The PhotoNaturalist

Description

All 70 of Kim Eckert’s Birding by Hindsight articles compiled into one volume (along with over 100 black and white photos). These articles originally appeared in The Loon

576 pages

6×9 inches (softcover)

$24.95

Buy Kim Eckert’s book and make money for the MOU (Minnesota Ornithologist’s Union)!…18 Years of Kim’s Birding By Hindsight articles for The Loon journal now in book form

When you purchase a copy of Kim’s book, Birding by Hindsight, $5 of the purchase price will be donated to the MOU.

Birding by Hindsight contains EVERY article Kim wrote for his popular column in The Loon from 1994 to the last installment in 2012…70 in total.

Topics cover many areas of identification (and misidentification) of Minnesota’s most confusing bird species. Another fun series of articles covers Kim’s predictions on what the next species to be added to the state list will be…Find out where Kim was right on, and what species are yet to be discovered within Minnesota’s borders.

The text is still incredibly relevant today…The text is timeless (well, most of it).

And Kim’s writing is both humorous and enlightening…a combination that makes reading each page a delight.

Makes a great gift for a birding friend as well

576 pages

Over 100 black and white bird photos

$24.95 + shipping

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One

Introduction: Birding by Hindsight

A Second Look at…

Honkers

Ducks

Swans

Swans (A Third Look)

Grouse

Loons & Grebes

Herons

Hawks

Mississippi Kite

Shorebirds

Dowitchers

Western (& Eastern) Sandpipers

Jaegers

Gulls

Thayer’s Gull

Doves

Owls

Hummingbirds

Flycatchers

Shrikes

Swallows

Fall Warblers

Sparrows

Meadowlarks

Blackbirds

Redpolls

Part Two

A Second Look at…

Bird Identification Books

National Geographic Guide

Identification References

Sibley Guide to Birds

Identification Resources

Last Ten Years (A Third Look)

Photographs

Journals

Crossley ID Guide

Part Three

A Second Look at…

Songs: Part 1

Songs: Part 2

Songs: Part 3

Songs: Part 4

Part Four

A Second Look at…

The Calendar

The Map

Ego, Id, and ID

Field Notes

Field Notes: Part 2

Field Notes (A Third Look)

MORC

MORC: Part 2

The F Word

Painted Buntings & Scissor-tailed Flycatchers

Hindsight

Measurements

Bird “Identifakation”

Behavior

Identity Theft

Escapes & Hybrids

Second Looks: Part 1

Second Looks: Part 2

MBW: Part 1

MBW: Part 2

Part Five

A Second Look at…

First State Records

First State Records: Part 2

Foresight

Splitting

Internet

Internet (A Third Look)

Internet (A Fourth Look)

Internet (Another Look)

The Last Ten Years

Part Six

A Second Look at…

The Last 50 Years

Kim’s Intro text from Birding by Hindsight…

The first installment of this Birding by Hindsight series appeared in the Winter

1994-95 issue of The Loon, journal of the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union.

The last was in the Spring 2012 issue. After seventy of these articles, second

looks at a variety of bird identification and distribution topics from a Minnesota

perspective, I sort of ran out of ideas seventeen years later and decided

to retire this column. The last installment, which looked back over my fifty

years of birding, seemed as good a way as any to end the series.

There are still some ID topics which have never been addressed and others in

need of updates. You might even notice the attempts at humor along the way,

along with some missing jokes and puns which still need to be told. After all,

these essays were intended to entertain as well as enlighten – and never meant

to take themselves too seriously.

It is now 54 years after my first feeble attempts to distinguish a crow from a

grackle, to learn that things other than ducks can swim, and Sparky Stensaas

has decided to compile all these columns into this one volume. As I work

with him in the final stages of this project, I find myself in Australia and

New Zealand, where almost every bird and family are new, the songs are

completely foreign to my ears, distribution and seasonal clues elude me. I now

find myself paging through the field guides picking out the closest thing in

the book – ignoring my own advice that I tried to pass on to others in these

essays.

What goes around comes around, they say, and again I am the complete novice

as I was in 1962.

—Kim Eckert