You are browsing the archives of 2007 March.

Recent visitors may have noticed, or for the unobservant I’ll say SHOULD have noticed that I’ve made a few changes to the layout, particularly the sidebars. Though the alterations may seem primarily cosmetic, most of them are designed to improve usability.

The first and probably most obvious change is the removal of the dynamic 10,000 Birds […]

remove vines from the nest tree, and isolate its canopy from neighboring trees, says BirdLife International. Sounds like good advice!

It seems like everyone I know has gone back to school. Tom, the birder who has shown me more life birds than any other, is home from surveying school for his spring break and we went out looking for birds this morning before I had to go to work.
Birding with Tom is a pleasure. […]

My favorite online news source, Salon, tipped me to a grim tale from the depths of the blogosphere. It seems that Kathy Sierra, prominent tech blogger, co-creator of the Head First computer books and founder of the JavaRanch programmer site, has placed her blog on what may be permenant hiatus. She’s also afraid to leave […]

Momentarily sated by last week’s Texas birding bonanza, I undertook this week’s travels with neither binoculars nor camera. Carting all that gear through airport after airport grows tiresome. Of course, as soon as I landed in Chicago, I had reason to regret my decision, as my hotel lies directly across from the Chippewa Woods Forest […]

you’ll find Tangled Bank #76 over at Balanced Life a tasty treat indeed! You won’t actually get to enjoy any mangoes, but there’s plenty of science to satisfy your appetite.

Female/immature Amur Falcons Falco amurensis
South Africa, March 2007

Closely related to the European Red-footed Falcon Falco vespertinus, the beautiful and agile Amur Falcon breeds in northern Asia and Siberia and winters in southern Africa. After breeding Amurs undertake what is probably the longest regular overwater passage of any raptor when they cross the Indian Ocean […]

Faansie Peacock (Self-published, 2006)

Writing a review of a book which is entirely dedicated to the pipits of southern Africa might at first glance seem obscure, like an act of one-upmanship that says to the majority of mainly residential birders, “I travel a lot, so I need a book like this even if you don’t” […]

No that’s not some kind of absurd typo up there. Sunday was all about the search for the Tufted Duck at Ausable Point State Park on Lake Champlain (TUDU is the bird banding code for Tufted Duck). The Tufted Duck is a Eurasian species which occasionally pops up in North America. […]

The idiomatic expression “for the birds“ is common enough to crop up in everyday conversation. One hears it all the time: “This pizza is for the birds!” “The Mets are for the birds!” “Lying, fascist, ideologue politicians are for the birds!” You probably get the point. This phrase is obviously negative in connotation, meaning […]