In late May we took what was likely our last guided birding trip ever, in the form of a three-day outing around the Valencia and Alicante regions of Spain. Why “last”? Well, my life list now stands at 5,044 species, and while I welcome the idea of adding more to it, it is hardly a … More Winged Beauties in Spain and Rome
Pelagic Publishing, based in the UK, is set to release my book, The Physics of Birds and Birding, on May 20. Here’s the Table of Contents: Preface : Looking Up1 At the Feeder: Birds, Mathematics and Symmetry2 In the Garden: Hummingbirds, Flowers and Forces3 On the Open Seas: Length Scales, Migration and Molecules4 In a … More The Physics of Birds and Birding: The Sounds, Colors and Movements of Birds, and Our Tools for Watching Them
It was a pleasure to be interviewed along with Martha Steele and Jerry Berrier, two totally blind birders that I am happy to call my friends. We discuss our experiences of enjoying birds with vision loss here: https://thomasconry.podbean.com/e/bird-watching-while-blind-join-the-movement/
We must have bought this game back in 1993 or 1994. You cannot find it anymore, except on eBay. The date on the box is 1990… 35 years ago! The passage of time certainly seems to accelerate as you get older. It was called The Birding Game with Roger Tory Peterson. It was very much … More The Birding Game, Anki, and Dragonflies
My wife Claire is a wildlife biologist by training and a much better birder than I am. She started as a child, whereas I didn’t notice birds until I was 26. She has the eyesight of a hawk, while I have a severe visual handicap. Yet, she does few things that most birders do. She … More Un-bird-end by What has Bin: No More eBird for this Birder
Edit: I recently added an article on the physics of parabolic microphone gain: LINK. When I was twelve I discovered astronomy and made my first optics purchase, a cheap, awful refracting telescope made by the K-mart subsidiary Focal. I knew I needed a more serious instrument, and soon became obsessed with something called the Dynascope … More I Went Parabolic and Now There is No Going Back
(Update: I changed microphones.) During the winter I made the jump to 32-bit audio recording with the Zoom F3 field recorder. I couple this with a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun microphone. I’d originally purchased the Rode NTG5, but it was horribly noisy. I soon learned that I wasn’t the only person that had trouble with … More Making a More Convenient Shotgun Microphone Recording Rig
Edit: For a very thorough article on setting up a Raspberry Pi for this project, see this excellent post by Rich Hoeg. I invested in a better USB microphone to replace the $18 Cmteck desktop unit that I used for my first swag at the BirdNET Pi. I wanted an omnidirectional microphone with a 24-bit, … More Raspberry Pi Automated Bird Recording System, Improved
Edit: For a very thorough article on setting up a Raspberry Pi for this project, see this excellent post by Rich Hoeg. I have a Raspberry Pi that I’ve been tinkering with for years, learning its personality while looking for a useful, novel application for it. I can now report that it is employed full-time … More An Automated Bird Recognition System Using The Raspberry Pi
Lately I’ve been thinking about doing a bird outing where every species that I tick – whether I see it or hear it, or both – must have accompanying media capturing it. Photos, audio WAV files, or both. Perhaps video if the opportunity for a decent recording presents itself. Doing this won’t add too much … More Defining a Big Day with Media
Our backyard is typically very active with birds, especially juncos this time of year. There are plenty of feeders and spilled seed to keep everyone happy. Mid-morning today, Claire excitedly called out “Hawk in the back! Hawk in the back!” A Sharp-hinned Hawk had perched right above our suet feeder and was inspecting the grounds. … More Downy Woodpecker on the Down-low
Scanning the snowy ground around our house today, as I am wont to do every hour or so, in hopes of finding a redpoll or some new visitor, I glanced at a medium-sized, dark bird on the ground and thought, Blue Jay. We have tons of jays and very little else of that size. Then … More A Hankering For Some European Food
Suppose you’ve just set up a last-minute trip for birding in Manuas, Brazil. It will be your first time in that diverse region, which sits on the border of Amazonia and the Guianan Shield. There are hundreds of species that will be new for you, and so you will have far too many targets to … More Why Is Vision Considered More Important Than Hearing?
My eyes are terrible, and I rely on ear-birding to make up for it. I’ve always thought of my hearing as being good, other than having some obnoxious tinnitus resulting from decades of loud music. But today I got a clear demonstration that my ears are not what I thought they were. I’d walked over … More Recording What You Don’t Hear
When I was much younger and had normal eyesight, I worked as a line cook. I enjoyed the mental and physical challenge of handling dozens of orders at once. You had to constantly think about your next actions, and your hands, eyes, and feet were obliged to move quickly. Mistakes and inefficiency were cumulative; if … More Why I Go Further Away, Not Closer
This weekend we drove from the Twin Cities up to the eastern end of the U.P. of Michigan. To go look for a life bird that is rather hit-or-miss in northern Minnesota, but per eBird, very consistent along a particular dirt road near Paradise, MI. The bird in question was the Spruce Grouse, distributed through … More A Good Bird and a Dumb Birding Idea
A North Carolina birder and programmer, Michael Fogleman, has created a slick tool that utilizes eBird data in a novel way. It is located at https://www.michaelfogleman.com/birds/. You simply need to enter a location (you can even use zip code), a radius, and a month, and then the program will query eBird data and build a … More A Very Useful Bird Locator
The cost, in New Zealand currency, was $75 each. For my wife Claire and I, that would make it just over $100 in terms of US dollars. A fair price for a top life bird, if we could get it. Especially one as unique and rare as the Okarito Kiwi. It was January of 2019, … More Okarito Kiwi: A Most Unorthodox Birding Strategy
We are fortunate: we have the means to own a home. We bought it some fifteen years ago as it checked all the boxes for what our family needed at the time. It also had a feature that we were ambivalent about, something both enchanting and terrible: an east-facing living room wall, two stories high, … More How to Make Windows Safe for Birds
If you like electric guitars as well as birds, you know that the insanely playable Paul Reed Smith guitars provide a lovely intersection of these two things. Many of the instruments produced by this company, named for the master luthier that founded it, use bird images for the fretboard markings. We bought our son a … More The Birds On Paul Reed Smith Guitars
