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.
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Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand by Kenn Kaufman. First published 1997. The back of my Mariner Books copy of Kingbird Highway indicates the category as Travel and Adventures, which perfectly suits this extremely enjoyable, exciting and well-written memoir...
The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation by Mike Unwin. First published 2011. As reviewed and pictured: softcover, 144 pages. The Atlas of Birds is an engaging book that covers a huge amount of information on bird diversity and distribution, avian life cycles, bird conservation, and much more,...
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...
