On April 27, 2018, I will be 61 years old. Yikes! On my 11th birthday, I got a pair of binoculars and a bird field guide. So generally I consider that this is when I became a 'birder" since I also became serious about keeping a "life list", which reached 300 species just after my 19th birthday, a Yellow-headed Blackbird in my uncle's back yard in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As my 50th year of birding begins, there are two ways that I plan to celebrate. The first is the publication of
A Field Guide to Birds of Michigan by the American Birding Association. While I have made significant writing contributions to six books before this, enough to have my name on the covers, this is the first book that I have completely authored myself, and it is greatly enhanced by photos mainly by Brian Small and a few other photographers, including Michigan's own Darlene Friedman. I have received advance copies, but the publication date is expected to be April 25. It is available from
ABA Sales/Buteo Books. I have scanned a few pages, shown below, and more details are available
here. Click on the images below to enlarge them enough to read the text.
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| Front Cover |
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| Back Cover |
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| Inside front and back covers |
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| Sample text from Introduction |
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| Sample species account |
I think this book is an excellent resource for beginning and intermediate birders.
My next "celebration" will be a birding/photography trip to northern
Peru in mid-July to see the Marvelous Spatuletail hummingbird, among
many others. I am hoping to update my blog during that trip as often as
time, and connections, will permit. Stay tuned.
