Welcome to the August 2021 issue of Birding Online! Here, ABA members can enjoy extended online content, including gorgeous photos of Pileated Woodpeckers and Crested Caracaras, full-length Book and Media Reviews, and more.
In 2020, the ABA restructured its membership program so that its members now have online access to North American Birds, in addition to Birding. This means that North American Birds is now accessible to a wider audience than ever!
Podcast ➚
The second half of 2021 has been an exciting half-year for the ABA, not least of which because we got to welcome two new colleagues. Katinka Domen and Laura Guerard are the Coordinators of our Travel and Events program and our Young Birder programs respectively. Both come to their positions having read more >>
Vermont's 1st record of Bell's Vireo is an exciting find, along with a Brambling in Montana and an extraordinary Brown-headed Nuthatch in Kansas. All that and more in this week's Rare Bird Alert.
ABA Travel
When you travel with the ABA, you help build a better future for birds and birding. The ABA offers a carefully designed program of birding travel experiences that not only let experience and thrill of seeing great birds and traveling with friendly, interesting people, they give you the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting local on-the-ground conservation efforts as well as the ABA’s ongoing work to inspire all people to enjoy and protect wild birds.
Below is a sample of what we’ve got going. Click here to view all of our tours >>
My maternal grandfather died well before I was born, so all I got is stories. But stories can be powerful. Like this one: the story that my grandfather’s life would have been vastly different had he grown up with a Peterson field guide.
Species: American Tree Sparrow, Spizelloides arborea Question: What is your favorite personal patch list bird or the one you’d most like to add? Sometimes we manifest, don’t we? It was around this time last year—on the first really cold day of fall, when you feel it in yours bones for read more >>
It’s that time of year. The time when raptorphiles head to the mountains, the shores of large lakes, the coastal promontories, the riverine bluffs to watch for southbound raptors. However, with a bit of luck and a lot of scanning the sky, one can encounter raptors in active migration virtually anywhere on land.
Every summer, birders anxiously await publication of the “Check-list Supplement” by the American Ornithological Society’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds (a.k.a. the NACC). The supplement (available linked to here eventually) details revisions to the NACC’s Check-list. Here's a rundown of the more significant revisions.
We are living in an age of loss. In 2019, news headlines lamented the loss of 3 billion birds in North America in less than 50 years. Europe lost an estimated 421 million birds between 1980 and 2009. And we are seeing similar trends in other plant and animal groups.
As a person who reads often but tends to reach for a novel or self-help book, I found Owls of the Eastern Ice a fresh taste of how exciting a work of narrative nonfiction can be. My broad interest in birds, along with an intangible personal connection to owls, is...
A potential ABA Area first, a Lesson’s Seedeater, appeared at Pointe-aux-Outardes, Québec, an intriguing location where a misoriented South American migrant might be expected to turn up. As always with out-of-range seedeaters, especially the striking adult males, provenance must be considered, but could this bird plausibly be a wild vagrant?
Current ➚
In 2004, Mark Obmascik suddenly burst onto the birding scene with the release of his first book, The Big Year—and his fame escalated when Hollywood made it into a movie in 2011.
We are living in an age of loss. In 2019, news headlines lamented the loss of 3 billion birds in North America in less than 50 years. Europe lost an estimated 421 million birds between 1980 and 2009. And we are seeing similar trends in other plant and animal groups.
A potential ABA Area first, a Lesson’s Seedeater, appeared at Pointe-aux-Outardes, Québec, an intriguing location where a misoriented South American migrant might be expected to turn up. As always with out-of-range seedeaters, especially the striking adult males, provenance must be considered, but could this bird plausibly be a wild vagrant?
Current ➚
In 2004, Mark Obmascik suddenly burst onto the birding scene with the release of his first book, The Big Year—and his fame escalated when Hollywood made it into a movie in 2011.