While novices rarely make the critical connection, experienced naturalists know that birds and books go hand in hand. Obviously, this is not to say that one wants a bird in one hand (worth two in the bush if you ascribe to that calculus) and a book in the other. Instead, one wants to spend a lot of time with books, then a lot of time with birds, then back to the birds, back to the books, ad infinitum. Myriad are the ways to know the world and its denizens… observations make more sense when supplemented by academia or even other observations. Does this make any sense at all?

The reason for this bridge between birds and books is the host of our newest I and the Bird. Grant McCreary has Birds on the Brain, but we all know he also has books on the brain. Leave it to Grant to combine the two in an appropriately erudite edition of I and the Bird #134.

Any birder of letters should be contributing to our collective knowledge by blogging well about birding or wild birds. If you’ve done something like that recently or plan to in the near future, you really should be contributing to I and the Bird. Our next host is the California bird blogger with a heart of gold, Larry Jordan of The Birder’s Report.  Send your links and summaries to me or Larry (larrytech AT frontiernet DOT net) by 9/28 for the 9/30 edition.

Will there be an IATB in October? We don’t have a host for the early October edition, nor for any in November. Rise up, all ye bird bloggers. Raise your hand to take your rightful place at the helm of a new edition of I and the Bird. New hosts get precedence but all volunteers are very welcome!

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.