A few weeks ago I posted a very enthusiastic review of the new “Smithsonian Guide to the Birds of North America” published by HarperCollins, calling it ‘genuinely excellent’ and loads of other really nice things (the full review’s right here if you missed it), and - almost casually - mentioned that HarperCollins had offered us not ONE copy of this great book to give away in a competition - but TEN (yep, TEN), and had also said that we could give one winner an iPod pre-loaded with a whole symphony of North American birdsongs!

Ten copies. An iPod. Generous eh? Of course it is.

Now, we’ve a pretty good track record when it comes to running successful competitions to give away top class product - and not keeping fully-loaded iPods for ourselves - and we promised HarperCollins we’d come up with something special to thank them for the weighty package of goodies they’ve promised us.

So, what we’ve decided is to give away ONE copy of the “Smithsonian Guide to the Birds of North America” every day for ten days, and then give away the iPod in a huge stadium somewhere in south-eastern Brazil so that we can all go birding in the mountains afterwards.

No, just kidding…

What we’re really doing is a sort of ’scavenger hunt’ which will go like this:

• To win a “Smithsonian Guide to the Birds of North America”:
  Starting Monday 16th June we’re going to post a clearly labelled question in the Aside section of the blog every day for ten days which leads to a page somewhere within 10,000 Birds. All you need to do is find the page and email the URL to me (eg mail http://10000birds.com/review-smithsonian-guide-to-the-birds-of-north-america.htm to charlie10000birds - AT - gmail.com).

  My two year old daughter will then randomly point a jammy finger at the day’s entries and the one it lands on will be our winner for the day. We’ll do that every day until all the books have gone and then announce all the winners at the same time. (Finding the answer will be very easy and probably won’t involve much more than using Google to be honest, but we’d like PILES of entries and we don’t want to tax anyone more than necessary. You can enter every day and as often as you like, by the way, but you can only win once.)

 

• To win the fully-loaded iPod:
  IPods are not cheap (as many of you know) so to win it we are asking you to make a little bit of an effort. We need you to work out each URL over the ten days, go to each page and collect the first letter of each post - NB NOT the title but the actual post - you find (eg if a URL led you to this page the letter you’d collect would be “A” from “A few weeks ago I posted a very enthusiastic review…”).

  After you’ve collected all ten letters re-arrange them to find the name of a species of North American bird. Email me the TEN URLs and the name of the bird, I’ll save all the emails, and the jammy finger will again choose a winner. Closing date for entries is June 30th, and the winner will be chosen on July 1st.

 

• Conditions and stuff:
  We won’t give any of the prizes to anyone whose name is Mike Bergin, Charlie Moores, or Corey Finger - or any of their family. We will be honest and fair, so our decisions are final. There are no alternative prizes offered (who’d want one anyway). Love one another (that’s nothing to do with the competition, really, but I thought I’d chuck it in anyway).

Okay, that’s all there is to it. Let’s be honest give-aways on bird blogs don’t come much bigger than this one, so don’t miss out. Blame me (Charlie) if it doesn’t stir even the remotest interest in you because I wrote the Review and set the competition this time round. On the other hand, celebrate wildly and rejoice in the village square if it does.

Oh, and the best of luck!