Rants

A little pedantry is good for the soul, so let me offer an observation on what has become an irksome thorn in my mind’s side: the misuse of the word “hirundine.”
More and more I find birders reluctant to say “swallows” or “swallows and martins,” reaching instead for the Latinate “hirundine.” To my mind, there’s no [...]

Imbued with the modernist faith in progress, I long believed that “we” were becoming ever more respectful of the world around us, and that the bad old days were truly old. But enlightenment is not a forever thing, and more and more I think that we are slipping back, back, back: terns hosed off their [...]

Here’s a good one:
“On our return trip from ABC Sunday June 1 we found a DEF. The bird was on GHI state highway JKL while stopped by construction traffic control. The traffic control funnel is a mile from the summit of MNO driving southeast coming from PQR. While awaiting access to proceed, I noticed [...]

Just what is the relationship between birding and bird photography? I know people who won’t ‘count’ a bird unless they’ve got a good image of it, and I know, alas, many people who leave the identifying of their photos to the sometimes dubious expertise offered by one or another of the internet “forums.”
I’ve ranted before about [...]

How could anyone not love White-winged Doves?

Their physical beauty is beyond dispute, with that deep red eye, blue facial skin, and flashy white wing- and tail-patterns. And the voice: with their careful attention to syncopation and the constant variation of their melodies, white-wings are probably the most musical of all Sonoran desert birds.
Sure, they gobble [...]