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By Ted Floyd, on June 25, 2015
Take a look at the front cover of Birding, vol. 3, no. 1 (January-February 1971):
That was so long ago, humans evidently hadn’t yet invented art. Why, they were still using Roman numerals!
Now flip the magazine over, and check out the Table of Contents, printed on the back cover:
Take a [read more…]
A review by Keith Betton
The Helm Guide to Bird Identification: Comparing Confusion Species, by Keith Vinicombe, Alan Harris, and Laurel Tucker
A & C Black, 2014
396 pages, $42.95—softcover
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 14335
The internet tells us that the term “game-changer” was not used outside of sports until 1993. But one of the best [read more…]
By Greg Neise, on February 17, 2015 This past Sunday, I had a very pleasant experience … two experiences at once, actually. One was spending the morning in my local turf with a posse of great birders, including Birding magazine editor Ted Floyd.
Left-to-right: my big mug, Shawn Chandler, Danny Akers, Amar Ayyash, Andy Sigler, Ted Floyd, Joel Greenberg.At William [read more…]
By Bill Schmoker, on January 14, 2015 I get a kick out of hybrid birds- like Easter Eggs hidden in video games, they offer a treat that may be hiding in plain view but undetected without some scrutiny and/or detective work. I’ve previously posted on a couple of hybrid gulls that were fun to suss out (Herring x Glaucous and Herring x [read more…]
By Michael Retter, on January 3, 2015 That, or some variation thereof, is one of the questions I most often hear from beginning birdwatchers. This article in the December 2014 issue of Birder’s Guide to Gear attempts to answer that question by offering the advice of a diverse set of birders from various corners of Canada and the U.S. These are not [read more…]
A review by Paul A. Johnsgard
Ducks, Geese and Swans of North America, Fourth Edition, by Guy Baldassarre
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014
1,027 pages in two volumes, $69.95—hardcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14400
In 1942, the American Wildlife Institute published The Ducks, Geese and Swans of North America, a modest-sized book of 474 [read more…]
By Michael Retter, on July 30, 2014 Every summer, birders anxiously await publication of the “Check-list Supplement” by the American Ornithologists’ Union’s North American Classification Committee (NACC). The Supplement details revisions to its Check-list (e.g., lumps, splits, new species, new classifications, etc.). Below is a brief rundown of those changes. (You can see the Supplement here.) Be sure to check out the [read more…]
A review by Graham Etherington
Rare Birds of North America, by Steve N.G. Howell, Ian Lewington, and Will Russell
Princeton University Press, 2014
428 pages, $35.00—hardcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14102
Rare birds: everybody loves ’em. Whether it’s the wonder that you feel on seeing a bird that’s managed to survive a cross-ocean [read more…]
A review by Amar Ayyash
Peterson Reference Guide to Seawatching: Eastern Waterbirds in Flight, by Ken Behrens and Cameron Cox
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013
xi + 602 pages, $35—hardcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 13931
Perhaps the most challenging form of birding, the identification of birds in flight from a distance is a [read more…]
By Greg Neise, on March 23, 2014 My recent post here about my love/hate relationship with Slaty-backed Gull, got me thinking about being a birder. “Birder” is a pretty wide net, but I think the one thing—or a main thing—that defines a birder is the desire to identify the birds we see.
From there, many other forms of inquiry and enjoyment may [read more…]
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