Are you sitting down to eat a turkey later today? Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the USA instead of the actual choice of the bald eagle. He wrote to his daughter thus: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our…
Tag: USA
Bits, some bits
went to London on the train from Peterborough on Thursday and saw 3 cuckoos got a reply from NE re Walshaw Moor – will blog later this week spent ages on Friday evening looking at a lone wader in vegetation and gloomy light wondering whether it was a Temminck stint – and it wasn’t, it…
Have a look at these three short films
26 seconds worth of the Earth heating up 2 minutes of We miss you – I won’t say anything otherwise I might spoil it for you 33 minutes but you get the gist from the first few moments and then it’s up to you whether you stay with it – US farmers talking about local…
Use them!
On one of the last day’s of my trip to the USA I watched a killdeer calling in alarm as a man, unwittingly I think, disturbed the bird from its chicks. The bird’s cries cut through the mist of the June Gloom on the California coast – I won’t forget the sound of them as…
Are all Americans stupid?
I am, of course, only referring to American bird species. I ask the question because of a conversation I had back at the Bird Fair but first let me tell you about the Carolina parakeet. The Carolina parakeet was a native north American parrot that was widespread in the east of the USA when the…
Rating your science
As a BTO member I recently got an email full of interesting information about that excellent organisation and including a link on the differences between the BTO and the RSPB. The impression you might get from this is that the BTO does the science and the RSPB uses the BTO’s science to change the world. …
Bird list USA
This is just a list of birds I saw in the USA between 3 May and 15 June. If you are an American birder and think there is anything odd about this list – things I should have seen but haven’t listed or things I claim to have seen but seem very unlikely – then…
And finally?
So after 6 weeks (slightly more), 10,000 miles by car (slightly less), 270 bird species (slightly more) and 100 ‘lifers’ (more), what’s it all been for?? Well, this was a holiday so it was about relaxing and I relaxed, but it was a holiday only possible after I gave up the well-paid post of RSPB…
Flagstaff to the Ocean
I’m writing this with the sound of the Pacific waves near Carlsbad, California in my ears. I could live in Flagstaff it’s the most agreeable American town I’ve met. It provided me with breakfast in the Grand Canyon Diner, whose waitress was a bit slow, and whose booths seemed full of English people – me and…
Flagstaff
I drove into Flagstaff on a fragment of the ‘historic’ Route 66, which I last touched near its other end south of Chicago many days ago, hoping it would be nice as my ‘Rough Guide’ says it is – and it is. I’ve spent very little time in towns you would have heard of since New York and it’s…