Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

When you see this color, what would you call it? Simply brown won't do, neither will chocolate, because it's a little redder than that. Reddish brown works, but doesn't quite capture the essence of the color. No. The color as the title suggests is rufous. As I type this, a red squiggle indicating an incorrectly spelled word has appeared below it, as if it had no concept of this color's existence. This is something I've noticed all my life however. Whenever you spell it in Word or another word-processing program (are there others?) it says it's incorrect. But why you might ask am I bringing this up on a birding blog? Well, for one, color is an important aspect to describing and enjoying birds. Their myriad shades, pigments, and hues mesmerize us and make us so appreciative for the extreme variety that they possess. Having a vocabulary to describe those colors is very important as well. The guide that seems to do it the best is Frank M. Chapman's Birds o...

The next round of the Babe Ruth of Ornithology begins now! As the updated brackets show below, Alexander Wilson faces off against Charles Lucien Bonaparte this week followed by Peter Scott vs. Lulow Griscom, Margaret Morse Nice vs. Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey, and Konrad Lorenz vs. Charles Darwin. As I explained last week, the goal of the second round is to determine whose argument involving birds was more persuasive and had a larger impact upon the bird world. So without further adieu, let the games commence! Perhaps the most well known aspect of both Wilson's and Bonaparte's careers was the compilation, editing, and final publication of one of the early crowning achievements of American ornithology. The work known as "American Ornithology" started as the brainchild of Alexander Wilson who was inspired by other naturalists at the time to create a reference guide for the bird species to be found in the relatively new and unexplored world that was North Americ...