Writing about birds in people history and people in bird history.
Brooklyn, NY
Joined October 2016
- Tweets2.5K
- Following1.1K
- Followers6.3K
- Likes9.7K
Pinned Tweet
Some personal news: I’m writing a book!
I’ve signed with Holt to write a full-length history of birds and people in America. Birds have always been central to our economy, divisions, culture, and identity. If you want to understand America, you‘ve got to understand its birds.
Lotssss more like this on my Bird History substack check it out
birdhistory.substack.com
Grand Kankakee Marsh is my roman empire
I have a map for this! When this was destroyed it’s estimated that as many as ONE FIFTH of the migratory birds of North America were lost. It contained the largest lake in Indiana, Beaver Lake, which had the colorfully named Bogus Island in the middle of it, a notorious hideout for ne’er-do-wells and outlaws.
Robert Francis retweeted
We made a book!
RURAL INDEXING: A COLLECTION OF AMERICAN BUILDINGS, SIGNS, AND SYMBOLS arrives from Rizzoli in March 2027.
Our favorite themes & subjects from the 1000s of places we've visited since 2010—450+ pics, many never published before.
Preorder:
linktr.ee/ruralindexingproje…
Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act it's illegal for people to kill protected species of birds like this northern flicker, and people should be held responsible when their pets do it too, just like when pets cause other kinds of damage.
People have been fighting over cats and birds for more than a hundred years, I wrote about that history here
birdhistory.substack.com/p/t…
Same is true of animal names! woodchuck, chickadee, tanager, chipmunk, opossum, condor, coyote, jaguar. They're the best names we've got.
half the reason Benjamin Franklin complained about the bald eagle as national symbol was so he could land a sick pun about kingbirds
Audubon’s the biggest scoundrel in the bird world, fascinating, frustrating, and unavoidable. Spend enough time with birds and sooner or later you’ll have to reckon with him, which I did on the latest episode HISTORY This Week. Give it a listen!
open.spotify.com/episode/6Zc…
Robert Francis retweeted
"The global collapse of migratory shorebird populations is much more than a calamity facing a group of exquisitely evolved birds. It also tells us that our global network of aquatic systems is fraying."
nytimes.com/interactive/2018…
The story would be more inspiring if it actually worked. They could teach the birds to migrate, but shut the program down after 10 years because the human-raised cranes couldn't figure out how to have babies.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Robert Francis retweeted
Honestly, not the comparison I would’ve gone with.
