Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal from Iraq by Jonathan Trouern-Trend. First published 2006.
Subtitled A Soldier's Journal from Iraq, Birding Babylon began life as a natural history and birding blog by a deployed National Guardsman in Iraq. The book is formatted as journal, from the faux handmade paper cover to the short, dated entries of no more than two pages for each date. At just under 80 pages this is a quick read. A year of birding and observing wildlife in various spots in Iraq is covered, beginning in February 2004.
While the observations are interesting and the surroundings are at times riveting, I found the writing a bit dry and would hope for a bit more fluid text when the online journal was turned into a book. Trouern-Trend's blog, birdingbabylon.blogspot.com, is still active, and it seems he has recently returned to the Middle East once again. I will be following the blog to see what other interesting Mideast specialties are found in his day to day routine. Meanwhile I give Birding Babylon 3 Goldfinches out of 5.
Parrots of the World by Joseph M. Forshaw, illustrated by Frank Knight. Published 2010. Softcover, 328 pages. Wildly colorful, intelligent, popular, beautiful. These words are often used to describe birds belonging to the parrot family: Psittaciformes. This lovely book illustrates and describes all 356 species. Parrots of the World presents...
As my birding library grows, I've acquired a lot of books via trading sites like PaperBackSwap (PBS) and BookMooch (BM), or via thrift shops, used book stores, and festival fundraisers. Acquiring books this way makes the obsessive book-collecting part of this hobby a bit more affordable....
The Birding Life: A Passion for Birds at Home and Afield by Laurence Sheehan, William Stites, Carol Sama Sheehan and Katheryn George Precourt. First published 2011. As reviewed and pictured: hardcover, 240 pages. If birds are "God's nervous system," as someone once observed, bird watchers are their EKG,...
The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik. First published in 2004. I joined PaperBackSwap a few months ago. Having been a huge fan in a former lifetime, I had a very large collection of X-files-related books in which I was no longer...
