The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North AmericaAh, what a time to be a young birder in America! Not only is there an endless, free torrent of thrilling birding content online, but some of our sharpest minds have tackled the thorny task of creating a field guide strong enough for an adult, but made for a kid. Thus we have Bill Thompson III’s terrific Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, and when I say “we” I mean we at 10,000 Birds have three copies of this guide that we’d like to give to YOU.

Really, we’d like to give these books to three young nature lovers on the precipice of a rewarding lifetime of bird watching adventure. Our friends at Houghton Mifflin, the publishers of this outstanding work, would probably like that as well. But I suspect that any teen or tween who reads this site regularly knows his or her way around the full arsenal of North American field guides. This is why we’re counting on YOU (yes, using caps again for emphasis, thanks for noticing) to help these guides find their way into the right hands.

Since we have three free copies of The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America to give away, we’ll offer three different ways to get them:

  1. If you are an adult, we’d like you to share your favorite tips for How to Get Kids Excited About Birds. What do you do and how successful are your efforts? These tips will be compiled in one mega post so take this opportunity to share all your secrets for getting children and teens engaged with nature.
  2. If you are a kid younger than 16, we’d like you to write a short essay, about 100 words or so, on Why Watching Birds is Fun. Tell us what interests you, why you look up when you hear a cool bird, and even which kinds of birds you like best.
  3. Anybody of any age has a shot at receiving a free copy of this guide simply by helping to promote this giveaway. Write about it on your blog, post it on a forum, or submit it to a social bookmarking site… we love it all. Plus, because the emphasis of this contest is on getting these field guides into the hands of the kids that would best appreciate them, we want to encourage everyone to get kids involved. Thus, for every entry written by a child younger than 16 on the topic of Why Watching Birds is Fun that you submit, you’ll have another chance to win this third giveaway. Teachers and youth-group leaders, I’m talking to you!

So, there’s a way for everybody to participate in this promotion and win a free copy of Bill Thompson III’s The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. Did I mention that our pal Julie Zickefoose illustrated this book as well? Seriously, this book is good! If you haven’t already seen it, read Charlie’s superb review of the Young Birder’s Guide and then spread the word. I know most North American birders are a bit occupied with spring migration and all, so let’s give this competition two weeks to play out. Send all essays and notification of promotion to me by Wednesday, May 28. Based on the number of submissions, participants in the first two competitions will either be selected randomly, by our crack panel of judges, or by reader poll.  The “promote the promotion” book will be assigned randomly. Good luck!

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.