Yesterday I stood on top of Thailand. I made the steep trek and it was well worth it. Don’t leap to conclusions though, I rode a motorcycle. Doi Inthanon is the highest point in Thailand, as well as in most of mainland Southeast Asia east… Read More
Pai could easily be seen as just another town on the tourist track. It used to be a sleepy town in a valley in Mae Hong Song Province until recently, when a couple Thai movies were filmed here and tourism exploded for the wealthy Thai.… Read More
Culture shock can come in many forms. I’ve been struggling with something people keep repeating here: “they eat all the animals.” Deciphering whether this is Western racism or simple reality is complicated. I do know that the Thai sense of edibility is far more encompassing… Read More
Blogging follows a trend in immediacy. What’s interesting about this, in conjunction with what I intend to initiate with Wingtrip, is the dualism that arises. As fast paced as the natural world can be, careful, exacting observation is absolutely necessary to make satisfactory conclusions. Time… Read More
Brendan McGarry: I’m guessing that you were working hard for a short period of time and that was about it – did you have any time for recreating or was it just eat, sleep, work? Ben Freeman: We were pretty regimented due to the amount… Read More
Just in case you didn’t snicker enough in the last interview that my initials are BM, here’s another, equally fascinating and envy inspiring conversation. A benefit of starting out young as a birder is that it’s a small world. You inevitably meet some people who are headed… Read More
I interviewed Ben, a fellow bird nerd and real deal Ornithologist, this fall about exciting expeditions he’s taken in the name of science. Enjoy! Ben Winger is a graduate student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago and the Division of… Read More
An ornithological collection is not a bunch of stuffed birds. Devoid of 15-some data points, dutifully transcribed on individualized tags, they would be merely wonders of preservation. Every bird has a unique number, date of collection, a preparer, a locale, standard name (Latin name), and… Read More
I decided to write a review of the movie instead of listening to someone “uh-huh” me while they played video games. After watching a documentary about an extinct bird, the last thing I wanted was to have the message fall on deaf ears and I… Read More
After visiting the Ara Project (www.hatchedtoflyfree.org) near San Jose my family and my friend Tiffany (we both studied at La Selva Biological Station in 2006 through a program at The Evergreen State College) headed out towards Monteverde. All of us except my mother had traveled… Read More
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