We birders are a most fortunate bunch. Not only are we spoilt for choice when it comes to high-quality optics, birding holidays to suit every budget and every level of interest, birding blogs (like this one!) and websites serving us with all kinds of information and avian adventure, we’re also being offered books of astonishing [...]

A new field-guide by the birding powerhouse family that is Bill Thomson III and Julie Zickefoose, published by the excellent Houghton Mifflin in the notable “Peterson Field Guide” series? Now there’s a pedigree that should appeal to most birders - after all it’s almost guaranteed that it’ll be well-written, well-illustrated, and beautifully put-together. And [...]

I found Jonathan Rosen’s The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature so magnificent that I’ve been celebrating it for the last month. So have many of you! We’ve had a splendid string of collaborative activities starting with an inspiring photo gallery of birds in flight. We followed that with thoughtful [...]

You’ve probably heard that old saw about how it’s better to give than to receive. What if you could do both? That’s what wheelers and dealers call win-win. Well, what if I told you that you could win a free copy of The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Jonathan [...]

Kenn Kaufman is a birding celebrity. He is well-known not only for his field guides but also for his North American Big Year, famously described in his memoir, Kingbird Highway, in which he describes his hitchhiking, cat-food eating, country-criss-crossing attempt at breaking the Big Year record (he did, but another birder beat the record [...]

The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Jonathan Rosen is a truly remarkable book possessed of a depth and breadth well beyond the usual birdwatching fare. While we’re not in a position to put a copy of this book in the hands of everyone who would enjoy it, we can, [...]

Any author who attests that “birdwatching is the real national pastime,” American or otherwise, deserves attention. Jonathan Rosen, in actually making a compelling case for his electrifying assertion, demands respect. Too many books in the birding genre focus naturally on the innumerable hows of technique, craft, and field ornithology. Rosen’s mighty The Life of [...]

Backyard birding is, as both a method and philosophy of watching birds, decidedly distinct from field birding. One of the main differences is that backyard birders usually indulge from the comfort of their own homes, often while attending to more productive tasks than just ogling avians. Also, backyard birding requires a lot less effort, unless [...]

This BIRD giveaway has been a blast, what with the bird limericks, birding site suggestions, and of course, the six scintillating essays in praise of beloved bird species. The authors have done their part in applauding the avians of their choice and we’ve done ours in publishing them for your perusal. Now it’s your turn. [...]

What happened? Our BIRD: The Definitive Visual Guide giveaway has been going so well, swimmingly in fact. Then suddenly, the river of stupendous submissions has dwindled down to a trickle. Maybe you’re all suffering from giveaway fatigue. Perhaps you fear that you’re not worthy of a avifaunal epic like BIRD. It’s even possible that you [...]

Our BIRD: The Definitive Guide giveaway seems to be going swimmingly. Entries for the fourth stage of the giveaway are in and ready for your reading pleasure. Readers were challenged to write an original essay of at least 250 and no more than 750 words in praise of a single bird species. Six admirers of [...]

My writing a short review for 10,000 Birds on the new Sony Walkman (the NWZ-A81* series) might seem a bit like someone from a hi-fi magazine writing about warblers, but I’m pretty sure that just as some audiophiles must have something interesting to say about small and pretty birds I must have something worth saying [...]

If you read my review of BIRD: The Definitive Visual Guide, you probably got the sense that I loved it. I’m hardly the only one. Birdfreak, Bill Schmoker, and John Riutta are also among the growing legion of fans of this big, beautiful, bird-laden bombshell. You could be too, and sooner rather than later if [...]

Can I tell you, I’ve just fallen in love with birding all over again. I owe this renewed ardor for avian observation to a magnificent new volume simply called BIRD. If you appreciate truth in advertising in service to an exhaustive, eye-popping review of the world’s abundance of avifauna, you will absolutely love this book.
BIRD: [...]

I went out and bought the (relatively) new Canon 40D DSLR today, and took it to a local area for about an hour to have a “play”. I have to say I’m very impressed so far - the large LCD screen on the rear of the camera is superb, image detail from the 10-megapixel resolution [...]

That time of year has come when raptors are on the wing and a young man’s thoughts turn to… Osprey? It’s true. Come September, the denizens of Seattle aren’t the only ones watching seahawks. Nature lovers around the world turn out in hordes to observe the osprey’s southerly migration. However, none have pursued this peregrination [...]

One of the many reasons why the passion for birding can be sustained for a lifetime is that the undertaking can never be considered complete. You’ll never see all the birds nor will you ever see all of your favorites enough to be satisfied. Bird watching can be taken up in a moment, but takes [...]

Season 10 of The Simpsons has come out on DVD and of course I picked up a copy as soon as I noticed. No show on television has ever held my attention and devotion as The Simpsons has and I even saw their silver screen debut on its opening weekend. But why am [...]

“Gulls of the Americas”,
Steve Howell and Jon Dunn (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
Identifying gulls - particularly 1st and 2nd year birds - is one of birding’s most difficult skills to master, as anyone who’s ever stepped onto a beach in eg California, Kuwait, or Korea will know all too well. The variation in plumage seems endless. The [...]

Gulls… we birders can’t live with them and we can’t live without them. The gregarious, opportunistic, adaptable avians of the family Laridae are never hard to find, no matter how far you are from an ocean, but can prove nigh impossible to identify definitively. The trouble with gulls, at least from a birding perspective (picnickers [...]