I and the Bird

I and the Bird #88

November 13, 2008 by Mike No Comments

Have you ever noticed how well-spoken so many birders are? I’m not just talking about the blogging ones either. Birders tend to come off as smart and literate. Sure, carting heavy books around might evoke an aura of erudition but I believe this apparent fluency is far more than a facade.

My suspicion is that the same forces are at work in the far-flung birding community that supercharged the loquacity my high school peers: Latin. That most lively of dead languages is the lingua franca of Linnaean binomial nomenclature. Latin is also the foundation of all Romance languages including, to no small degree, English. Believe it or not, all that time you spend poring over taxonomy not only makes you a better birder but might also be improving your SAT scores. Bonus! Plus, you probably know what rufous means, which places you in rarefied company indeed.

The confluence of brains and birds comes to mind because of the host of our newest edition of IATB. Rick Wright of Aimophila Adventures is easily one of the most eloquent aficionados of avifauna you’ll ever have the pleasure to meet. I feel on firm ground describing Rick as a deep thinker, bolstered by a boatload of fancy degrees and booklearnin’, but also buoyed by decades in the field as a tour leader and now the Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours. The former editor of the American Birding Association newsletter, Winging It is now the host of our modest blog carnival. Enjoy Rick’s edition, the first to be rendered in five-foot verse, of I and the Bird #88!

Do you blog about wild birds or birding with facility and flow? If so, get together with the rest of the bombastic bird bloggers of I and the Bird. Our next edition will, if all goes as planned this time, be hosted by Y C Wee of Singapore’s spectacular Bird Ecology Study Group.  Send your link with a brief summary to me or Y C (wee37 AT starhub DOT net DOT sg) by November 25 for the November 26 edition.

NOTE: due to the American holiday of Thanksgiving, IATB will be published on a Wednesday, not the traditional Thursday. That means that you had better get your submissions in on time, turkeys.

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.