The field guide for people who hate birds
Posted by staff / May 2, 2017
Not everyone appreciates the slower-paced pleasure of bird-watching, nor the animals themselves. Fortunately, there’s now a field guide specifically designed for those with a beef against birds.
The issues of the Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America’s creator date back to childhood, as so many of our adult issues do. When assigned to write his first big homework assignment on the Golden Crowned Kinglet, he experienced the terror of academic failure when he couldn’t find the bird anywhere over Christmas break. Almost forty years later, he spotted the elusive creature out on a hike, but couldn’t get a picture because the darned thing kept flitting away.
Out of frustration was born the field guide.
Evening Grossbutt
This fat-billed little chunk-of-finch is usually found in the northern coniferous forest, but during the winter you basically can’t hide from it – then they appear erratically all over North America, and are well known for descending on bird feeders in noisy flocks to demolish your supply of sunflower seeds without so much as a “thank you.”Genus loves company!
Did you know that the International Ornithologists’ Union has this dumb grosbeak in the genus Hesperiphona, while the American Ornithologists’ Union places it under the genus Coccothraustes (the same genus the hawfinch)? Naturally, this raises the question, “Oh, my god, how am I even still awake?”
Full story at Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America via Kottke.
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