2004 SCBWF Articles

A Lucky Boy From Brooklyn
By Arthur Morris
I am truly blessed to be able to make a great living photographing birds. And while I have been photographing birds for more than 21 years, each day that I head out into the field with a big lens is more exciting than the very first time that I went out in back in August 1983... One of my biggest thrills comes from knowing that my images are often used to help protect the very birds and places that I love. BIRDS AS ART is fortunate to be able to donate images to a wide variety of conservation and environmental organizations such as Audubon of Florida, New Jersey Audubon, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, the Florida Birding Festival, and the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival (among others).
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Saving The Whooper
By Jim Lewis
President, Whooping Crane Conservation Association
North America's magnificent whooping cranes were once abundant throughout the continent, nesting in Illinois, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, and northward through the prairie provinces of Canada, Alberta, and the Northwest Territory. At 5 feet, they are the tallest birds in North America, with a wingspan of over 7 feet. Whoopers are graceful flyers, elegant walkers, and picturesque dancers. Adult birds have beautiful snowy white plumage, with black outer wing tip feathers that are highly visible when their wings are extended. The top of a whooper's head is bright red and it has black cheeks, as well as black smudging across the back of its head. Whooping cranes have bright yellow eyes and grayish black feet and legs. Their distinctive trumpeting call can be heard from well over a mile away.
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Finding Birds in Florida
Jeff Bouton
Florida is a birder's paradise with an amazing diversity of species accessible year round. Geographically situated between tropical and temperate climatic zones, it is the only spot in the United States to find Caribbean habitats mixing with those more typical of the rest of the southeastern US. Florida also sits on a major migratory flyway and borders the Gulf of Mexico. This makes the state an important staging area where birds fuel up before making the arduous water crossing to Mexico, the Caribbean, or South America in the fall and where they rest and recover from their long flight back each spring. It is also a crucial wintering area for a wide array of avian delights. Over 500 different species of birds have been reported in Florida.
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Evolution of a Birder's Addiction: My Personal Tale
By Kevin T. Karlson
Twenty-five years ago, a young married couple accepted an invitation to join a birdwatcher friend on a spring walk. This venture proved very strange, with humorous names such as rufous-sided towhee and yellow-breasted chat resulting in giggles and raised eyebrows. Little did we realize that a seed had been planted. A winter trip that year to the Florida Everglades sealed my fate, and life would never be the same again.
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Florida Tourism, Florida Greening
By Herb Hiller
When Florida first rose in the public imagination after the Civil War, it was a place of unfathomable wilderness, of untamed swamp and bayou, of limitless vistas. Springs bubbled up fresh water from the bottoms of salty bays. Brilliantly hued birds evoked Eden, so numerous in flight that they darkened the sky.
Florida was a place of myriad everglades. Everywhere shallow water pooled upon endless prairie, inching across sawgrass and cypress sloughs, near the coasts forming languid streams that braided their way to the sea. Panthers lazed on oak limbs. Black bears foraged in palmettos.
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In Praise of Peterson
By Pete Dunne
Roger Tory Peterson (1908-96) is the once and forever "grand master" of North American birding. Author, illustrator, teacher, and naturalist, he ushered in a new age of bird study with the publication of his first field guide in 1934, A Field Guide to the Birds. The first two thousand copies sold out within three weeks. Now in its fifth edition, the Peterson field guide and its western companion volume have sold over ten million copies.
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