An a Couple of Podcasts

Hey all I just wanted to post these here so I have them and don't forget them and maybe one day stumble upon them as an old man trying to remember what my voice once sounded like. 

I was honored to join Tommy Siegal and Billy Libby on their excellent Extremely Accurate Bird Songs podcast to talk about one of the world's gnarliest birds, the Osprey. Listen on Spotify here or Apple Podcasts here. 

 

 

I love this podcast. Tommy is a famous cartoonist, the author of the Extremely Accurate Birds calendars, and cartoons in the New Yorker and elsewhere. Billy Libby is a musician and composer and, incidentally but perhaps most importantly, is from Portland, Maine. It was great to join then and their Osprey song absolutely rips.

I was also honored to be asked to join the American Birding Association (every birder should be a member) for their This Month in Birding Podcast, along with birding luminaries Jennie Duberstein and Brodie Cass Talbot. 

 

We had a great talk, as always, and I was particularly proud of some of the hoped-for hybrids I came up with, including the Smooth Groove Ani (Groove-billed x Smooth-billed). Good times.

2019 Year in Review

My dear friends, we're rapidly hurtling towards the close of another calendar year (thanks Pope Gregory XIII, honestly the whole 'conduit to God' thing was impressive enough for me, inventing a whole new calendar seems like overkill...), and it seems like the perfect time to talk about some of the stuff I did.

2019 was a fun year (though not likely as fun for me as 1572 was for Cardinal Ugo Boncompagni, who was elected Pope and took the name Pope Gregory XIII). It wasn't my most productive, but I did a lot of different, enjoyable things. Let's take a look.

• In early January I published a piece about birding in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 at Audubon. I love that game, and played it for hours and hours this year, eventually achieving a nerdy 100% completion. I committed myself to the game, much like Pope Gregory XIII committed himself to putting into practice the recommendations of the Council of Trent. The piece was well-received, and was republished in the Guardian and got me an interview on German NPR. 


• I raked some muck in 2019, some birdy muck. In late 2018 I made the papers here in Maine for discovering that our state doesn't actually have an official state bird species, but rather an ambiguous "chickadee" (we have both Black-capped and Boreal). A state legislator took up the issue and introduced a bill to clarify the situation, and I was eventually hauled up to Augusta to testify in front of a legislative subcommittee about why this was an important issue (it is) and what the new state bird should be (Boreal). I felt like a big shot, like when Cardinal Boncompagni was sent by Pope Pious IV to investigate the Cardinal of Toledo! I was again asked onto NPR, in America this time. I wasn't convincing enough, however, and the bill died in the committee in March. 


• In April I spoke with Tim Kimmel, the Supervising Sound Editor on Game of Thrones, about how his team puts real thought into the birds singing in the background of that show, and I put together a field guide to the background birds of Westeros.  You know who else put thought into things? Pope Gregory XIII, who in 1580 commissioned artists, including Ignazio Danti, to complete works to decorate the Vatican and commissioned The Gallery of Maps.


• I was honored to appear in THREE episodes of the incredible new web series from Rob Meyer and hosted by Jason Ward, Birds of North America. I had a blast taking Jason and his brother Jeffrey and the one and only Rosemary Mosco around during a chilly Christmas Bird Count, and then I debated feral cats, the Trump Duck, and other important topics with Jason, and finally was included in the last video of Jason and Jeffrey tallying lifers in Maine. So much fun. 


• I was delighted in June to publish a fun article about fixing birdy pro sports logos in Deadspin, one of my favorite websites. Not the happiest of endings, though, as the website went belly-up thanks to disastrous mismanagement just a few months later, and I never got paid. I was disappointed, much like Pope Gregory XIII was disappointed when Thomas Stukeley joined his forces with those of King Sebastian of Portugal against Emperor Abdul Malik of Morocco after landing in Ireland to aid the Catholics against the Protestant plantations.


• I went birding in Newfoundland in July! Holy cow was that fun. I was guided by the incredible Jared Clarke of Bird the Rock, and joined by Ted Floyd and Nate Swick of the ABA and Jason Ward of Birds of North America. Nate interviewed us all for a great ABA podcast episode, and I shouted out the amazing sea watching at Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, where I had one of the absolute best birding experiences of my life. Most importantly, I finally got my lifer Thick-billed Murre, by 691st ABA bird! I was as excited as Pope Gregory XIII was in 1575 when he gave official status to the Congregation of the Oratory!


• I got another ABA lifer (#692) in September, a Great Skua from the Maine Audubon Bar Harbor Pelagic!


• The goofy insane Google Street View Birding group that I started on Facebook in Nov. 2018 has swelled to more than 2,700 members and are still out there finding new species in roadside images from all over the world. As of today we've collectively found 1,144 different species. That's a much larger number than the 34 cardinals in eight consistories Pope Gregory XIII created during his pontificate.


• With only a few days left in the year and a few possibilities left (I am in VA for a few days), I am at 272 ABA species for the year, a very modest improvement over the 268 I ended at last year and a far cry from the 400+ I made in the pre-kid years. I haven't had a real birding trip in two years now (other than Newfoundland, which was incredible but wasn't a really high species count area), but that's changing in 2020. I've been asked to speak at the Laredo Birding Festival in February (please come see me! We can hang out!) and also just bought tickets for a week with buddies in Ecuador in March. Follow here or Twitter or wherever to follow along.

That's it! Love to you all. And, as Pope Gregory XIII said as he laid on his death bed in early April 585: "Thanks for reading my blog."

Deadspin logo piece - Responses

I published a fun piece on Deadspin.com this week about fixing the birds pro sports logos. I worked with Ashley Anderson of Hidden Stash Art on the artwork, and she did a fantastic job.

There's been a pretty good reception for the piece so far (as a longtime Deadspin reader I know it's a tough crowd), but there have been a few recurring comments on the article and social that I want to address here.

1. The Falcons logo making an F

There's a long and delightful tradition of sports logos sneakily incorporating letters into the design. The all-time best example was the logo for the Milwaukee Brewers, which used an "m" and a "b" to make a baseball glove. I am all for secret letters. Except when they don't make any sense. 

Part of the problem I have with the Falcons logo is that there's that weird leg sticking out in front. It's unnatural and unnecessary. A bunch of people said it was there because it turns the logo into an F. Here's the best illustration of that effect I could find on the internet, from SB Nation:

Uh I guess? I guess that's an F? It's sort of a long stick with two things moving off to the right in a general F pattern? So, OK, the body makes an F, but please grant me that it is a terrible F. 

But here's the thing: You don't need to make an F when you are showing a falcon. It's a picture of a Falcon. This isn't a children's book. If you want to incorporate a letter, incorporate an A, for Atlanta! If there was a team called the Oklahoma Zebras, you wouldn't have a picture of a zebra with a hidden Z...it's already a zebra! You know what it is! This whole thing sucks, please fix it.

2. The Falcon logo has its foot out because they have their feet out when pouncing on prey

A bunch of people said that it was normal for a falcon to have its foot out because that's how they attack prey. Yeah, sure, falcons use their feet to attack prey...but not with their wings down! Falcons sweep their wings back to extend their feet when they attack. The bird in the logo is sweeping its wings down. Completely unnatural.

3. The Arizona Cardinals Should Be The Arizona Pyrrhuloxias Instead

Hell yes, hell yes they should. I don't care that no one would be able to pronounce it.

4. I Should Have Included the Toronto Raptors Because Dinosaurs Are Birds

Congrats to the 2018-19 NBA World Champs! I hope Kawhi stays! Anyway, yeah birds are dinosaurs, but dinosaurs aren't birds. Thanks.

Okay that's about all thanks for reading stay in school don't do drugs vote! support your local library and give to environmental causes bye. 

Birds of North America -- DEBATE!

We filmed more than just the one episode when Jason and Jeffrey Ward were in town. Director Rob Meyer also made Jason and I face off for a debate on birding's hottest topics!

What do we do about cats?

What insults can we hurl at the Mandarin Duck?

What should we do about rare owl sightings?

THESE ANSWERS AND MORE BELOW!

Maine Voices Live -- June 4

For anyone in the southern Maine area who wants to come watch me and my Maine Audubon pal Doug Hitchcox talk about birding and birds and Maine and youth and travel and controversy and vagrants and whatever else we can come up with, please join us in Portland on June 4 for Maine Voices Live.

Thanks in large part to the interest of reporter Deirdre Fleming, the Portland Press Herald provides a ton of great content about birds in Maine. She's written about the state bird story I mucked up, covered the Great Black Hawk and lots of other vagrants (I'm trying to get them to stop using the "birders flock" headline cliche), and other cool bird stories that don't typically make major newspapers.

And now she's going to interview Doug and me about all this stuff, and more, on stage in front of a live audience. Buy your tickets and come join us!

RANKS II

MORE RANKS

-Breasted Birds

10. Red-breasted Merganser 

9.  Spot-breasted Oriole
8.  Red-breasted Sapsucker
7.  White-breasted Nuthatch
6.  Buff-breasted Flycatcher
5.  Rose-breasted Grosbeak
4.  Bay-breasted Warbler
3.  Yellow-breasted Chat
2.  Buff-breasted Sandpiper
1.  Red-breasted Nuthatch

-Billed Birds

23. Long-billed Thrasher
22. Ring-billed Gull
21. Thick-billed Murre
20. Thick-billed Kingbird
19. Thick-billed Vireo
18. Short-billed Dowitcher
17. Long-billed Dowitcher
16. Red-billed Tropicbird
15. Broad-billed Hummingbird
14. Long-billed Murrelet
13. Pied-billed Grebe
12. Smooth-billed Ani
11. Groove-billed Ani
10. Hook-billed Kite
9. Red-billed Pigeon
8. Black-billed Magpie
7. Yellow-billed Cuckoo
6. Curve-billed Thrasher
5. Yellow-billed Loon
4. Gull-billed Tern
3. Long-billed Curlew
2. Black-billed Cuckoo
1. Yellow-billed Magpie

-Capped Birds

8. Dusky-capped Flycatcher
7. Black-capped Gnatcatcher
6. Plain-capped Starthroat
5. Rufous-capped Warbler
4. Black-capped Petrel
3. Black-capped Vireo
2. Brown-capped Rosy-Finch
1. Black-capped Chickadee

Thank you. These rankings are 100% correct and not open for discussion because, as I said, they are perfect.

Hey! Do you know I'm still writing a weekly column for beginner birders over at Audubon.org?? It's a ton of fun, and it's called The Birdist's Rules of Birding!

Also, did you know that I was for some reason asked to include an essay in the radical new book Good Birders Still Don't Wear White? I was! Buy your copy here and feel good about yourself because a portion of each sale goes to the ABA!