No one has seen and identified more birds than Kaestner, a retired US diplomat who aspires to become the first birder to spot 10,000 of the planet’s roughly 11,000 avian species. “It’s a species that eludes you after multiple attempts, especially if the bird was or should have been there,” Kaestner said. “If it’s a bird that drives you crazy, you can call it a nemesis bird,” Koeppel said. It became a very emotional moment.”Sometimes it’s something else about nemesis birds — how they can, with persistence, be overcome. Kaestner spent time this summer on the Indonesian island of Sumatra searching for several of its endemic species.

Source: The Telegraph September 11, 2023 07:26 UTC