Sherrida Woodley’s Quick Fall of Light is based on an intriguing premise – what if the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon was somehow linked to the 1918 influenza epidemic? What if, in turn, the discovery that the species was not truly extinct held the key to saving humanity from another, even more devestating flu outbreak? [...]

It’s my fantasy and it’s yours: Quit the job, say good-bye to the family, and bird. Just bird. It’s what I dream of every Monday morning. British birder Chris Gooddie, my new birding hero, not only dreamed the fantasy, he lived it. And, to give his dream year a little more oomph, he created a [...]

Putting nature on TV is a tricky business. First there is the inherent irony of getting people to sit on their butts in front of a screen in order to show them the vast and beautiful world outside said screen. On top of that, every editorial choice not only says something, but says a million [...]

Since the day that we announced the release of the EL42 Swarovision, people have been asking when a 32mm version of the Swarovision binoculars will be available. These are hard questions, because being really passionate about the binoculars we are developing (our babies), I really want to be able to blab about how cool they [...]

I must say that I never expected us at 10,000 Birds to receive an email asking us if we wanted to review a DVD made from a company dedicated to producing “children’s nature resources (from a Creation perspective).” After all, my views on creationism are pretty darn clear. Nonetheless, I thought it might be interesting [...]

It’s tough being a New Jersey birder. Jersey has always gotten a bad rap in general (the smells of the turnpike, the Jersey shore, the governor), and in the world of birding, the state often seems to be symbolized by two words: Cape May. And yes, Cape May is incredibly wonderful, with its hawk watch [...]

Be warned, The Atlas of Birds is not a map book, though it does contain maps, lovely orange and purple and green bird distribution maps. It is not an encyclopedia, though it does summarize research, explain basic concepts, and ends with a section on bird statistics. And, it is not a coffee table book, though [...]

Can you believe that it hasn’t even been a year since Richard Crossley and Princeton University Press unleashed The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds on the birding public? Actually, a fair accounting of this innovative book’s already storied history must include many months of fervent speculation. I recall the words “game-changer” and “unprecedented” bandied about as enthusiasts across North [...]

Have you ever looked to the sky and seen a high-flying hawk and wanted to know what it was?  Do you wish you could tell an eagle from a hawk?  Do you know your raptors but wish that you had an easy reference for all the raptors of North America? Never fear, David Allen Sibley [...]

Anarchy – discontent – upheaval! Desperate fights over territory, water, and food! Poisoned air! Unhappiness! I fear we are lost. We must do something! -Peter Sis in The Conference of the Birds The Conference of the Birds, an amazingly well-illustrated adaptation of the twelfth century Persian poet Farid Ud-Din Attar’s epic poem, is well worth the [...]

Recently, I’ve reviewed a number of well-designed and interesting books on birds. Today, I bring you an equally lavish look at a group bipeds that are perhaps a little more confusing: people. People who are into birds. The Birding Life is another coffee-table-worthy affair, rich with color photographs and brief vignettes that encourage browsing. As [...]

I confess, I don’t always love hawks.  Sure, they’re beautiful and powerful, a reminder of the feral freedom of the skies. They’re also confoundingly difficult to identify, the eternal inscrutable spot in the distance.  This is probably why I number so many hawk books in my collection. There’s the slim Hawk Watch: At Guide for [...]

The Big Year was alright.  It was neither horrible nor outstanding, neither fully factual nor completely made-up, neither completely engaging nor totally alienating.  I would give it a solid “B-” as a birder whether I was grading on a curve or not.  If you are a birder you should, of course, see the movie.  If [...]

I’ve long felt that birders, as a group, should have a greater appreciation for the book as a physical object – all those years of choosing field guides that have high-quality color prints and will hold up to rough use ought to lead in that direction. Looking at a book like Barn Owl by David [...]

Few issues of our day are as huge, in scope or in implication, as climate change. The task of wrestling this topic down into something that the human mind can manage, without losing sight of the big picture because it’s snowing in Buffalo, is likely to be the task of a lifetime for many science [...]

“An island in the Adriatic Sea, called Diomedea, is home to a great number of shearwaters, which, it is said, neither harm the barbarians who live there nor come close to them. If, however, a Greek comes ashore, the shearwaters approach and stretch out their wings as if they were hands, welcoming the stranger.” Thus [...]

When my friends over at YourBirdOasis sent me a super squirrel-proof bird feeder to review, I had to think about who I knew who could really put the device to the test. After all, I have my local white squirrels well in hand. My good buddy Seth, on the other hand, does not. So here’s [...]

Feathers are the unique ingredient when it comes to birds.  Platypus have bills, bats and bugs can fly, and reptiles lay eggs, but only birds have feathers.  Despite feathers being such a large and essential aspect of birdness I did not know much about them, at least until I read Feathers: The Evolution of a [...]

Birders around the world are united by their passion for glass, by which I mean high-end optics. We crave ever more advanced binoculars, spurring our favorite optics manufacturers to increasingly miraculous innovations (insert your favorite new binocular here!) So why do so many of us still carry our marvels of modern optical technology around our [...]

Philosophy and I have always had a rather fraught relationship. I love grappling with big ideas, but dislike the tendency to extrapolate endless sky-bridges of thought and constantly redefine terms. You’d think, then, that applying science to philosophy by studying the evolutionary underpinnings of thought and behavior across species would be right up my alley. [...]