Between the Covers: A Bird in the Hand…

20 Aug Between the Covers: A Bird in the Hand…

Let’s play a game of free association.

If I say “birds,” what do you say?

Hitchcock?

Audobon Society?

Geeks with binoculars and sore necks?

Ted Floyd would be a great answer.

Hot on the heels of the dearly departed Telluride Mushroom Festival, Daiva Chesonis was as much in demand as boletus edulus, Between the Covers Bookstore, as was The Nature Conservancy host Ted Floyd, editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association, and author of the newish “American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Colorado.”

Make it a point to show up at Between the Covers on Saturday, August 23, 10:30 a.m. For about a half-hour, enjoy coffee or tea and a talk with Floyd, then head out for guided birding from 11 a.m. – noon. After that, there should still be plenty of time in the day to go shrooming. Should be prime. If not, Floyd is a bird in the hand…

Ted Floyd

About the Book:

Colorado is home to 496 types of birds, making it one of the finest birding destinations in the world. The birds in “American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Colorado” are organized by type and appear in color photographs accompanied by introductions, identification tips, and habitat and birdsong descriptions. The book also includes a state bird checklist and a directory of birding destinations, making this field guide the perfect companion for anyone interested in learning about the state’s birds and where to see them.

About Ted Floyd:

Ted Floyd has published widely on birds and ecological topics. He has written more than 125 articles, with contributions to scholarly journals such as Ecology, Oecologia, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and to popular magazines such as Natural History, Birdwatcher’s Digest, and Birding. He has contributed chapters to textbooks and guidebooks published by Oxford University Press, Houghton Mifflin, and National Geographic. Floyd is senior author of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada (University of Nevada Press, 2007) and author of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America (HarperCollins, 2008).

Floyd received a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Penn State University in 1995. He is currently an instructor with the American Birding Association’s Institute for Field Ornithology program, and he has taught college-level courses in ecology, evolution, entomology, statistics, conservation biology, and other topics. Floyd is a frequent speaker at birding festivals and ornithological meetings, and he has led birding trips and workshops throughout North America. He has lived and birded in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. In the course of his scientific research and outreach activities, he has visited and birded in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as South America, Europe, and Asia.

Floyd has broad interests in birding and ornithology, especially as they relate to conservation and management. In recent years, he participated in the creation of Bird Conservation Plans for Partners in Flight and in the production of Eco-Regional Plans for The Nature Conservancy.

Currently, Ted Floyd is contributing to an effort to describe the nocturnal flight calls of migrating birds in western North America, and his findings are helping to clarify basic patterns of occurrence of birds on active migration in the West. His work has also highlighted the value of nocturnal flight calls as an identification aid for bird species that are otherwise easy to overlook in the field.