You are browsing the archives of 2006 March.

While the title of To See Every Bird on Earth by author Dan Koeppel may get fans of birding adventure narratives salivating, the book’s subtitle, A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime Obsession, hints at the human drama that carries this memoir beyond mere spotting and listing.
I really enjoyed this book. Koeppel’s memoir describes his [...]

Are you as excited as I am? The host of I and the Bird #20 is none other than Nuthatch, the pseudonymous blogger at   Bootstrap Analysis. Nuthatch is, hands-down, one of my favorite web writers, so in place of a long prelude, I’m just going to link to her bird.icio.us edition and get out of [...]

 
Hooded Crows Corvus cornix
North-east Germany, March 2006

Long regarded as a sub-species of the Carrion Crow Corvus corone, the BOU Records Committee took the decision in 2002 to treat the Hooded Crow as a separate species (though, oddly, this split is not yet recognised in conservation listings where population statuses and trends would normally be observed). [...]

Specialization may be the trend in business, science, and academia, but birds who wish to succeed in tomorrow’s demanding environment should not specialize, but generalize. In this era of increasing urban sprawl and habitat fragmentation, birds with fewer specific environmental requirements are far more successful than birds with many. That means the birds that we [...]

What a conundrum… can we, as environmentalists, support wind power as a clean, safe, eminently renewable energy source or should we, as birders, decry its dangers to migratory birds? Actually, we can do both, but only if we get our collective act together to address the very real opportunities and threats posed by wind turbines.
Wind [...]

Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, 15 March 2006

After sheltering from the rain in Newark a few days ago, I woke up in Chicago on a beautiful, cloudless day - glorious! The night before I’d met up with my second US blogger in three days, the extremely sharp-witted and well-informed Ken of Birding is not a [...]

Reports of the first Eastern Phoebes of spring have been popping up all over New York and this weekend, I decided I was going to find mine. Now that the bird watching balance is tipping back from the water to the woods, it was high time to renew my acquaintance with one of my favorite [...]

North-east Germany (with Jochen Roeder)
26 March 2006
 

St Mary’s Church/Marienkirche, Stralsund - built between 1383-1473
 
 
It maybe that only the best people read this blog, or it maybe that I’ve just had a good run of luck this month, but I was fortunate to spend a “mini-break” in north-east Germany birding with Jochen Roeder - a [...]

The federal government just announced its strategic, five-point plan to detect the invasion of H5N1 avian influenza on American soil, first and foremost our westernmost regions of Alaska, the Pacific Flyway, and Pacific Islands.  The multi-pronged surveillance for early detection of the virus in migratory birds (the USDA is supposed to identify and monitor domestic [...]

If you’ve made it through winter in the company of a bevy of backyard birds, you’ll appreciate this next observation on avian identification.
Seed-eaters are easier to identify than meat-eaters.
Like you and me, most birds appreciate a good meal. In fact, a significant portion of a bird’s daily activity is devoted to seeking and savoring sustenance. [...]