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Laura Erickson has posted a great overview/history of North American field guides on her blog.

We have a winner in the ABA giveaway. Congrats to Eva, of The Flying Mullet, who just won a copy of The Birds of Panama: A Field Guide. Here’s hoping you enjoy your ABA membership and find the field guide helpful!

The Birds of Panama: A Field Guide, by George R. Angehr and Robert Dean, is a very nice guide to the incredible birds found in Panama. If I’m ever lucky enough to bird there, it will always be on my person.

Want a copy for free? Then join the American Birding Association (or renew if you’re already a member). The first person to forward me proof of joining gets the book. Just email me the confirmation email from the ABA (with any payment information removed, of course). For it to count, you need to join/renew after this is posted on my site.

Why the ABA? I’ve been a member for a while now, and feel strongly that they have something to offer any North American birder – beginner to expert. Right now, that’s mostly in the form of their wonderful publications. But I also believe they have a strong potential to advocate for birders. For them to do that, though, they need members. The organization has been in a rough patch recently, but they seem to be headed in the right direction now under the leadership of a new president.

A tip of the hat to the Birdchick podcast for planting the idea for this in my head.

The Birder’s Library has another copy of The Great Penguin Rescue to give away.

To enter this time, go to the North American Birding Forum and reply to this thread. The contest ends Saturday, December 18th, at midnight eastern.

Good luck!

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Free Press, respectively, I have copies of The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America and The Great Penguin Rescue to give away.

How to win: Simply “Like” the Birder’s Library page on Facebook. Make sure you do so by Sunday, December 5. On Sunday evening I’ll choose one of the page’s fans at random to win a copy of BOTH books, and a second one to get The Great Penguin Rescue.

If you don’t have a Facebook account, never fear, there will be another way to win. Keep watch for more details.

If someone from outside the US or Canada wins, you may have to help out on the shipping, depending on how much it costs. (Sorry)

Good luck!!

Earlier today, Corey of 10,000 Birds posed some interesting questions about bird books. You should head over there and read the entire thing, but it basically boils down to: why do we birders have so many books about birds?

Besides the obvious answer that it allows crazy, obsessive types the excuse to create entire websites devoted to them, it’s a good question. Of course, you have to start with field guides. We legitimately need them for identification, and since birders tend to travel all over the place the field guides can really pile up. But even then, we aren’t satisfied with just one field guide. We need a guide that utilizes paintings as well as one that uses photographs, a larger guide that encompasses the entire continent and smaller regional guides, all-encompassing guides and family-specific ones.

But even so, field guides make up a relatively small portion of my birding library. So why have all the rest? Corey postulates two reasons, and both apply in my case. The first is that I want to learn all I can about birds. That includes how to identify them, obviously. But I also want to know about their biology and behavior. Birds are endlessly fascinating; you can read all you want but you’ll never know it all. Three of the books I’ve read recently have dealt with this, and I learned many interesting things from each one (National Geographic Bird Coloration, The Private Lives of Birds, and Molt in North American Birds).

The other reason Corey gives why birders may be such bibliophiles is that we tend to be a bit obsessive. We have lists for everything else, why not books we’ve read? This is definitely me. I’ve always been a collector. As a kid, it was Star Wars and Batman toys, baseball cards, and comic books. Now it’s bird books (as well as movie, comic, and baseball memorabilia – I don’t think I’ll ever grow up). I’ve wondered if my collector’s mentality is one of the things that attracted me to birding in the first place. Listing is, after all, just another word for collecting.

The final reason that I think I have so many bird books is that I simply enjoy reading about birds and birding, beyond reading for knowledge. I love big year-type accounts and other birding narratives. You’d think that reading about someone else birding would be the most boring thing in the world, but I devour it. I’d wager that the appeal of the numerous bird-art books is readily apparent. And then there’s anything written by Pete Dunne…you get the point.

I don’t think I ever stood a chance. My predisposition to collect, life-long love of reading, and the fact that a bird book got me into birding all conspired to make me a bird book lover. I’m glad that I’m not the only one.

I feel bad for not having posted much lately, everything’s just been so busy. But at least there are a couple of guys out there working hard to bring you news and information on some books….

• Jack Holloway has been feverishly updating his Avian Books site. He has been going through his extensive listings, updating them with scans and excerpts from the book, and adding brief notes. He has a TON of books listed. If you’re looking for books on a particular geographic region or subject, check out his site and you’ll likely find what you’re looking for.
• Ian Paulsen summarizes new and upcoming natural history titles in his The Birdbooker Report. This is a good place to go to see what’s new.

… 20 pages of bird book review-ey goodness! That’s right, the latest issue of Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association (ABA), contains reviews of 12 books, covering a total of 20 pages.

And I wish I could write reviews as well as these people do.

Of course, this issue is an aberration; apparently, there was a backlog of reviews to be published and the editor decided to make this a special issue. Most issues usually review “just” 2-4 books.

In addition to all of these reviews, you also get in-depth looks at Harlan’s and Krider’s Red-tailed Hawks, a great article by Donald Kroodsma (author of The Singing Life of Birds and Birdsong by the Seasons), and more.

I subscribe to ten or so bird-related publications. Birding is the one I look forward to the most. If you are not a member of the ABA, I would urge you to join. I consider it worthwhile just to receive Birding, but you’ll also get the Winging It newsletter (also a great publication), while also supporting conservation programs.

The Birder’s Library is proud to team up with the 10,000 Birds Conservation Club to give away two great books – Falcons of North America and Prairie Spring: A Journey Into the Heart of a Season.

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  Falcons, by Kate Davis, is an overview of the biology and ecology of these charismatic birds, focusing on the six North American species. Accompanying the text is a ton of incredible photos, some of which are just unbelievable. Full Review

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  Prairie Spring is another great read from Pete Dunne. Dunne takes the reader along on a tour of the North American prairie in spring. Dunne is one of my favorite authors, and does not disappoint here. Full Review. Note: this is an advance reading copy paperback.

So how can you win them?

1. Be a member of the 10,000 Birds Conservation Club
2. Follow the instructions here

Membership in the Conservation Club costs $25 per year. Back in December, I wrote about the benefits of joining the Club. This is a great way for birders to do something to help birds in trouble. Plus, you get to enter great contests like this one! They’ve already given away over a dozen prizes, and have even more contests open right now. If you win just one contest, you’ll get your money’s worth. And even if not, you’ll be supporting a very innovative approach to help out worthy causes, namely the birds that we all love.

…I’ll finally be able to post my review of Birding from the Hip. I’d hoped to have done so last week, but computer problems keep popping up. If it weren’t for computers I wouldn’t have my job, but still, they can aggravate me to no end. In the meantime, just wanted to mention that I really enjoyed the book, and think it’s well worth a read.

Another thing that’s well worthwhile are the Watching Warblers and Watching Warblers WEST DVDs from Birdfilms. The video footage is just amazing; it blew me away. A full review is forthcoming. That is, if I can thwart my computer’s evil plans.