Stamp of Approval

When it comes to environmental issues, conservation is often common ground.

Although people have different opinions about the environment, many of them can get behind the idea of conserving resources. The Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp (better known as the Duck Stamp) is a great example of conservation's broad appeal.

For almost 80 years, the Duck Stamp has been a popular program that allows hunters and bird-watchers access to places where migratory birds congregate. Additionally, the money raised by the program supports conservation by providing funds to buy and set aside land.

The 2014 version of the Duck Stamp is out now and costs $15. To learn more about it and find out where to buy it, click on this story from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's blog, Round Robin.

While many environmental issues are contentious, conservation is something that many people support in one form or another. I think a big reason for this is that our connection with the environment is strong enough to help us see the need for such actions.

The Duck Stamp lets us enjoy and maintain that connection. That's why it continues to receive great support.

Sound Buy

Bird sounds have something special about them.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, one of the works that helped propel the modern environmental movement, took its name from the unnerving quiet that came from DDT's devastating impact on bird populations. An art exhibit in Sydney, Australia, plays the songs of birds that used to inhabit the city. Then, on a personal level, the song or call of a species I am familiar with is enough to give me a smile.

Bird sounds are also important for identification purposes, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a great collection of songs and calls from North American species. The lab is now making the complete set available for purchase as MP3 files. A smaller, less expensive collection is also available. Both can be purchased for a limited time at a discounted rate. For more information, check out this entry from the lab's Round Robin blog.

Bird sounds occupy an important place in our world, and getting to know them makes their impact all the more meaningful.

Learning on the Fly

The study of birds isn't just for ornithologists.

Because we interact with them so frequently, birds offer a lot of things to learn about our environment.

One of the best teachers about all things feathered is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The lab provides online courses and webinars on birds and bird-watching. Its newest offerings include webinars on waterfowl identification and tutorials for beginning birders. For more information about this online instruction, click here to read an entry from the lab's blog, Round Robin.

With resources like these, the next time a bird flies by the window might be the start of a lifelong study.

How I See It

I've found that pictures don't always match reality. This is especially true when it comes to using the images in bird field guides to identify a species I've see in the wild.

Many times, I've struggled over identification because the bird I saw seemed to have significant differences from the ones in the book. Now, I think I know why: The still images on the page capture the birds from an ideal perspective, unobscured with key identifiers in plain view, while the real-world encounter is usually brief and from a tricky angle.

As this entry from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Round Robin blog suggests, help is on the way for bird-watchers. Birder and photographer Richard Crossley is taking a new approach to bird guides by providing many images of each species from different angles and distances against a more natural backdrop. The pictures even present the species at different stages of its life.

Guides like this represent a great advance in bird identification. I wonder if e-books will be able to take it further by including motion.

Fledgling Birders

Nature or nurture? When it comes to our connection to nature, nurture helps.

I've probably always had an interest in birds. My family has recordings of my dad reading field guides to me when I was about four.

Still, bird-watching is something I've only recently taken up. In fact, I didn't really start to figure out just how much someone could do with bird-watching until a few years ago. Before then, I simply had not been made aware of that world. As I grew up, my family gave me plenty of chances to connect with nature. However, beyond our bird books, we didn't have a lot of access to bird-watching information.

That's why I think the latest offering from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is such a great thing. As explained in a blog post on Round Robin, the lab is working with the Black Swamp Bird Observatory to connect aspiring bird-watchers through the Young Birders Network.

The network gives students in high school a chance to start or join bird-watching clubs, share bird sightings, and learn about college and career opportunities related to birds. This is the kind of thing that gives wings to childhood interests.

For more information, visit the Young Birder Network on eBird.

The Spring Classic

Major League Baseball's World Series is nicknamed the Fall Classic. Well, the Spring Classic might just be the World Series of Birding.

Since 1984, bird-watching teams having been showing up in New Jersey each spring to identify as many bird species as they can in 24 hours and raise funds for bird organizations.

This year, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has two teams, each competing in a different category. The Redheads will be made up of some of the lab's students while the Anti-Petrels will compete in the carbon-neutral category, in which participants can move location only by bicycling or walking.

For more information about the World Series of Birding, click here. To get an update on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's teams, go to this entry from Round Robin, the lab's blog.

This one's for all the marbled godwits (shorebird). Let's play ball.

Life Partner

When I think about nature's impact on me, I realize it has given me quite a lot. What it has shared includes a piece of my life perspective, a place to find and compose myself, and, to some extent, my health.

These are not minor things, and they have helped lead me to where I am. Perhaps this is why I feel a partnership with nature and a need to give back to it.

The following video also talks about a partnership with nature and how the natural world has given us both resources and the inspiration to use them. Check it out:



I found the video on an entry from Round Robin, which is the blog of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.