American Birding Podcast

Categories

Archives

Gulls, Obsession, and Trash in a Human-altered World

A review by Amar Ayyash

Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene by Tim Dee

Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018

239 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 15007

In this unique nature monograph, Tim Dee tackles a topic no author has before: How gulls—something of the once-wild—came to share our [read more…]

The Universal Pleasures of Birding

A review by Sanford Sorkin

How to Be an Urban Birder, by David Lindo

WILDGuides, 2018

232 pages, softcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14865

Birdwatching London: All the Best Places to See Birds in the Capital, by David Darrell-Lambert

Safe Haven Books, 2018

192 pages, softcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 15008

Not every [read more…]

Rare Bird Alert: December 20, 2019

It’s CBC season, which means thousands of birders working areas that typically don’t get the birding coverage they probably deserve the rest of the year. And as is typical this time of year, we see a number of great records coming out of CBCs across the ABA Area. But first, the rare birds that are [read more…]

How to Know the Birds: No. 23, Parakeet Possessions

What: Monk Parakeet, Myiopsitta monachus When: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 Where: Green-Wood Cemetery, Kings County, New York

Aldo Leopold, the influential 20th-century ecologist, intended that his magnum opus be titled Great Possessions. Then marketing got involved. A Sand County Almanac has endured, and I can see why. Simple and descriptive vs. fraught and philosophical. [read more…]

Rare Bird Alert: December 13, 2019

ABA Area rarities continuing into the middle of December include a Garganey (ABA Code 4) and Red-footed Booby (4) in California, joined by the still continuing Antillean Palm-Swift (5) and a La Sagra’s Flycatcher (4) in Florida.

Highlight bird of the week is likely a Rustic Bunting (3) found in Pacific, Washington, a couple days [read more…]

American Birding Podcast: Best Bird Books of 2019 with Donna Schulman

As is our tradition, the end of the year means it’s time for a look back at the best bird books published this year. Once again, 10,000 Birds book reviewer Donna Schulman joins me to talk about our favorites. Donna and I each share our Top 5, including field guides, family specific guides, and narratives [read more…]

The ABA Blog is Dead; Long Live The ABA Blog!

The ABA Blog launched all the way back in 2010 in a time of intense transition at the organization. Over the intervening decade it has been an integral part of the American Birding Association’s outreach strategy, providing an opportunity to learn about field marks and rare birds, to hear from our staff and friends, and [read more…]

Blog Birding #424

A survey of museum specimens from Chicago’s Field Museum suggests that migratory birds are getting smaller, likely due to climate change. Read more at BirdWatching Daily.

“We had good reason to expect that increasing temperatures would lead to reductions in body size, based on previous studies,” says study lead author Brian Weeks, an assistant [read more…]

Rare Bird Alert: December 6, 2019

Noteworthy rarities continuing into the beginning of December include Red-footed Booby (ABA Code 4) and Garganey (4) in California, and the long-staying Antillean Palm-Swift (5) and the likely-to-be long-staying La Sagra’s Flycatcher (4) in Florida

 

This week had another edition to the annals of epic rare bird stories, surrounding the fate of Washington’s 3rd [read more…]

2020 AOS Classification Committee Proposals, Part 1

As we have in the past, here is the first rundown of the new bird taxonomy proposals submitted to the American Ornithological Society’s North and Middle America Classification Committee for 2020. The AOSNMACC is the volunteer group of ornithologists who make the split, lump, and name-change decisions that influence the ABA Checklist and our field [read more…]