During our trek across Georgia from Augusta to Columbus, we made a number of stops to do some birding where we could. In case you haven’t caught on, we’ve just started birding, and it’s much harder than I thought! However, we’re both enjoying it, and getting lots of extra walks in because of it.
We’d previously listened to Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper, which we both really enjoyed (though it’s more autobiographical than bird-focused — Cooper is the Central Park birder involved in a racially charged incident). It had some helpful tips, which we enhanced by listening to National Geographic Birding Basics: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Great Bird-watching by Noah Strycker. And that led Doug to purchase The Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley, because who doesn’t buy hard-cover books when they live in a van? (Those are all affiliate links, BTW.)
Anyway, here’s some of the pictures I liked best – for each of these I probably have 50 pictures of very fuzzy birds/partial birds/birds facing the wrong direction/spots where a bird had been but is no longer – ha ha! The cover photo is a line-up of cormorants.
Great post! Love the pictures & comments. The mockingbird picture most surprised me because I thought mockingbirds were black or dark colored.
Happy birding!
From the back/side they are dark gray and black. But one thing that birding will teach you is that there’s approximately 8,000 variations per bird; it’s much more challenging than I thought!