Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Technique of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior by Marie Read

Rocky Nook, 2019

340 pages, softcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14938

Given the explosive growth of digital bird photography in the last decade or so, there have been surprisingly few titles devoted [read more...]]]> A review by Bill Schmoker

Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Technique of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior by Marie Read

Rocky Nook, 2019

340 pages, softcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14938

Given the explosive growth of digital bird photography in the last decade or so, there have been surprisingly few titles devoted to the topic despite the proliferation of birding books in the same time span. In her ambitious new Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Technique of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior, Marie Read has distilled decades of experience into a beautiful, well-organized reference on the topic. As more birders count their camera along with binoculars and scope as essential field gear, many begin by grabbing shots without much thought other than centering the bird as best they can and pushing the shutter, often using the camera’s auto mode. Shots obtained this way are great for ID reference, documentation, gripping off your buddies, etc. These are perfectly fine and fun reasons to employ photography in your bag of birding tricks (and I think it is important to remember that there’s no “right” way to do any art form as long as you enjoy yourself). There are bound to be some gems in the mix, but many bird photos taken without planning and technical consideration are disappointing or just so-so for a variety of reasons. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to push the easy button ad infinitum, but for those who want to step up their photography game this book presents a trove of practical advice for making wonderful images of birds and undoubtedly improving one’s percentage of winners from each day’s photographic haul.

The book’s 16 well-organized and illustrated chapters comprehensively cover nearly every consideration of bird photography. Included are treatments of suggested equipment, settings for said equipment, field craft, composition, editing, and ideas for using your photos once acquired and processed. I think the first chapter, “Getting Started in Bird Photography,” could stand by itself as a thorough article full of ideas for laying a solid foundation for pursuing this most difficult of photographic subjects. In fact, much of the solid advice in this chapter can apply to improving one’s birding skills in general.

Read’s chapter on “Equipment Essentials” has lots of good advice as well but veers slightly toward tricky ground. I love her opening statement that she considers “field craft, creative vision, and determination as contributing far more… than having the newest camera or biggest lens.” Read then states, and I fully agree, that photographers often want to talk about gear or get advice on what equipment to buy. The challenge here is that the landscape of camera models, lenses, tripods, and the like will inevitably evolve while the rest of the book’s information is essentially timeless. So I think the best parts of this chapter are the big ideas of what to look for in camera gear rather than the specific models given as examples.

Additionally, Read focuses on Digital Single-Lens Reflex (AKA DSLR) rigs, which even someone unfamiliar with the jargon would recognize as a large camera body with separate interchangeable (and usually big) lenses. While I think that DSLRs indeed still offer the greatest photographic potential, new formats such as mirrorless interchangeable lens systems are fast approaching DLSR performance in a smaller package. Many birders opt for even simpler, smaller, and more affordable all-in-one super zooms (or “bridge” cameras, that bridge the gap from small, cheap point-and-shoots to DSLRs). Digiscoping or phonescoping are also powerful and effective ways to capture compelling bird photos. So the takeaway from the book is to pursue DSLR photography if you have the budget, strength, and desire, but I would add that most of what this chapter and the rest of the book suggest applies to these other types of photo gear as well! For example, bridge cameras have most (if not all) of the shooting modes and options that DSLRs have, even if many folks don’t commonly access them. To sum up, this book will have ample ideas for getting the most out of any photo gear you choose.

Besides questions about gear, I also get frequent inquiries about difficulties with bird photography such as blurriness, being too light or too dark, not capturing enough detail and/or compelling behavior, or trouble tracking flying birds. Read has chapters to address these areas, including “Focusing and Image Sharpness,” “Seeing the Light,” “Exposure,” “Composition Basics,” as well as chapters on “The Big Picture,” “Weather, Water, and Mood,” “Shooting Outside the Box,” and “On the Wing” (flight shots). Each are loaded with gems of knowledge, practical ideas, and teeming with images to illustrate her points on these subjects. Often, simply getting close to a subject addresses many of these challenges, and sure enough Read includes a fantastic chapter on the subject. Her suggestions of choosing locations where birds are used to people, moving carefully and blending in, using hides (portable blinds, vehicles, and boats), and attracting birds all can contribute to ethically narrowing the distance to your subject. Getting close also helps to even the playing field between more modest camera rigs and big guns.

Complementing the “Getting Close” chapter is “Beauty Close to Home,” which promotes staying home in a bird-friendly backyard to get great photos. Recognizing that not everyone has a back yard, I suppose most of these ideas could also apply to patronizing your local patch. Some of my favorite photos are in this chapter, paired with a wide shot of the feeder, perch, and sometimes the blind setup used to get them. There are some great ideas here for setting up what amounts to a wild bird photography studio right out the back door, and even though the examples may be specific to Read’s property, I’m sure folks’ minds will envision adapting the ideas to their situations. Essentially, Read pulls back the curtain on some really cool tricks of the trade here, which I think nicely illustrates the sharing nature of birding (versus, say, the mystery of a magic trick and taboo of sharing the secret behind it). As a contrast with backyard bird photography, we also find a chapter on “Bird Photography Hotspots,” with 11 famous sites in North America detailed as well as a handful of briefer suggestions for well-known bird photography destinations and tips for finding your own target-rich hot spots.

As if all of this wasn’t comprehensive enough, Read includes chapters on “Basic Image Editing” and “What’s Next” (ideas for using your photos). Her image processing workflow is laid out in a well-organized sequence, with well-chosen photos showing key steps along the way. The focus here is on using Adobe Photoshop, while Adobe Lightroom also gets an endorsement (though no specific treatment). I slightly fear that beginning photographers may be a little daunted by this chapter, which to my eye jumps in at an intermediate level of editing software comfort and competency. As potential relief there are three excellent suggestions included for books to get novices up to speed on these two Adobe products. If someone is using different editing software, including one of the many free online options, I would suggest paying attention to the big picture here instead of the exact tools and commands tailored to the Photoshop world. Getting to the reasons and results of her steps here may be more important than the specifics, especially as one develops their own workflow with their software of preference.

The last chapter has lots of creative ideas for what to do with one’s photos now that all of the other steps from gear selection through editing have been thoroughly addressed. Ranging from online sharing and making cards or calendars to entering contests and giving talks, I quite enjoyed this section as a beautiful way to wrap up the whole package presented in this book. It is rewarding to see your photos doing something besides languishing on a hard drive somewhere, so I applaud Read’s choice to finish with this topic and appreciate her concrete tips to put photos to use.

I’d have no hesitation recommending this book to anyone heading out birding with camera in hand. It offers plenty of takeaways for the casual photographer, even if they don’t find every chapter or suggestion applicable. But I think its real strength is having the comprehensive expert advice to give someone the tools to make the transition from being a birder with a camera to becoming a serious bird photographer (or to just progress anywhere along that continuum). Even experienced photographers will gain nuggets of wisdom and validation from a master of Marie Read’s caliber, not to mention enjoying the inspiring selection of photos and easy-to-follow prose. The well-organized chapters and detailed table of contents will make this a useful reference to go back to repeatedly for tune-ups or to refresh one’s memory on a topic as well—I envision my copy becoming dog-eared over the years. Thank you, Marie Read, for distilling your expertise and vision into such an accessible form in this terrific book.

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Bill Schmoker is known in the birding community as a leading digital photographer of birds. Bill is especially fond of his involvement with the ABA’s Institute for Field Ornithology and Young Birder Programs. Bill is a popular birding guide, speaker, and workshop instructor. He teaches middle school science in Boulder, Colorado.

Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving Birdscapes throughout the Americas, by Owen Deutsch and the American Bird Conservancy

Braided River, 2019

208 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14928

“We are a dying symphony.

No bird knows this,

But us — we know…”

Margaret [read more...]]]> A review by Mark VanderVen

Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving Birdscapes throughout the Americas, by Owen Deutsch and the American Bird Conservancy

Braided River, 2019

208 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14928

“We are a dying symphony.

No bird knows this, 

But us — we know…”

Margaret Atwood’s poem “Fatal Light Awareness” introduces the remarkable Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving Birdscapes throughout the Americas, giving us a haunting reminder of anthropogenically-driven mass declines of many American bird species. Hers is one of eight written pieces by bird-world luminaries that range in subject-matter from exploring why we like birds, the science of bird migration, the myriad threats that confront Western Hemispheric bird populations, and possible solutions to the dramatic avian declines in the Americas.

The best way to begin reviewing Bringing Back the Birds is to candidly confess the fun challenge of reviewing a book that offers so much. Does the reviewer begin by describing it as a beautiful coffee table book, lushly and omnipresently illustrated by Owen Deutsch’s photography? Does the reviewer boast of the acclaimed slate of contributors including Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, and the Kaufmans? Or do they start by emphasizing the overarching messages of the book, namely the grave threat to migratory bird populations and the role the management of American Bird Conservancy “BirdScapes” can play in stanching and perhaps even reversing decline in the Western Hemisphere?

Birds need all of healthy breeding territories, wintering grounds, and migratory paths. Novelist Franzen follows Atwood’s introductory poem with a foreword that serves as an abstract of the text to come. He extols the resilience and appeal of birds yet warns of the perils they face on and between wintering and nesting grounds. “Seabirds can still fly immense distances… but during breeding season they’re tied to the islands where they raise their chicks.” Yet Franzen provides a guarded sense of optimism, citing how the American Bird Conservatory (ABC) is working with farmers in places like Chihuahua, Mexico, to conserve and create habitat while enabling them to stay on their land.

Birds fascinate us. In the next passage, bird author and president of the American Bird Conservancy Michael J. Parr sets the tone for the book in his introduction, “Birds Are Amazing.” This is a chapter to be shown to the non-birder who pesters as to why we find birds fascinating, as Parr peppers the introduction with convincing facts and statistics on bird physiology and behavior: “Hummingbirds have… heart rates reaching over 1000 beats per minute.”

In his “The Power of Birds: Capturing Our Hearts and Minds,” Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s John W. Fitzpatrick reinforces Parr’s compelling thoughts by pointing out that “birds activate both sides of our brain.” He poignantly describes his transformative 1980s Hawaiian encounter with a singing male Kaua’i O’o, not only the last of its species but of an entire family of songbirds whose island endemism rendered them especially vulnerable to extinction: “Once I grasped the meaning of this song, I vowed to do my best to let every human on earth experience what it does to us.”

Conservationists and field guide authors Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman write the book’s first of a pair of chapters exploring the complexities of both migration and the set of threats to migratory bird populations. “Migration: The Thread that Connects the Americas” mixes interesting scientific facts and figures—the tiny Blackpoll Warbler will often fly over open ocean for more than three days—with evocative personal anecdotes, as they describe a late September evening in which they are moved by a cacophony of overhead songbird migratory flight calls. Map buffs will appreciate the “Migration Patterns” graphic depicting a few dozen intra-American migratory routes, some of which are a short east-west hop across Canadian provinces while others are impressive flight paths that are annual roundtrips between western South America and Ontario.

Peter P. Marra, once the director of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, follows the Kaufmans with a companion piece on migration. “Migratory Connectivity: Understanding Annual Cycles” explores the intricate relationships between migratory avians and seasonal and geographic variables including climate, range, habitat, and food abundance. He reiterates the book’s recurrent theme about the importance of understanding a bird’s breeding, migrational, and non-breeding stages and the connective relationship between the locations where each stage is carried out. Marra describes how tracking technologies, especially back-mounted satellite transmitters, are returning data that improve our understanding of migratory connectivity.

Not all hope is lost. The final two essays of the book are written by Clare Nielsen, the ABC’s vice-president of communications, and tie together the concepts of the first six passages. “Bringing Back the Birds: Conserving Birds through BirdScapes” and its follow-up and book finale “Activism for Avians: What We Can Do for Birds” inform what the ABC is doing for migratory connectivity and what concerned entities can continue to do.

BirdScapes are the ABC’s primary tools for remedying migratory bird population declines. In Clare Nielsen’s words, BirdScapes are simply “large-scale areas given priority for habitat management to support the conservation of migratory birds.” BirdScapes typically range from 100,000 to 1 million acres in area. A BirdScape is not contiguous parcel of land owned and managed exclusively by the ABC. Rather, each BirdScape is determined on the combined bases of bird population data, habitat features, existing protected habitat, and political realities, and ranges across both public and privately held lands. The challenge to identifying a BirdScape is to find an area large enough in which conservation measures have a realistic chance of being effective, but also where management objectives have a realistic chance of working. Once a BirdScape is defined, the ABC begins working with collaborators that include conservation organizations, public land managers, and private landowners.

One such BirdScape is the “Guatemalan Conservation Coast,” a crucial non-breeding area for Wood Thrushes and other neotropical migrants in Guatemala’s Caribbean region. To illustrate the working relationships ABC needs to have with local landowners, Nielsen introduces us to Don Francisco Lopez, the “Guatemalan King of Black Pepper,” a land-owning cultivator of black pepper vines that grow on larger trees that provide vital habitat for neotropical overwinterers.

Humans need to conserve and expand habitat and reduce threats if they want to save migratory birds. Nielsen concludes the book with “Activism for Avians” and emphasizes that it is not too late to save the birds and that bold steps have already been taken. Over the past 20 years the ABC has been active in either establishing or expanding over 70 bird reserves in the Americas. The Lear’s Macaw, clinging by a fragile talon above the maws of extinction but thirty years ago, has expanded its population fifteen-fold, primarily through the work of the ABC and a Brazilian collaborative agency to establish a reserve for them in the Amazon rainforest.

Opening to any page of Bringing Back the Birds will treat the reader to Owen Deutsch’s alluring photography. A Bald Eagle in close pursuit of a Great Blue Heron makes for a powerful and dramatic image. While Deutsch’s pictures are representative of a variety of American migratory bird taxa, the large colorful photos of tropical forest birds are especially captivating. A Broad-billed Motmot, a Red-billed Streamertail, and Green and Shining honeycreepers are among hundreds of subjects of Deutsch’s keen and sensitive eye.

Beyond its well-crafted essays and lovely photographs, a beauty of Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving BirdScapes throughout the Americas is its compositional richness and diversity. One can either pick it up off the bookshelf for a good educational read or lift it from the coffee table for the avian eye candy. And if these aren’t compelling enough reasons to buy the book, know that 100% of book royalties are used to support the efforts of the American Bird Conservancy!

–=====–

Mark VanderVen participated in his first Christmas Bird Count (CBC) in 1973. He enjoys “poor man’s pelagics” aboard ferries and from shoreside bar and restaurant decks. He encourages birders to participate in citizen science and conservation projects including CBCs, migratory bird counts, breeding bird atlases, and habitat restoration.

Florida’s 3rd record of Hammond’s Flycatcher had been masquerading as a Least Flycatcher in Collier for several weeks before someone noticed that the wings were a little too long.

And [read more...]]]> Continuing rare birds in the ABA Area include the La Sagra’s Flycatcher (ABA Code 4) in Florida and a female Garganey (4) in California.

Florida’s 3rd record of Hammond’s Flycatcher had been masquerading as a Least Flycatcher in Collier for several weeks before someone noticed that the wings were a little too long.

And that wasn’t the only Hammond’s seen in the eastern part of the US this week, as in Massachusetts a Hammond’s Flycatcher was seen on Martha’s Vineyard.

Tis the season for Euro thrushes in the northeast part of the ABA Area and Newfoundland had a Redwing (4) in Lumsden this week.

Noteworthy for California, a Slaty-backed Gull was seen by many in San Mateo. 

Texas adds to its already impressive run of Fork-tailed Flycatcher (3) this fall/winter with a bird seen recently in Hidalgo. The state also boasted a Red-necked Grebe near Breckenridge and a young Mew Gull at Port Aransas.

In Pennsylvania, individual Pink-footed Geese (4) were seen in Lehigh and Montgomery.

Connecticut also had a Pink-footed Goose, in Orange. 

And in South Carolina, a nice male Bullock’s Oriole was visiting a feeder in Pineville.

—=====—

Omissions and errors are not intended, but if you find any please message blog AT aba.org and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. This post is meant to be an account of the most recently reported birds. Continuing birds not mentioned are likely included in previous editions listed here. Place names written in italics refer to counties/parishes.

Readers should note that none of these reports has yet been vetted by a records committee. All birders are urged to submit documentation of rare sightings to the appropriate state or provincial committees. For full analysis of these and other bird observations, subscribe to North American Birds, the richly illustrated journal of ornithological record published by the ABA.

Not much in the way of ABA rarities this week, but New Mexico saw the return of a [read more...]]]> Continuing rarities in the ABA Area include a Garganey (ABA Code 4) in California, both La Sagra’s Flycatcher (4) and Antillean Palm-Swift (5) in Florida, and a Streak-backed Oriole (4) continuing to visit a feeder in Arizona.

Not much in the way of ABA rarities this week, but New Mexico saw the return of a Common Crane (4) in Socorro, traveling amongst the many thousands of Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR. This Old World species is somewhat regular in North America, almost always in flocks of Sandhills. Indeed, most records come from states where Sandhill cranes congregate in winter or during migration. The two species breed not overly far from one another in east Asia.

There is one 1st to report this week. Florida is well-known for its Caribbean vagrant potential, but the new bird this time around comes from the other direction. A Common Murre was photographed in Volusia, representing a 1st for the state and one of few records for the southeast, though records of this alcid have been increasing in recent years not far to the north.

Up the coast in New Jersey, a Black Guillemot was notable at Barneget.

New Hampshire had a Bullock’s Oriole at a feeder in Stratham.

Maine also had a Bullock’s Oriole this week, in Camden.

In Ontario, a Mountain Bluebird has been seen by many in Durham. 

Missouri had a Rock Wren in Mercer. 

Arkansas also had a Rock Wren, this one in Pope. 

Notable for Louisiana and continuing a theme for the fall and winter, a Tropical Kingbird was seen in Baton Rouge.

Texas had an unusual combination of notable birds in Uvalde, including a Rufous-backed Robin (3) and a Eurasian Wigeon.

Good for Arizona was a Yellow-throated Warbler in Yavapai. 

Oregon’s 6th record of Vermilion Flycatcher was hanging out in Eugene.

British Columbia’s 3rd McKay’s Bunting was a very nice find in Delta.

And in Alaska, a Common Pochard (4) was seen on Adak.

—=====—

Omissions and errors are not intended, but if you find any please message blog AT aba.org and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. This post is meant to be an account of the most recently reported birds. Continuing birds not mentioned are likely included in previous editions listed here. Place names written in italics refer to counties/parishes.

Readers should note that none of these reports has yet been vetted by a records committee. All birders are urged to submit documentation of rare sightings to the appropriate state or provincial committees. For full analysis of these and other bird observations, subscribe to North American Birds, the richly illustrated journal of ornithological record published by the ABA.

In Georgia, a young Snail Kite in Charlton is the state’s long-anticipated 1st record. This [read more...]]]> Welcome to 2020! As is typically the case, we ease into the rare bird world  at the top of the year. But there are a couple nice state firsts for those birders looking to get their year lists off right.

In Georgia, a young Snail Kite in Charlton is the state’s long-anticipated 1st record. This is a particularly nice find in the light of the spate of vagrant Snail Kite records in the east at the end of last year, including a small handful in the Carolinas to the north.

Somewhat surprisingly, Delaware had its 1st living record of Western Tanager at Bombay Hook this week. The species is a fairly regular vagrant throughout the east, but no live bird had ever zeroed in on the tiny state until just recently.

In New Jersey, a noteworhty congregation of Ash-throated Flycatchers was seen at Sandy Hook, with at least five individuals present at one time.

In New York, a Townsend’s Warbler was spotted on a CBC in Nassau, the first on Long Island in some time.

Virginia had a Gray Kingbird in Chesapeake this week.

Notable for Florida was a single Purple Sandpiper that turned up near Jacksonville

Ontario also had a Purple Sandpiper this week, at Presqu’ile.

Always nice for the Lower 48, a Yellow-billed Loon was photographed in Arapahoe, Colorado.

And still fairly notable in the interior west of the continent, Nevada had a young Lesser Black-backed Gull in Washoe. 

—=====—

Omissions and errors are not intended, but if you find any please message blog AT aba.org and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. This post is meant to be an account of the most recently reported birds. Continuing birds not mentioned are likely included in previous editions listed here. Place names written in italics refer to counties/parishes.

Readers should note that none of these reports has yet been vetted by a records committee. All birders are urged to submit documentation of rare sightings to the appropriate state or provincial committees. For full analysis of these and other bird observations, subscribe to North American Birds, the richly illustrated journal of ornithological record published by the ABA.

• My kids are teenagers now, how’d that [read more...]]]>

• What: Great Horned Owl, Bubo virginianus
• When: Wednesday, December 18, 2019
• Where: Fountain Creek Regional Park, El Paso County, Colorado

Well, another decade is in the record books. Or it will be in a few hours. I hope yours was good. Some personal highlights for me:

• My kids are teenagers now, how’d that happen? (Shoutout to Kei on this one.)

• I uploaded one or more complete eBird checklists on each and every one of the 3,652 days of the decade.

• I baked a frozen pizza upside down, almost set the house on fire, and lived to tell about it.

Back to eBird for a moment. I can see how you might think it got to be a routine, the same old same old, day after day after day. But it really wasn’t. For one thing, bird populations changed a lot in the past decade. eBird itself has changed a lot, a whole lot, since Jan. 1, 2010. The world around me has changed, and so have I.

All those things were on my mind when I saw a pair of great horned owls on the Fountain Creek Christmas Bird Count (CBC) a little less than two weeks ago. Here’s the male:

The author and his companions saw objectively rarer birds on the Dec. 18, 2019, Fountain Creek Christmas Bird Count, but this adult male great horned owl stole the show. Video by © Ted Floyd.

You can hear two kinds of vertebrates in the audio: Bubo virginianus, the great horned owl, and Homo sapiens × H. neanderthalensis, the human being. A couple of quick comments about the owl, and then a bit more on the humans.

The owl. It’s a male. Males typically give two to five hoots, females five to eight. The field guides say the male hoot is lower-pitched, but that’s tricky. The thing is, the female’s hooting is more nasal, with more “partials”; those features create the subjective impression of being high-pitched. I’ve learned about this stuff in the past decade, thanks to an explosion of brand-new digital resources for recording and analyzing birdsong. Check out how the owl turns his head to the left after hooting; he did this consistently, the whole time we watched him, and so did the female. I’d honestly not noticed this behavior till that CBC morning. Thanks to technology, I’m noticing more about birds than ever before.

The humans. First off, we’re not H. sapiens. Not anymore. That convenient viewpoint went out the window this past decade. All modern humans, we now know, are, to a lesser or greater degree, infused with some amount of neanderthalensis genome. Like LWHGs (large white-headed gulls), we’re a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Which is great. It makes the human story richer and more vibrant than we ever knew. What I especially like about the human voices in this video is their shared sense of wonder at the owl. You get the impression they want to proclaim to the whole world that there’s an owl, an actual owl, right there along the trail, hooting like nobody’s business in broad daylight for all to see.

Which brings me around to the matter of what I view as the most felicitous development for birding in the 2010s. I think birders have gotten a lot better, this past decade, at sharing. Social media has had something to do with it; so have crowdsourced websites like eBird; young birder clubs have proliferated, and it’s gratifying to note the recent successes of such organizations as the Feminist Bird Club and QBNA. We see a great horned owl these days, and we share the good news far and wide and almost instantaneously.

Whether it’s your first encounter with the species or your five thousandth, the sighting of a great horned owl inevitably stops you in your tracks. Photo by © Ted Floyd.

The great horned owl is the most widespread and, you might say, the most ordinary owl in the ABA Area. But here’s the deal. Tweet a 7-second video of B. virginianus, and the entire twitterverse takes note. Not all that long ago, we birders were just a tad embarrassed by the star power of owls. As in: “Wouldn’t you rather take a look at the first-winter longspur in my scope?” We’d dig in: “It’s a good bird, you know, and a challenging ID.” But that’s changing. That’s changed. eBird and Twitter have had a role to play, as noted above, but something has changed within ourselves, too, this past decade, and that’s one of the happiest outcomes I can think of for birding.

We get longspurs on the Fountain Creek CBC, but these days we’re just as likely to say: “Check out that owl, that actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness owl, in the cottonwood directly ahead.” And this: “It’s a good bird, you know, a great bird, an absolutely spectacular bird, and it’s such a blessing to have it right here in front of us like this.”

“For Purple Mountain Majesties.” Katherine Lee Bates penned those immortal words on seeing Pikes Peak bathed in alpenglow, the very same vista that greeted birders at sunrise on the Dec. 18, 2019, Fountain Creek Christmas Bird Count. As the next decade dawns on the American birding landscape, new opportunities and new challenges await all of us. Photo by © Ted Floyd.

In a few more hours, the 2020s will commence. That can mean only one thing: Announcement of the 2020 ABA Bird of the Year is right around the corner. If you’re in or anywhere near Chicago, we hope you’ll attend the Jan. 12, 2012, reveal party, with special guest Tony Fitzpatrick. (Or even if you’re not in Chicago! Come to the windy—and snowy, and icy—city for excellent midwinter birding.) Anyhow, we’ve really outdone ourselves this year, with an extraordinary commission by one of the ABA Area’s most prominent contemporary artists.

If you’re looking for a clue about the identity of the 2020 Bird of the Year, you’ve come to the right place. That’s because I’m here to tell you that it may or may not be the great horned owl. I’m also here to tell you that, whatever it is, the 2020 Bird of the Year is a species like B. virginianus, the sort of bird you want to share with all the world. And you’ll have the opportunity to do so: The ABA will be creating social media space for uploading your stories about and experiences with the 2020 Bird of the Year.

A final thought. The great horned owl wasn’t really the Bird of the Decade. There was no such thing, not officially. But it might as well have been. Because I think that marvelous bird is emblematic of what birding became in the 2010s—and where I think it’s going in the 2020s and beyond.

Roads, Peoples, Birds, Mountaintops, & Billabongs by Dean Fisher

Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2018

500 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14925

In To See Every Bird on Earth, author Dan Koeppel, while chronicling the first globetrotting birders, describes Dean Fisher: “When I first heard about Fisher, [read more...]]]> A review by Frank Izaguirre

Roads, Peoples, Birds, Mountaintops, & Billabongs by Dean Fisher

Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2018

500 pages, hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14925

In To See Every Bird on Earth, author Dan Koeppel, while chronicling the first globetrotting birders, describes Dean Fisher: “When I first heard about Fisher, I didn’t believe he really existed, mostly because he’s not mentioned in the early accounts of listing that I’d seen.” For historians and enthusiasts of world listing and global Big Years, Fisher may be the most mystery-shrouded figure of the pantheon.

No more. 57 years after the completion of his three year round-the-world journey, Fisher has finally published an account of his and companion Noble Trenham’s avian-attuned odyssey, Roads, Peoples, Birds, Mountaintops, & Billabongs. For every birder who faithfully devotes a half-shelf or more to global listing chronicles like Noah Strycker’s Birding without Borders or Phoebe Snetsinger’s Birding on Borrowed Time, Fisher’s book is an instant must-own.

The quest begins in 1957, when Fisher obtains several days leave from his aircraft carrier, stationed off Japan, and attempts to summit Mt. Fuji. Already September, summiting season was closed, as the weather was unpredictable and the trail near the top was already covered in snow and ice, making the climb not only exceedingly dangerous but effectively impossible. Undeterred, Fisher attempts, very nearly succeeding before turning back amidst a series of hazardous and harrowing conditions. After this escapade, one of the carrier’s fighter pilots, Noble Trenham, approaches Fisher and asks if he would join him in traveling the world after the completion of their tours. They didn’t much know each other, but after hearing of Fisher’s Fuji attempt, Trenham had decided that was exactly the kind of spirit he wanted in a travel companion.

Departing from Southern California in an overweight Jeep in 1959, the two travel through Central and South America before ferrying their way to South Africa from Brazil. After crisscrossing the African continent, they explore Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and finally ferry themselves back to California in 1962 after three years on the road. Fisher birds along the entire route, diligently recording the many bird species he encounters. The book’s layout recalls Wild America, punctuated by Peterson’s own illustrations of his journey—many of them avian but also including other wildlife observations and cultural scenes—but on a grander and global scale. Physically, this is a big book, textbook-sized, perhaps a necessity for accomplishing all of Fisher’s objectives as the author: The story itself, interspersed with mostly color photos of his travels, including portraits and landscape shots, is over 400 pages long. Two appendices at the end of the book add an extra 70 pages, cataloguing the trip’s bird list, one by family and the other by date and country. In total, Fisher encountered 3,406 birds on his trip, 2,932 of them lifebirds.

Not surprisingly, owing to the largely unexplored nature of ornithology in many of the regions Fisher visited, some of his observations were their own thrilling scientific discoveries. One of the most astounding is his own personal description of a wren he observed at Machu Picchu, which turned out to be the Inca Wren, Thryothorus eisenmanni, first collected by scientists in 1974, named in 1985, and, according to The Birds of South America, the Oscine Passerines by Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor, first seen in 1965, a full six years after Fisher observed the species, making his description the actual first ever. In another incredible episode, Fisher goes on a fishing boat departing from the port of Valparaíso, Chile, and observes two prion species, Antarctic and Slender-billed, extending the known range of these two species 250 miles northward.

The author’s writing style maintains a pleasant balance between travel narrative, logistics and other details, and ornithological notes. Birds are mentioned on almost every page, and readers might best savor the book by keeping a relevant field guide (or perhaps a Google tab) handy to look up the birds he encounters. As may already be obvious, Fisher’s trip occurred before field guides existed for most of the countries he visited, and certainly before any site guides were available. It took him years, in some cases decades, to identify many of the species he had seen, which was only possible because of the extremely careful and thorough notes he took throughout his trip, especially in northern South America where he had essentially no resources to help with identification. Some of these notes are interwoven with the prose, giving the reader a sense of Fisher’s diligence and attunement to birding in largely unexplored territory, but never so much as to overwhelm the story.

Readers with aversions to the killing of birds and other wildlife should know there is a fair bit of it in Fisher’s writing, sometimes for food, other times for scientific collecting, and occasionally even for pleasure, as when Fisher and Trenham go on safari with the goal of shooting a zebra for its skin, although such episodes are notably in the service of illuminating the contours of travel in that day and age. Fisher’s habit of photographing people who very strongly did not want to be photographed, which occasionally gets him into life-threatening situations, can be similarly difficult to work through. The author also has a habit of ending paragraphs with phrases like “Life was an adventure!” or “Our spirits descended to an all time low,” giving the narrative something of a journal-like quality, although it is not strictly speaking a journal. After reading about the seemingly endless string of car problems and correspondingly even bigger problems of seeking out adequate repairs on the road, one is left feeling relieved that Fisher was able to go birding as a form of stress-relief.

Car troubles are not even the most trying moments of the trip. Fisher’s other misadventures include a drunken Colombian federal agent pointing a gun at his temple, a group of Masai surrounding him with pointed spears and knives, being arrested for “spying” (birding) in Jordan, and being arrested again in Iraq for illegally attempting to bring a shotgun and his ceremonial Navy sword into the country. Additionally, Fisher and Trenham drive across what might be reasonably perceived as such unwelcoming places as the Sahara Desert, the Soviet Union, and Afghanistan. The lows are low, even terrifying, but the highs soar, which include Fisher’s introduction, upon his arrival in Australia, to one Laurie Weaver, whom he falls in love with and marries within just a few months of meeting.

Much like Kenn Kaufman’s unique Big Year, Fisher’s global birding effort will probably never be replicated. The publication of Roads, Peoples, Birds, Mountaintops, & Billabongs is a wonderful moment for birding, the illumination of an obscured near-legend of birding history. Like Fisher and Trenham’s own overweight Jeep, this sturdy book will safely transport you to not just faraway lands filled with the unknown, but to an era of birding that retains its own air of mystique.

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Frank Izaguirre is the Books and Media Reviews Editor at Birding magazine and a PhD candidate in English at West Virginia University, where he is dissertating on how field guides have shaped environmental values in America. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with his wife, Adrienne.