Ben Franklin, Eagles, and Turkeys

Check out my latest piece for Slate.com about Ben Franklin's grousing about eagles and turkeys on the Great Seal of the United States.  Hope you enjoy!

Richard Crossley's Advertising Career

I'm sure you've seen the innovative new field guides from Richard Crossley.  They're great, and you should all go here to purchase them.

What you may have missed, though, is that Crossley's groundbreaking collage style did not begin with field guides.  Crossley worked out his stylistic kinks during his career in the advertising industry.  I've done some deep research and found some of Crossley's ads, all of which show his style in development.

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Scary Birding Stories!

Halloween is the best holiday.  No honoring anything, no family obligations, no guilt trips, no presents to buy, just good old fashioned scaring each other and eating candy.  Other than Valentine's Day (which is a baloney holiday cooked up by greeting card companies), Halloween is the only holiday that honors an emotion: fear.  It's always seemed incredible to me that we would dedicate a day to scaring the crap out of each other, and that's part of the reason I love it.

I'm not sure what emotion that word "birder" evokes in non-birders.  Unfortunately, it's probably "bored" or something.  Those people are dumb.  Birders experience the full spectrum of emotions: joy, disappointment, envy, lust, hope, anxiety, doubt, and, yes, fear.  To prove it, I asked some birding friends to share with me their scariest birding stories.  Read them below...IF YOU DARE!

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Let's Rename Some Birds After Different People

John Cassin.  Georg Steller.  Edward Harris.  John Kirk Townsend.  All of these guys have a couple things in common.  First, they were each top-notch naturalists in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Second, each are honored in the common names of multiple North American birds.  Third, if it weren't for these species, current birders would probably say these guys' names a lot less frequently.

Having a species named after you is scientific immortality.  It's the highest honor a naturalist can recieve.  The naturalists listed above are each fully deserving of their species based on their contributions to scientific discovery, but it seems a problem remains - important scientific contributions to ornithology didn't stop in the 1800s.  There have been plenty of people deserving of having a species of American bird named after them, why should these guys get more than one?

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Spy Birds

I've noticed a couple of stories in the news recently about birds being detained in foreign countries, suspected of being spies.  Here is one from Egypt.  Here's another recent one from Turkey. 

In both of these cases, some folks saw a bird with tagged, either leg-banded or wearing a GPS backpack.  The average bird not typically being accessorized, these people became suspicious that the birds had more complicated backstories, and detained the birds so they could be checked out by the authorities.  In both cases, the birds were cleared of all "charges" and released.

These stories were represented as "News of the Odd" in the East, peppered with "in a case that ruffled feathers..." puns and "check out these wacky foreigners!" attitudes.  It's a frustrating condescension, because these stories tell me something much more interesting and sad about the current state of things.

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Birding the Great Salt Lake

I've just returned from an epic two-week work/vacation road trip to the Rocky Mountain West.  Salt Lake City, UT to Jackson, WY to Bozeman to Arco, ID back to Salt Lake City then to Park City before on to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in the south.  I'm jealous of myself just typing that.

Eared Grebes, mostly, from the Antelope Island Causeway

Though birding wasn't my primary activity, like any birder worth his salt I saw loads of great birds; birds an East Coaster like me rarely gets to spend time with.  Black-billed Magpies and Brewer's Blackbirds everywhere!  Pygmy Nuthatches!  Rock and Canyon Wrens!  Dippers!  Townsend's Solitaire!  Grace's Warbler!  Though I dipped on a bunch of possible lifers (mostly grouse), I did manage three: Trumpeter Swan outside Jackson, WY; Chukar on Antelope Island, UT; and, a FERRRUGGGGGGG!! Hawk outside of Arco, ID. 

I want to use this space to talk about the most impressive birding sites I saw on the trip: those along the Great Salt Lake.  Holy cow, you guys.  I was able to spend some time at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge on the north end of the lake, as well as at Antelope Island State Park.  Being by far the largest body of water in the West, the Great Salt Lake is a gathering point (for breeding and wintering) for millions of birds.  And I mean millions.  I don't think I've ever seen concentrations of birds like I saw out there.  What follows is going to be a lot of pictures of cool stuff.  Click to enlarge.

Look for Bear River MBR along the northeastern side of the Lake, and Antelope Island SP on the southeast, where that bison is.

 

 

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Slate Update

Hi folks-

I am traveling in the West (typing this from beautiful Bozeman, Montana) but I wanted to update with a couple articles I published on Slate recently.

The first is a book review/personal essay for Peter Doherty's Their Fate is Our Fate

The second is about faked sightings of supposedly extinct species

I hope you enjoy!  OK, off to find Gray Partridge in the morning.