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Informationen zum Autor LISA A. WHITE is executive editor of nature and field guides at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Boston, Massachusetts. PETE DUNNE forged a bond with nature as a child and has been studying hawks for more than forty years. He has written fifteen books and countless magazine and newspaper columns. He was the founding director of the Cape May Bird Observatory and now serves as New Jersey Audubon’s Birding Ambassador. He lives in Mauricetown, New Jersey. Klappentext In these 50 light and fun original essays, the biggest names in birding dispense advice to birders of every level, on topics ranging from feeding birds and cleaning binoculars to pishing and pelagic birding. Whether satirizing bird snobs or relating the traditions and taboos of the birding culture, each essay is as chock-full of helpful information as it is entertaining. Leseprobe FOREWORD I find myself in a very uncomfortable position here —and I don’t mean facing a computer screen with fingers dancing over the keyboard. Fact is, I write a lot— books, articles, columns, you name it. If the topic relates directly or tacitly to birds, chances are I’ve dabbled in it. No, my discomfort has nothing to do with any unfamiliarity. It has to do with direction. Almost always, when I sit down to write, I know precisely what I’m going to say and pretty much how I’m going to say it. This time I’m at a loss. I know what I’m supposed to do, and that is warm up readers for the great act to follow. But that is also the problem. How can any one writer hope to introduce a birding audience to the greatest compilation of birding know-how of all time? Okay, let’s start with what this foreword is not going to do. It is not going to beguile you with the hints, tricks, shortcuts, and advice that expert birders bring to bear. That is what the fifty contributors to this book have done: synthesize more than a hundred years of birding tradition and approximately twenty-five hundred cumulative years of birding experience. Who’s going to try to compete with that? This foreword is also not going to fall back on the old tried-and- true distraction employed by many writers in my position, which is to expound on my own experiences with birds, birding, and bird study. Look. I’ve written whole books filled with anecdotal bird stuff like that. You passed them by in order to buy this one (and I can’t gainsay your choice). But in searching for an angle, I do find that I have an insider’s insight that may pique a reader’s interest. It turns out that I know virtually all of the contributors to these pages, recognizing all as colleagues and knowing many as friends. Many writers have an aversion to speaking about themselves, so with the authority vested in me, I think it might be fun to offer readers a peek behind the writer’s mask and direct a descriptive word or two toward the contributing authors of Good Birders Don’t Wear White. Jon Dunn is a noted author and tour leader for WINGS and has been for many years the final word when it comes to tricky identifications. All photos of unidentified gulls and Empidonax flycatchers with borderline traits ultimately find their way into Jon’s hands. Jon is affable and serious, intellectually gifted, and boasts an array of interests (we share a passion for American history). Tens of thousands of birders are better birders because of Jon and his teaching skill. If you are not counted among them, you soon will be. Jessie Barry, at the tender age of thirteen, was a poster child for the American Birding Association. She and I appeared together in their membership brochure. The photo showed me pointing out a bird, Jessie looking on. I’ve always wanted to know what happened to the other hundred photos taken that day—the ones that showed Jessie pointing out birds to me. As memory serves, they were more representative ...
