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I just got back from an all-too-brief exposure to the Biggest Week in American Birding, and all I can tell you is that you’ve got to get to Ohio! Despite highly inclement weather, including an unexpected tornado scare, Magee Marsh has been overrun by spring migrants en route to the great Boreal forest. I was [...]

Early May is a key portion of the calendar if you are a North American birder. This season may even have resonance for those of you outside the ABA area, but if you’re within in, you lick your lips (figuratively, I’m sure) all winter awaiting the arrival of spring migrants. Well, early May in America [...]

The 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, OH was simply phenomenal. Now I don’t get out to many birding festivals but I nonetheless know a good time when I experience it. Everything about this symposium from the setting to the participants to the presentations to even the birds (more on that in a moment) coalesced [...]

On the weekend of September 17 to 20, 2009, many hundreds of bird watchers will gather at Lakeside, Ohio for what will surely be the highlight of the birding year… That’s right! Our friends at Bird Watcher’s Digest and The Ohio Ornithological Society have been hard at work to make the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium [...]

That’s right, I’m going to the First Annual Mesoamerican Birding Festival.  Now while Mike has enjoyed birding the neotropics (the sub-tropical and tropical parts of the New World) and Charlie has birded, well, pretty much everywhere, I have never birded outside of the temperate zone.  While I am set in terms of the field guides [...]

The birding south of the U.S. border and north of the equator is always exceptional. This February, the mind-boggling birding splendors of Central America will be wide open for international indulgence. Check out these incredible events: The Neotropical nation nearest and dearest to my heart is Guatemala. If you’re not exactly sure why a country [...]

Now that I’ve shared a glimpse into just how special the birds of the Rio Grande Valley are, I feel compelled to mention the people. This is probably because I fell in with such spectacular individuals. After all, a birding festival is as much about birders as it is about birds, and the Rio Grande [...]

I just flew in from the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in Harlingen, TX and boy, are my arms tired. Actually, every bit of me is bone weary but it was worth it. The birding at this festival was epic, which is a term I don’t use lightly. This was due in no small part [...]

One of the most spectacular, important, and envy-inducing birding festivals in North America happens to be the one situated along the Mexican border in South Texas. The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in Harlingen, TX is the real deal, a birding festival by birders for birders with truly breath-taking birds. If you’ve ever dreamed of [...]

Now that summer is officially over, we can turn our attention to affairs of fall. Few events on the North American birding calendar are more autumnal than Cape May Autumn Weekend. Cape May in New Jersey is one of the magnetic poles of East Coast avian observations, a vortex that seems to exert an irresistible [...]