Word: birding
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Sure, Thanksgiving is supposed to be about carved-in-stone traditions-Detroit Lions NFL games, drippy cranberry sauce, the day after shopping craze, the nationwide massacre of an arbitrary bird, the token acknowledgement of Pilgrim-Indian relations-but where in the bylaws for Turkey Day does it demand that pop culture dissolve into templates...
...edible. So it goes without saying that Sadie loves Thanksgiving. In fact, one Thanksgiving, while the extended family was eating in our dining room, the dog managed to pull down the entire serving tray of turkey that was sitting in our kitchen and gorge herself on the then-desecrated bird (a la A Christmas Story). These are the kind of shenanigans that I have come to expect and even admire from our family dog during Thanksgiving. While normally Thanksgiving is the most languid of all the holidays, consisting of heroic acts of gluttony followed by digestion-induced catatonia, I could...
...helpful guides are targeted toward neophytes, Kaufman's comes with a technological breakthrough. Birders have long disagreed over whether field guides should be illustrated with paintings or photographs. Both have inherent disadvantages: artwork invariably distorts, however minutely, the reality it attempts to convey, whereas snapshots may capture an actual bird in an uncharacteristic pose or in unusual light or shadow. In either case the image on the page will differ, perhaps significantly, from the bird in the bush...
Kaufman attempts to resolve this dilemma by presenting photographs that he has digitally edited on a computer, using his vast experience in the field to render each bird image as accurately and typically as possible. The results are regularly clear, colorful and impressive. Those who want a single, near Platonic representation of a particular species should turn to Kaufman first...
...birders, more daunting. Sibley relies on his own often exquisite paintings to illustrate his book, but he is of course aware that individual drawings can misrepresent their subjects. So he offers multiple images of each species. His page on the American robin, for example, presents four drawings of the bird in flight, two as seen from above and two as seen from below. Accompanying these are drawings of a juvenile robin, a regular adult, a "pale adult" and a slightly different form of the bird seen in eastern Canada. Another drawing portrays a group of robins in typical feeding postures...