We’re putting the finishing touches on the May/June 2014 issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest, and readers of this blog get a preview! It’s going to be a good one, if I do say so myself.
The cover species profile will be summer tanager, by BWD Assistant Editor and fellow blogger Kyle Carlsen. Kyle, who has been a birder since childhood, recalls seeing one of these beauties for the first time, and being blown away by it.
Fellow Ohioan Jim McCormac offers a fascinating appreciation of caterpillars and the birds that depend on them. Spring, emergence, migration—they’re all related and interwoven, and Jim explains it very well.
Can you tell a blue-headed from a warbling vireo? Alvaro Jaramillo, our bird ID guru, provides useful tips for keeping vireos straight. Just realizing that they can be grouped into three, easy-to-recognize looks helps a lot. Read it and you’ll be ready when they make their 2014 debut.
A Texas lawman (attorney) started a program in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, to train local residents to be bird guides, which both supports the local economy and encourages protection of the tropical habitat that both the birds and people call home. It’s a fascinating story about a worthy project.
In need of an earworm? Al Batt’s column will provide plenty of birdy song titles for you to plant firmly in your brain. How many bird songs can you think of? Clue: Al came up with dozens!
There now, your toe is wet. But this is just a handful of the great stories you’ll read when you dive into the May/June issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest.
Have I said here how much I love my job? What a privilege it is to get to read these stories and work with crazy-good writers such as Julie Zickefoose and Kenn Kaufman—both of whom, by the way, have columns in the issue, too! I do love my job!
About the AuthorDawn Hewitt is the managing editor for Bird Watcher's Digest and Watching Backyard Birds. She has been watching birds since 1979, and wrote a weekly birding column for The Herald Times newspaper in Bloomington, Indiana, for 11 years.