Coming in from Switzerland, Wolfram and Dorena are the farthest-flung of the relatives to gather this weekend for Alison’s father’s birthday. We picked them up Saturday afternoon at Castlegar, and took advantage of a brief fog-occasioned delay to bird the perimeter road around the airport.
Lower and drier than Nelson, Castlegar harbors quite a few species [...]

The snowmelt is massive here in southeast British Columbia this spring, and creeks and waterfalls have been transformed into torrents. Too deep and too fast for dippers, most of them, but a sharp-eyed Alison spotted a couple of even better rushing-water denizens.

This and another, equally snazzy drake Harlequin Duck were sheltering in the lee of [...]

Our drive yesterday from Spokane to Nelson, British Columbia, wasn’t much enlivened by birds, though a nice selection of waterfowl on flooded fields and overfull streams did include Ring-necked Duck, Hooded and Common Mergansers, and Cinnamon Teal.  It was a mammal that provided most of the excitement, a black bear bigger and blacker than any [...]

Come catch some oysters with us in Provence in May!
Details on the next tour are available on line now, along with a brief report about this year’s.

Bill Thompson III is well known in North American birding circles, both as the Editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest and as a fine field companion. He is also admirably dedicated, as is his wife, the artist and author Julie Zickefoose, to educating all Americans about their natural heritage. This newest volume in Houghton Mifflin’s [...]