The Experience of Birding
There’s just no predicting March on the Great Plains, and though the cold weather and snow that started this year’s tour were less than welcome, they were no surprise—and no real obstacle to our hardy group of eager birders, all of us recognizing that what might have been discouraging to hoi non-birding polloi in fact …
Continue reading “Nebraska: March 2013”
JUNE 1845: John James Audubon and John Cassin meet for the first time, at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. They quarrel. As George Spencer Morris wrote in Cassinia, The meeting appears not to have been an altogether happy one, and they parted none too amicably after a warm dispute as to who [had] discovered Falco harrisii. Audubon had …
Continue reading “Sluggish Birds, Lazy Ideas”
As the brother of three immensely talented and enormously capable (and all very different, thankfully) siblings, I know what it’s like to be in the shadows sometimes. Between them, there’s nothing my brother and my two sisters can’t help us out with — generously enough, not one of them has ever come back to me …
Continue reading “The Other Ridgway — and the 2013 ABA Bird of the Year”
Sonora: Puerto Peñasco August 11, 2010 Visiting Inner Harbor, Malecon, Rocky Beach, Cholla estuary, Cholla point, Laguna del Mar ponds. Ganley, S. 2006. Checklist of Birds from the Puerto Peñasco Region, Sonora, Mexico. Privately publ. Russell, S., and G. Monson. 1998. The Birds of Sonora. Tucson: U Arizona P. (along the way, but not in …
Continue reading “Puerto Peñasco, Sonora: August 11, 2010”
Of all the highlights of a birding visit to Arizona, the sparrow watching is among the highest. But things are looking up here in Vancouver, too. Though emberizid diversity remains lowish–four species felt pretty good this morning in Jericho Park–the spirit of spring has descended, and I was never out of earshot of sparrow song. …
Continue reading “Sparrow Watching: Improving!”