Happy New Year from Birding magazine and the ABA! If you’re an ABA member, you should have received the print version of Birding by now. Be sure to check out the expanded online version of the magazine, too. Visit our members-only portal and browse full content in the December issue and in every issue for the past few years.
Everybody’s been talking about the Featured Photo in the print version of the December issue, and here’s what you’ve been waiting for: the full version of Peter Pyle’s good-naturedly notorious tutorial on identifying juvenile warblers. But wait!—would you rather first quiz yourself on these tricky warblers? Go to this two-page spread showing only the photos. Then you can read the full text of the article.
Vultures have a bad rap. They’re ungainly, unfeathered, and probably smelly. Actually, they’re beautiful, and that beauty is on full display in the expanded online version of Paul Hess’s wonderfully informative “News and Notes” column. See astonishing photos of Egyptian, Rüppell’s, Hooded, and other vultures, and learn the sobering story of their calamitous ongoing declines in Africa.
If vultures have a bad rap (see above), then four-letter codes have a REALLY bad rap. Yet they are undeniably useful. And, as Ed Pandolfino demonstrates in “Fun With Four-Letter Words: The Abbreviated Caper,” they can be downright funny. Laugh along with as you caper with Ed, and, if you need a “translation” of these four-letter words, that’s included with the expanded online version.
Birders aren’t all the same, that’s for sure. There are young birders, there are casual birders, and there are birders who find themselves in, say, Poland. And, to be sure, there are bird books for all of them! In this issue of Birding, Beth Guldseth reviews an Audubon biography for young readers; Carrie Laben reviews a satirical and important book on bird conservation, and Rick Wright reviews two new guides to eastern Europe.