Welcome to the expanded online edition of the April 2015 issue of Birding. To get straight to the April issue online, click on this link:
Log in, and you’ll be taken to a page with covers from all the recent issues of Birding. Click on the April 2015 cover, with the Lazuli Bunting photographed by Marie Read. Open the magazine, and start reading!
Flip through the magazine just as you would with the “normal” print version. Or, you can go to the Table of Contents, click on any title of interest, and jump straight to where you want to be.
For example, let’s click on p. 22. There you’ll find the complete text of a special feature on the 50 interviews we’ve carried on the pages of Birding. All the images, too. Same thing with our regular “Milestones” feature. Just click on p. 12, and there you are: all the text and all the images from the print version of the April 2015 Birding.
Chances are, you don’t carry Birding with you everywhere you go. But chances are, increasingly these days, that you do carry your phone with you everywhere you go. So if you find yourself away from your print copy of Birding, you can enjoy these and other features online. Just flip through the pages as you would with the print copy of the magazine.
That was easy! For a (very) slightly more challenging application, click on p. 26: Paul Hess’s “News and Notes” column. You’ll find the content that appears in the print version of the April Birding (articles on Golden-winged Warblers and Savannah Sparrows)—and then some: an extensive review of a new field mark for separating Yellow-bellied Flycatchers from the Pacific-slope and Cordilleran flycatchers in the “Western” Flycatcher complex.
Why did we do that? Why did we put the flycatcher content online? One reason, of course, has to do with space. There are practical constraints on how much we can put in print, but not online. But there’s something else. The primary resources for this flycatcher content are chiefly online. Hess cites many online sources in his article, and it’s frustrating at best to keyboard in URLs that you read about in print. In the online version, though, you just click on the URLs, and—voila!—you have immediate access to the primary literature.
Now let’s click on p. 40: Donna Dittmann and coauthors’ article on the diverse economic and environmental interests that are teeming up to promote bird conservation in Louisiana. The issues are complex, and the images are legion. Dittmann and coauthors submitted 23 images, and we really wanted to use all of them. Dittmann and coauthors also submitted several lengthy but eminently interesting sidebars—practically mini-articles that we couldn’t justify eliminating.
The solution to this surfeit of content? We’ve put it all online. Yes, all of it. We really think it’s worth it. We’ve never articles this long—not even back in the days of print-only Birding. But we can do it online.
Next let’s click on p. 64, where you’ll find the full text of the three book reviews. Birding book reviews are lively and opinionated, and that’s especially the case this issue. Do you agree with the reviewers? Then bop on over to The ABA Blog, and join the discussion about these books, still under way. Or maybe you just want to buy the book? Then just follow the links at The ABA Blog—you’ll be taken straight to ABA Sales–Buteo Books, where your purchases support the ABA’s initiatives in conservation, education, and publications.
Finally, the Featured Photo. For Tony Leukering’s illuminating and definitive analysis, just click on p. 58. Leukering is one of the great bird ID educators of our time, and we encourage you to spend time with his text. But there’s also value in working out these challenging IDs by ourselves or in group settings. If you seek the former, click on p. 72, where you’ll find the Featured Photo—but not analysis. See what you can do on your own. And if you desire the latter experience, visit The ABA Blog, where you’ll find discussion and conversation, still ongoing, regarding the Featured Photo.
For full access to the expanded online edition of Birding, plus all the other benefits of an ABA membership, please join today.
