Recent content by Lerxst

I am currently at 206. We dipped on some notable families of the Eastern Hemisphere when we used to live in Asia, so we will be going back. The family goal is taking a backseat to first getting to about 5,400 lifer - enough to claim with confidence that I have seen the majority of species.

Awesome. I love this approach. Last autumn I did a biridng marathon on my own - it really was a marathon, I forced myself to walk 26.2 miles while birding in one day. It was debilitating and I swore I'd never do something that dumb again but I am already thinking about doing it during spring...

I already did! I'm Michael H. I've been trying to get your site some attention via Instagram too, although I am new there.

Thanks for sharing this here, Oz. Your website has some fantastic images and is really well organized.

We exhausted our luck, getting in and out of Brazil last month ago before the new rules were enacted. So it will be domestic travel for us for a while. Some distant relative has a wedding in May in Washington state that we are expected to be at; this means at least tacking on a road trip for...

There was a thread started by Mysticete back in the summer that is related, here. That dealt with the appalling attack on th MBTA by the Trump administration. I wanted to start a new thread to call attention to an opportunity we now have to help rectify things - for those people, like me, that...

As indicated, I agree with the "widely accepted' argument here, and that they should in this case leave it be. But in a perfect (better?) world, shouldn't we aim for clarity and consistency in our descriptions and naming? There are, in the Clement's taxonomy, four "bald" species. And just like...

Another irony here is that, in appealing to the dictionary for evidence of "bald" meaning "white"... from Merriam-Webster: 1a: lacking a natural or usual covering (as of hair, vegetation, or nap) his bald head Both men were bald. a bald hill bald trees The rug was bald with wear. b: having...

Baldpate is a lovely, ironic example here since the bird did get a name change, and ended up inheriting the term "American." I was going to bring this up, as just a few weeks ago I was given an old 1958 Peterson field guide and saw the bird was described with the old name. I'd heard the term...

BTW I am not in favor of actually changing the name, as I think it is so well-established. However I think it is always fair to point out badly-named species, and this one certainly qualifies.

But "America" isn't a country. It refers to two continents; that is certainly the view of most people I have spoken to in Latin America - all of whom consider themselves "American." So I think a better name would be "North American Eagle" as that correctly identifies the range of the bird. No...

My wife and I had the pleasure of birding with the author of this article last spring. We met up with him purely by chance at Sax-Zim Bog in northern MN, during our last gasp effort to end our 20-plus-years-Nemesis-Bird-Horrorshow, known to others as the LeConte's Sparrow. With Bruce we did...

Great to see you here!

From Asa Wright, they also took us one day out to Yerette: https://www.yerettett.com/story - this is a small sanctuary in the back yard of a fellow that is a bona fide hummingbird aficionado. No lodging there, but can accomodate a pretty large group for a few hours. Hopefully with the lower...

This is terrible news. We birded for a week or so in T & T back in 2014 and spent 4 or 5 days at Asa Wright. While it was older and less swanky than some other eco-lodges, we still consider it the gold standard by which we compare all others. They had an immense covered deck with many feeders...