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Birding Photo Quiz: August 2019

Adult male orioles in breeding plumage are a thing of beauty. And a cinch to identify. You’re in Pennsylvania, say, and it’s May. An Orchard Oriole flies by, or a Baltimore Oriole is singing from the treetops. Easy peasy. The females and second-summer males of those species are more subtly marked, but, still, Orchard vs. [read more…]

Hitting the Right Note

A review by Caitlin Kight

A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing, by Richard Smyth

Elliott and Thompson, 2017

208 pages—softcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14983

Between my sophomore and junior years in college, I worked as a field ornithologist for the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP). I had been [read more…]

“Ask Rick Wright”—Thoughts on Being Birderly

A quasi-review by Ted Floyd

Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America, by Rick Wright

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019

434 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales–Buteo Books 14934

As I was sitting down to write this not-exactly-a-book-review, one of my kids asked me a question about the mathematical details of the orbit of the moon. I [read more…]

New Field Guides for Birding Central America

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A review by Knut Eisermann

Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, [read more…]

Another Look at the February 2019 Birding Photo Quiz

For this photo quiz we just threw a couple of interesting things up there, that whizzed through our computer screens, before we had a chance to analyze them, and we will now react to the comments we received on The ABA Blog. We both had some initial preconceived thoughts, some aligning with those of posters [read more…]

Birding Photo Quiz: February 2019

It’s usually the case with the “Featured Photo” in Birding that we on the editorial and authorial side of things know, or think we know, what we’re dealing with, ID-wise. That’s not the case, though, with Feb. 2019 Featured Photos—yes, plural. Here we present photos of two birds that have been well documented yet stubbornly [read more…]

Another Colossal Gull Guide

A review by Peter Adriaens and Amar Ayyash

Gulls of the World: A Photographic Guide, by Klaus Malling Olsen

Princeton University Press, 2018

488 pages—hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14824

It’s been 15 years since Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson presented us with their Gulls of North America, Europe, and Asia. Unlike [read more…]

Birding Photo Quiz: June 2018

We love rarities. Vagrants. Hybrids. Mutations. Critically endangered birds. Even odd behaviors. If it’s rare, we love to find and enjoy it.

This March, I saw an electric blue Cattle Egret at Cattail Marsh, a famous local hotspot, in Beaumont, Texas. First discovered in December, no one was exactly sure what to make of this [read more…]

Straddling the Boundaries of Biology and Poetry

A review by Lori Potter

Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and Vultures of North America, by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

320 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14755

Birds of prey occupy a favored spot in our collective imagination. The Maltese Falcon. The recent bestseller H is [read more…]

Birding Photo Quiz: February 2018

Okay, folks, here’s the first installment of Birding Photo Quizzes for 2018. Before we get underway, we’ll remind you that, as always, the definitive answer and analysis appear in Birding magazine, published by the American Birding Association (ABA). In order to receive Birding and the many other benefits of ABA membership, please join the ABA [read more…]