Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.
No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird.
I am a closet birdwatcher. I can identify Southern African species, but it irks me I can barely tell a jay from a blackbird in the U.K.
Of all types of birds, birds of prey have always fascinated people.
I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.
I consider myself to have been the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird watching. Before I came along, the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
