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Where I Went Birding that Third Weekend of September 2020

10,000 Birds

The Salvia mexicana is sold in North America with the varietal name “Limelight” But this one was wild, native, and beautiful. While not my quite my first sighting of an Olive-sided Flycatcher for 2020, this difficult species is always a welcome find as it makes it way through Mexico to reach Central and South America.

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GUYANA–Simply Delicious Birding!

10,000 Birds

Before I delve into some of these avian treasures let me give you a few non-birding reasons to visit this gem of South America. If your Spanish or Portuguese is at the level of a 2-year-old bonobo like mine is, then you’ll probably be pleased to know that Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America.

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The Popular Barn Swallow

10,000 Birds

Growing up in South America, I distinctly recall the arrival of “the swallow with a deeply forked tail”. They fly from extreme northern North America to the southern tip of South America and are seldom seen perched during migration. Swallows have migrated north to south along the Americas for millennia.

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“Purple Martins” by Carl Sandburg

10,000 Birds

Before I delve into details about the poem I should probably share it with you so we have a text in common: Purple Martins If we were such and so, the same as these, maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, tumbling half over in the water mirrors, tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, tumbling our purple numbers.

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Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Southeastern North America and of Northeastern North America: A Review of Two Field Guides

10,000 Birds

You can blame the nice people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who took it upon themselves to send me a review copy of the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Southeastern North America by Seabrooke Leckie and David Beadle. Moth plates from Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Southeastern North America. Moths are more than bird food.

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Gulls Simplified: A Gull Book Review

10,000 Birds

Howell and Jon Dunn list “overall size and structure” as the fundamental first step in gull identification in their classic Gulls of the Americas (though they then go on to describe endless variations of plumage patterns). Five species are grouped in a chapter titled (4) Dark Horse Gulls (Rare or Unlikely Gulls).

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State of the Birds, Halloween Edition

10,000 Birds

So who is going to become America’s next top scary bird? Or maybe the dark horse of this race will be a bright bird we haven’t yet learned to fear. The rails, as a group, are strong contenders. Along with their colleagues the bitterns they are industry leaders in making unnerving noises in swamps at night.

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