About

The Author

Hi, my name is Grant McCreary, and I’m a bird bookaholic…

I started birding relatively recently – in the summer of 2003. But I became hooked very quickly. I’ve read everything that I can get my hands on and have tried to get out birding as much as possible. I’ve been able to bird my home state of Georgia fairly extensively. I’ve also been fortunate to get away to some hotpots such as Southeast Arizona, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and Costa Rica. On a trip to Colorado in April 2007 I broke the 500 species mark for the ABA area. But I have to admit that I’m no expert. I am just a regular birder who happens to love both birds and books.

The Site

I have read many, many bird books and I am constantly getting more. But I’ve noticed that in some cases it is very hard to find any information on a book that I am interested in. There are some very good resources available online (see the links page), but they don’t always have what I’m looking for. Additionally, Amazon.com has many user reviews and is usually very useful for popular books like North American field guides. However, more obscure books often don’t get any reviews. Finally, there are print reviews such as those in birding magazines. These are usually well written (and by a real expert!), and can be very helpful. But due to the nature of the format by the time the review is printed the item being reviewed has often been available for quite some time, and I’ve already broken down and bought it anyway.

I created this site to try to rectify this situation. I wanted to give other birders a resource that I myself would find useful. I had been kicking around the idea of doing something like this for a while, even though I had never created a website nor written a book review. But it wasn’t until discussing websites with a friend (Ken Blankenship, who created a great Georgia birding website) that I finally decided to follow through with it.

This site was first published December, 2006.

The author with a Chestnut-mandibled Toucan.