I have daydreamed about Cuban birds since I was eight years old. That’s when I discovered the book “Birds of the West Indies” by James Bond, with its fantastic line drawings by Earl Poole and truly spectacular color plates by Don Eckelberry (Amazon link). I was captivated by exotic species like Fernandina’s Flicker, Cuban Trogon, […]
Announcing Song Sleuth
I’m very excited to be able to announce the long-awaited launch of a new app – Song Sleuth – created by Wildlife Acoustics, Inc. It’s a bird song identification assistant, just a couple of taps and your iPhone will suggest what species of bird is singing. It covers nearly 200 of the most frequently heard […]
Song Sleuth tips – How to crop a recording
Song Sleuth main page Song Sleuth is a new bird song identification app, created by Wildlife Acoustics. Watch the detailed walk-through video You can find the app now in the iTunes app store. The Song Sleuth app can be very accurate, but it is also easily confused by extraneous sounds, and that can lead […]
A melanistic Downy Woodpecker
In early December 2016, David Pierce of Wildwood, Missouri, noticed an odd woodpecker at his feeder and took some really nice photos. I always marvel at the path these kinds of stories follow: Dave had to be looking carefully enough to notice the slight differences in this bird, make the effort to take some good […]
Fix for recent issues with Android app
Several users have had trouble with permissions in the Android version of the Sibley Birds app recently, and the developers at My Digital Earth looked into it. They have posted an updated version of the app in the Google Play store. That should resolve the issues for most users, but they also discovered that some […]
A white Great Blue Heron in Massachusetts
I wrote about white Great Blue Herons in 2007, and thanks to a recent comment there by David Ammerman alerting me to a whitish Great Blue Heron chick in a nest, I made the short trip to Bolton, MA yesterday (July 7, 2016). It was not hard to find the nest, and I was able […]
New Bird Puzzles made from Sibley Guides art
Two jigsaw puzzles are now available from Eurographics, featuring over 100 species of North American birds with images from the revised Sibley Guide to Birds. The same collage of species is shown in either a 1000 piece puzzle, or a larger (and more challenging) 2000 piece puzzle. 1000 piece puzzle: Order from Puzzle Warehouse 15.99 […]
The Mississippi Ornithological Society meeting
Thank you to the birders of Mississippi for a wonderful weekend April 28-29 around Oxford. Special thanks to the MOS, Delta Wind Birds, The Strawberry Plains Audubon Center, Wild Birds Unlimited of Jackson, and the other sponsors for making it all possible. The birding was excellent, as passing thunderstorms pushed migrants down and kept birds […]
The Arcata Godwit Days Festival, 2016
My time in Arcata, CA, taking part in the annual Godwit Days Festival, just wrapped up. The birding was fantastic, the weather could not have been better, and the people were outstanding. Thanks to everyone for making it happen. I only have a few photos to share, since photography was definitely not a priority for […]
Two new paintings for auction
I’ve just posted two more paintings for auction, a Bewick’s Wren and a Black-throated Green Warbler, adding to the two auctions that will be ending in the next few days. You can see the full listing of current auctions here, and more original art and prints are available for sale here.
