I thought it was a bird at first. As I continued walking along the bike path along the Muskingum River in Marietta, Ohio, I convinced myself that the rounded bowling pin shape perched in a tree on the bank was just a piece of plastic trash. The dark bluish-black portion I’d first believed was a… Read more »
by Tom Ferguson I grew up in Texas, playing football. Then I joined the Army and became an Airborne Ranger. I was sure I was unbreakable. Ranger school is the world’s most stressful school, and I survived. After military service, I jumped headfirst into the culinary world. I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America… Read more »
[Editor’s note: We invited Katie Fallon, author of Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, to share her thoughts on the negative attention vultures have received in the news lately. Here is the second of two posts she has graciously provided. Click here to read her first post.] I’m not ashamed to admit it:… Read more »
By Bruce Wunderlich | Production Director, Bird Watcher’s Digest “Oh no! You’re not really going there, are you?” That was the reaction I received from most of my friends when I told them I was going to Honduras on a birding tour. I have to admit, their reactions concerned me a little. This was my… Read more »
Alvaro recounts tales from Japan, including fish eagles, fish owls, and talking toilets. Also, the guys discuss the Chilean/Argentinian divide, and geography’s impact on both bird distribution and human culture. The topic turns to the true Zen nature of birding and how it may challenge some of your bird ID assumptions! All this and more… Read more »
They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Be that as it may, I like to name things. Through naming comes knowing and in knowing, understanding. I can name most of the mammals and many of the reptiles and amphibians I encounter, and I’m well acquainted with the birds. But when… Read more »
They stomp their feet like a child having a tantrum. They flare long “ear” plumes (pinnae feathers) into an impressive double erection like jackrabbit ears, and bend over to stick their tail feathers straight up in the air to moon anyone nearby. Most impressively, they inflate apricot-colored air sacs on the sides of their neck… Read more »
I don’t think I am old, but when I realize that my parents were born before the passenger pigeon was extinct, that my grandparents were born when bison filled the plains and that there were Eskimo curlews and, probably, ivory-billed woodpeckers inhabiting the planet with me at one time, I start to feel old. As… Read more »
There’s a certain sensation I think every birder is familiar with: the bugging eyes, the pounding heart, the sharp inhalation when your lenses sweep across some unexpected avian, the adrenaline that surges when you’re not quite sure whether you can believe your own eyes. Is it really? Could it be? Quick, grab your field guide!… Read more »
Stonechat The stonechat is not a stonechat. She is simply herself on the long twig, by the stones, no, she is not even self – it all simply is, on this, the only possible, perfect twig. It is look, and oh! and flit, all sense and verb, centred in the understood, measured height of the… Read more »
