Author: Pam Sinclair
Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Empidonax and Pewees
For many North American birders and ornithologists, the field identification of Empidonax flycatchers and their pewee cousins has long been one of the most difficult ID puzzles. Over the past six decades a range of top museum specialists, banders, and birders have spilled considerable ink on the subject in the scientific literature, field guides, and magazine articles, but this book is the first field guide to focus specifically on this often-perplexing group of flycatchers. Read More
Baby Bird Identification: A North American Guide
Linda Tuttle-Adams has taken on an under-appreciated and under-studied aspect of our birdlife in Baby Bird Identification: A North American Guide. Her work is a highly laudable illustrated guide for identifying hundreds of North American bird species in their early stages of life. The author helps the user through the identification process for young birds, from the just-hatched to the fledgling-stage, and she does it very well. Read More
Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration
If there is a perfect if unintended target demographic for Flight Paths, the debut book by science writer Rebecca Heisman, it may be the members and associates of the Association of Field Ornithologists. Subtitled "How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration," Heisman's book chronicles the emergence of the increasingly sophisticated techniques... Read More
Vultures of the World: Essential Ecology and Conservation
This book provides a very thorough and up-to-date scientific review of all aspects of the biology of a globally imperiled group of birds that arguably have a disproportionately large ecological role everywhere that they occur in the world. Not since the pesticide DDT drove a suite of apex predators to the brink of extinction in the middle decades of the twentieth century, has the survival of an entire group of birds been threatened by human use of a single chemical... Read More
Identification Guide to North American Birds, Part I (Second Edition)
For more than three decades, the “Pyle Guide” has been banders’ most comprehensive resource to aid in identifying, ageing, and sexing birds in the hand, and many banders consider their equipment incomplete without a copy. Part 1 of the Identification Guide to North American Birds, first published in 1997, contains meticulously detailed species accounts for all North American passerines and near-passerines with text describing all plumages, molt strategies and timing, and other identification, ageing, and sexing criteria. Read More
OC bimonthly news brief January-February 2023
The Ornithological Council is pleased to provide this bimonthly report covering activities in January and February 2023. The Ornithological Council’s mission is to: Our work focuses on animal welfare issues, permits, research funding, and other policies that affect ornithologists and ornithological societies. We greatly appreciate your support. Please contact Laura Bies with questions or concerns […] Read More
Halcyon Journey
Within the field of ornithology, there is a melding of different people who are connected by a common passion – birds. Our passions are as diverse as our obsessions for these creatures. Some of us simply love birds for their beauty, some for their fascinating natural history, and others for the adventures related to merely sharing a “place” with them. There are also those who desire to study, research, and reduce the complexities of birds to advance scientific knowledge and understand their contribution to the overall... Read More
AFO news | Remembering James Baird
James “Jim” Baird, President of the AFO (then the Northeast Bird Banding Association) from 1967 to 1971, passed away at the age of 97 on January 25th, 2023. Jim led a remarkable life. He was a prolific bird bander and observer of birds, authoring or co-authoring several formative publications on bird migration and other topics […] Read More
