Book Review: Going Wild, by Robert Winkler

I chose this book entirely by happenstance. It happened that I went into a cheap book store while on a recent trip to the passport office in Whitby, Ontario. While browsing the nature/outdoor books, I saw this book, Going Wild, for sale for the princely sum of $7.99 (Canadian). The photos of the large binoculars and hawk on the front of the book sold me on this being a book about birding that I just might like reading.

Are those 12x50s? Might as well just use a scope.

Product Revew: Sibley Backyard Birding Flashcards

It all started out as a scheme to get my daughter a bit more into birding. She is a great kid and super smart, and she is interested in birds and nature and outdoor stuff, but she has a stumbling block: her twin brother. He is also a great kid and super smart, but when he is interested in something he gets really interested in it, so much so that I think it turns his sister off of it because she sees it as "his thing" (I can't imagine which parent he inherited this obsessiveness from!). It has been like this for years with dinosaurs and, to a lesser extent, animals in general, so it is only natural that it was like this for birds (they are dinosaurs after all).

So I worried that she might miss out on a hobby or activity that she actually likes and is good at. Just to be clear, my daughter is actually pretty good at identifying birds: she knows many common yard birds, can pick up Northern Cardinals, Song Sparrows, and Carolina Wrens by ear and can tell Fish Crows and American Crows apart. She actually is a great birder for her age and is a better birder than many adults. Her twin brother, however, must have gone through his Sibley Field Guide many times and does things like identifying Broad-winged Hawks soaring over his school.

The interest was there, but how could I get her something more that would get her on a more solid footing as her brother (so she wouldn't feel like his junior partner if we were looking at birds)? Her little brother!

My daughter loves to teach my youngest son, so I jumped on Amazon and looked for some flashcards that I could use with my youngest, and my daughter could help me out. It wasn't coincidence that it just so happens that the best way to learn something is to teach it, so while my youngest might learn some birds, my daughter would learn even more.

There were a couple of options for flashcards, but I went with Sibley Backyard Birding Flashcards. This seemed an obvious choice, as I love the Sibley Guide and was assured to have good quality images. So let's see what I got!

Preliminary App Review: BirdLog NA, by Birds in the Hand LLC

It finally happened. I have gotten over my butthurt about eBird and decided to use it, embrace it, even love it. What caused this? The Top 100 lists for each region! Yep, you can go to the website and see the Top 100 for whatever region you want (country, state, county, continent, etc.), which is automatically compiled by the data. Yeah, I went there and saw the Delaware County and Philadelphia County lists and I could easily be in each of them, if not the top 20. Hell, just estimating, I'd be in the top freaking five for Delaware County, top 15 for Philadelphia County, and probably top 50 in New Castle County in Delaware (and I am only there for work). I want that fame!

Tangential to Birding Music Review: The Carpenter by The Avett Brothers

It happened again this last week. Yes, I got judged by my binoculars.

This shouldn't be a problem and it doesn't really bother me, except when people insist "you should borrow some binoculars" after I politely say no thank you that I am fine with the crappy ones I have. Even then it doesn't actually bother me so much, but more annoys me because it can come across as condescending, and I could only imagine how that might turn off new or beginning birders.

Book Review: Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman

It is book review time here at The Year of Birds! We will have plenty of these as a relatively regular feature, or at least whenever we have time to read bird-related books and talk about them. And while the format may change with different reviews, today we are having a question and each of us give our own answer to it as it relates to the book. Yes, you can probably note that Damon can be long-winded and meandering, but you've already read enough on this site to know that already.

So, what is the first book of the Year of Birds Book Club? Is it the obvious The Big Year? Nah, since we both read that years ago. Nope, today we are reading Kingbird Highway, by Kenn Kaufman. Is it just a story of him hitchhiking his way in search of birds and the reason for the extraneous second 'n' on his first name?

App Review: Audubon Birds for iPhone by Green Mountain Digital Reference

Smartphones are great. Not just in the overall sense, but for birding they are indispensable, which is funny because I rarely see people get theirs out for anything while I go birding (perhaps it is an age thing, since many birders I run into are older). They are also not cheap.

Ok, in the grand scheme of things the cost for a birding app of $15 - $20 is minimal compared to what you get out of it, but psychologically it is hard to drop that much money on something that you can't really browse beforehand (yeah, yeah, there are 'lite' apps of them I know) and that is not a real, substantial thing like a book. I understand. So when I looked around a few weeks ago and saw one on sale, I jumped at it.

I am fully aware of the number of unupdated apps

This is the Audubon Birds iPhone app by Green Mountain Digital Reference. You can get the full app like I did, or there are other more specific apps (like California or Central Park in New York).

Magazine Review: BirdWatching

We took the family to the public library yesterday and, while I was watching the littlest of our kids, my wife found a birdwatching magazine for me. It was cleverly titled BirdWatching and sported a cool photo of a hummingbird on the front cover. I decided it would be ok to take a look at it, but was wary lest it contained a lot of campy birdwatching stories and lame tips for how to get the perfect photo. I actually wasn't quite sure what I was to find between its covers, but my curiosity got the best of me. We brought it home that April 2013 issue and I read through it last night before I went to bed. Here are my impressions of this magazine!