Some years ago, I failed to make a planned journey to India as I caught a nasty case of the flu just before I was scheduled to depart. Because of this, I didn’t get to use the copy of Princeton University Press’ “Birds of India” that I had been studying for two months prior in preparation for the trip.
When I first took up birdwatching, any mention I heard, any reference I read, any non-verbal cue I perceived regarding the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) – at least when in regard to their existence in North America – was universally negative. “Trash birds!” was a common epithet. “Ought to be exterminated” and “invasive” were two […]
After what I see as a rather long hiatus since the last major updates of two of the cornerstone field guides to the birds of North America, Peterson and Sibley, I was particularly pleased to learn that the third, the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of the United States and Canada, has recently been published in a new, fully revised, significantly expanded, and extensively updated Eighth Edition.
Containing a total of eleven hundred species depicted using over six thousand illustrations, Miles McMullen’s recently published “Field Guide to the Birds of North America” from Pelagic Publishing packs as much information about its subject into a field-portable volume as I’ve yet seen in any field guide.