Winging It: The Musings of a Birder

Book by Stephen Brigham.
Otter Bay Books LLC.  2023.  340p.  hardbound.  $29.95.  The verso of the title page states: “please direct all correspondence and book orders to the author at P. O. Box 1047, St. Michaels, MD 21663.”

It would be a shame if this rich, entertaining book suffers from what seems to be its relative obscurity.  Apparently self-published, it boasts 56 chapters, most of them thumbnail sketches of 2-3 pages, quick reads supported by hundreds of excellent color photographs by Brigham.  Many species sport more than one photograph, such as red-shouldered hawk, blue jay, and song sparrow (all with 3 shots).

There are 14 mini chapters on “domestic birding”, ten on international birding, five introductory essays, four on Brigham’s favorite books, 19 on general birding, locations, and birds.  Thoroughly indexed, there are indexes of the birds photographed, a bibliography, birding milestones through history, and abundant information on photographing birds.

About 225 species are photographed, including many exotic, “foreign” ones.  Good quality shots, making the book a pleasure to thumb through.  Groups well-represented are: warblers 11 with photos, woodpeckers 9, gulls 6, and hummingbirds 8.  Costa Rica, Finland, India, Japan, the Canopy Tower - Panama, et a. are among the places he chronicles.  Brigham is an M.D. (radiologist).

The few mistakes hardly detract from the richness of this book.  The “chipping sparrow” on p. 229 is an imm. white-crowned sparrow.  The “tricolor heron” is a tricolored heron (p. 238).  “Lumbar” should be lumber (p. 83).

There are also descriptions of famous world birding destinations, a few plates by Audubon and other notables, the Cape May hawkwatch platform, Hawk Mountain, archaeopteryx, a tango in Buenos Aires, the American cemetery in Normandy, and the Taj Mahal as well as other places less well known, plus shots of the author and his fellow tourists in action.

A delight.