This issue covers a range of topics and perspectives, all of which are about the intersection of people, birds, and the environment. Join us in learning about making birding & the outdoors accessible to all, birding in cemeteries, recent research, and more. And thank you to all of our 2021 donors!
Highly lauded field guide author David Sibley starts off our printed content with notes on the first known U.S. records and the identification of “Cozumel” Bananaquits. Oliver Komar presents results of his study on the field identification Pacific Parakeet and its close Middle American relatives. The Finch Research Network team reports on the 2020–2021 winter finch invasion. And as usual, we round out the fall issue of the magazine with the annual ABA Checklist Committee Report.
Podcast ➚
Birding editor Ted Floyd is back and ready to remember some birds! He joins host Nate Swick to put their fates in the hands of chance and a random number generator to find some birds to talk about woodpeckers, wrens, and warblers. Subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, and please read more >>
It'a April Fool's Day, and the urge to make up rare birds runs high on this day more than any other. But I will not succumb to that urge this day, and you can take the reports of the following birds to the bank. The Northern Lapwing (ABA Code 4) continues read more >>
When you travel with the ABA, you help build a better future for birds and birding. The ABA offers a carefully designed program of birding travel experiences that not only let experience and thrill of seeing great birds and traveling with friendly, interesting people, they give you the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting local on-the-ground conservation efforts as well as the ABA’s ongoing work to inspire all people to enjoy and protect wild birds.
Below is a sample of what we’ve got going. Click here to view all of our tours >>
We were on foot, the two of us, and we had a ways to go. The plan was to reach the marine preserve at low tide. We picked up the pace, trying in vain to avoid encounters with the unavoidable coast cholla which proliferates here.
The pinnacle of spring is when the first of year birds come hard and fast: when you’re getting 3¬¬¬¬¬-5+ birds you haven’t seen in months per day, sometimes even per hour or minute. The euphoric two-week period when this is possible, which varies across the US and Canada, is considered...
For the second consecutive month, the subject of the quiz photo is easily and quickly identifiable to family and, by most, to genus. However, despite field guides, the ABA-Area members of that genus do not make for quick and straightforward IDs...
The 2021−2022 invasion of Northern Lapwing into the ABA Area continues into spring as several more reports of this striking Palearctic plover occurred in Mar 2022. Read all about the lapwings that turned up from Newfoundland and Labrador south to Virginia, as well as the weather phenomenon that brought them to the ABA Area.
Birders love discussing bird names: whether they’re accurate, whether they’re useful, what an unusual word means, who did the naming, whom the names honor, and if they should honor anyone at all. Bird name buffs of all types will enjoy and benefit from Gary H. Meiter’s Bird is the Word...
Growing up in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains stood to the east, beckoning me toward them with dramatic snow-capped peaks on clear winter and early spring mornings. Just as enticingly, early autumn evenings hosted ominous congregations of colossal thunderheads looming above the highest...
Every summer, birders anxiously await publication of the “Check-list Supplement” by the American Ornithological Society’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds (a.k.a. the NACC). The supplement (available linked to here eventually) details revisions to the NACC’s Check-list. Here's a rundown of the more significant revisions.
If you’ve had experiences with access in the outdoors, we would appreciate knowing about them.
Birders love discussing bird names: whether they’re accurate, whether they’re useful, what an unusual word means, who did the naming, whom the names honor, and if they should honor anyone at all. Bird name buffs of all types will enjoy and benefit from Gary H. Meiter’s Bird is the Word...
Every summer, birders anxiously await publication of the “Check-list Supplement” by the American Ornithological Society’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds (a.k.a. the NACC). The supplement (available linked to here eventually) details revisions to the NACC’s Check-list. Here's a rundown of the more significant revisions.
If you’ve had experiences with access in the outdoors, we would appreciate knowing about them.