding Strategy
This past January I had the privilege of joining Jeff Bouton, Raymond VanBuskirk, and Rafael Galvez at the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival in Titusville, Florida. For this Coloradan the change in climate was welcomed, but even more awesome for me was the chance to spend quality time with birds I […]
Read MoreBirth of a Birder
How do you get a five-year-old interested in birds? Tell him the scientific name of American Robin. Hilarity will ensue. I promise. Earlier this year I took a trip east to visit my brother and his family. My nephews Freddy and Benny are eight and five. Since we live across the country […]
Read MoreOut of Albuquerque: The New Face of Leica Birding
With well over 100 hundred years of providing the world with the best optical equipment it’s probably safe to assume that Leica also takes care to hire only the best of the best to represent the company in the global marketplace; birding is serious business after all. Last year when […]
Read MoreRich Hearn: Tracking the Spoon-billed Sandpiper
Rich heads up WWT’s species monitoring team and chairs the Wetlands International/IUCN-SSC Duck Specialist Group. He joined WWT in 1995 after taking part in an expedition to Argentina to look for Brazilian mergansers. He has since taken part in waterbird surveys and research and helped set up monitoring programmes all […]
Read MoreSpring Has Sprung
The thought of spring may seem like a fairy tale for those in the Northern US buried under record amounts of February and March snowfalls, but here in sunny Florida, spring has definitely sprung and believe it or not, it’s coming your way! The first migrants to return to Florida each „spring“ are the Purple […]
Read MoreMonitoring Migrations in Israel
Hello from sunny Eilat, Israel! I’m out here this spring taking part in the intensive bird monitoring efforts put on by the Israeli Ornithological Center, and the International Birding and Research Center, Eilat. I’m participating in the survey side of things, rather than the banding (ringing for all of our […]
Read MoreChampions of the Flyway 2015
The Mediterranean is a danger zone for millions of migratory birds that pass the region on their travels to and from Africa — twice every year. Malta is an infamous example of the hazards these birds face by hunters and poachers, but the island of Cyprus is a hotspot for […]
Read MoreColorful or Cryptic?
From California to Mexico, Leica team member Steve Howell has recently been contemplating the beauty and plumage patterns of some ‘colorful’ birds… We all know about nightjars and bitterns having cryptic plumage, even green parrots in green trees. But some other species, when seen in a field guide, don’t seem […]
Read MoreNew: Leica Introduces the Ultravid HD-Plus 50 at IWA 2015
Yesterday marked the last day of IWA Outdoor Classics 2015 in Nuremburg, Germany. IWA is one of the world’s leading exhibitions for outdoor and hunting equipment in the world. Over the weekend, Leica Sport Optics introduced a range of new products for naturalists, the highlight being the Ultravid HD-Plus 50. With the […]
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