The view from my office in my apartment is of the fence between our building and the house next door. It's not really an inspiring view, except that the fence attracts a lot of birds. Some of them I know and some I don't - I'm not a birder. But I don't like not knowing, even if I have no desire to take up ornithology in a general way. Often when I read books from 100 or 200 years ago, the writers describe nature with a specificity lost on many of today's readers. How many of us know wildflowers, for example? So when I try to describe what I've seen in nature, it comes out as, "There were purple flowers. And yellow ones." Conversely, many of these older descriptions don't conjure up quite what they are intended to, but they at least sound poetic.
Today I was watching some little gray birds, and with the help of Google image search I figured out they were Carolina chickadees. At least now I know one thing I didn't this morning.
3 comments:
http://www.amazon.com/Stokes-Beginners-Guide-Birds-Eastern/dp/0316818119/ref=pd_sim_b_2
I like it because its divided into sections by color, not family, and it lists most of the common backyard birds.
Ooh, that looks useful.
Google is my addiction. I am always writing things down to google later.
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