Birds

On AI-generated Images of Birds

British Birds July 2024 cover

As one who has dedicated decades of his life to helping people learn about, understand, and as a result it is hoped care more about the natural world and the present state it is in, I am particularly troubled by AI-generated images of birds and other wildlife as they present the unreal as real, encouraging many of those seeing them and not understanding that they are nothing more than the random collection of data assembled into visual images by an AI image-generating computer program to develop a distorted expectation of how the natural world truly appears.

Guides for the Perplexed

FG North American Flycatchers Myiarchus cover

Beginning in 2024, after some years of putting it on the metaphorical back burner, I made the decision to devote more time and effort to birdwatching. I was once an avid birder, meticulously listing every twitch of a feather that can into view, then, having become disillusioned by some of the things I experienced in […]

The Vanishing Mew Gull

Vanishing Mew Gull cover

When the news reached me that Ray Reedman had written another book on the subject of the history of bird names, also, like his previous “Lapwings, Loons and Lousy Jacks; The How and Why of Bird Names,” published by Pelagic Publishing, my pocket notebook was immediately deployed and a note duly made (as the motto of the journal Notes & Queries instructs us: “When found, make a note of”).

Birds of China

Birds of China PUP cover

For most of the places I visit, a single field guide is sufficient to cover the area at hand; however when I travel in China, with its 1,431 species of birds to be found within its borders, no single field guide has previously been sufficient to cover the expansive area across which I must travel on my duly appointed factory-visiting rounds. Fortunately, this past January that changed…

1 2 3 4›»
Mastodon