The Birder's Library » Periodicals

The LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts

Grant McCreary — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:58:16 +0000

Little brown job, or LBJ, is birder jargon for a sparrow or other bird that is, well, little and brown. Mostly nondescript, these birds often go unnoticed. And when seen, they can be difficult to identify. Yet, these are fascinating creatures whose beauty is evident to those who take the time to look.

This new publication, also known as the literary bird journal, has much in common with these birds besides a shared acronym. Small and understated, it doesn’t assert itself with a large, glossy cover boasting a brilliant photograph of some spectacular bird. But like the other LBJs, a closer look will reveal much that is worthwhile.

The LBJ, published twice a year, is dedicated to birds and creative writing. The writing takes the form of creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and reviews. And the birds are the stars, or at least the supporting actors.

Here is how the content of the first issue is allocated among these categories. The first number is how many entries there are, and the second is the percentage of the 120 pages of writing that these entries make up.

Creative Nonfiction – 6; 43%
Fiction – 2; 9%
Poetry – 22; 33%
Reviews – 8; 17%

The subject matter, of course, is going to vary wildly. Under the nonfiction banner, you will find an ex-park ranger wondering why feeding backyard birds is treated differently than feeding the wildlife in the Alaskan wilderness. But also a newlywed relating a pair of Ospreys with her new and unfamiliar life.

My favorite, and apparently the editors’ as well since it won the inaugural Sparrow Prize for Prose, was an unconventional tribute to the Ovenbird. Reading this essay was as fun as hearing the subject’s strident song echoing through the woods.

The two fictional stories couldn’t be more different from each other. I was surprised to find that one of them was, in fact, fiction. It reads like someone remembering a childhood experience. It was very convincing in that regard, but overall just ok. The other was obviously a fictional story, which is good because it wasn’t a happy one. It was a little clunky and affected at times, but most definitely succeeded in producing a strong reaction.

I must confess – I’m not a big fan of poetry. I don’t have anything against it in general; it’s just that, for the most part, I don’t get it. Even if I understand what the poet was trying to say, it doesn’t affect me in the way they probably intended. I share this so that you can take my comments accordingly, or just totally disregard them if you wish. Most of the poetry here didn’t do anything for me. There are, however, a few exceptions. I definitely agreed with the selection of a poem about a window-killed bird as the winner of the poetry prize.

The final kind of writing included in this journal is literature reviews. Poetry collections and “literary” books are fair game. That means field guides and other technical books will not be included, but you will find such titles as The Life of the Skies and Of a Feather. The reviews were very well done, and I was obviously very happy to see them included.

In addition to all this writing, each issue will have a featured artist. For this issue, Barry Kent MacKay has provided 9 beautifully painted bird portraits. One, a Song Sparrow, is used for the cover. The others are presented as full-page color plates. This is a surprising, but very welcome, inclusion. They add a nice splash of color!

Recommendation

It would be unfair to judge this journal on the basis of a single issue, as it will only be as good as the individual contributors.

As for the first issue, it was ok. Some of the submissions were truly excellent, but I’d say that the majority didn’t do much for me. However, the nature of this format means that such opinions are even more subjective than usual. For instance, poetry fans would probably get much more out of those entries than I did. On the other hand, I enjoyed the reviews, whereas others may consider them a waste of space.

But The LBJ definitely has promise. Anyone who’s a fan of writing and birds should at least check it out. Personally, I am going to subscribe, because I can’t get enough writing on birds, and I want to see how it evolves. Who knows, maybe I’ll even come to appreciate poetry more…

You can subscribe, contribute, or find out more about it on the LBJ’s website.

Living Bird

Grant McCreary — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 05:00:00 +0000

by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Living Bird is a quarterly magazine for members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This high-quality magazine should be given consideration by birders the world over.

The first thing you will notice about this magazine is that it looks like few others. Full-page photographs adorn both the front AND back covers. There is only minimal, unobtrusive text on the front so as not to take away from the usually stunning photograph. High-quality, fairly stiff, paper is used for the cover. The internal pages are printed on better paper stock than typical high-circulation periodicals.

The 46 pages in this magazine can be broken down as follows:

Greetings from Sapsucker Woods
Letters
BirdNews
Columns
Feature Articles

The “Greetings” is a brief message from the editor-in-chief on the table of contents page. “Letters” is one page of letters from readers, and “BirdNews” is a single one-page news article.

The meat of each issue is the columns and featured articles. There have been 5 columns that I have encountered thus far:

Flying Field, by Mel White
In the Field, by Jack Connor
Spotlight, by David S. Wilcove
Picture Perfect, by various authors
The Catbird Seat, by Pete Dunne

Of these, Dunne’s is the only one that appears in every issue. Two of the remainders are also printed, for a total of three columns in each issue. “Flying Field” features birding locations, “Spotlight” focuses on conservation, and “Picture Perfect” deals with photography. I’m not sure if there’s a running theme to Jack Connor’s “In the Field”. All of these are very well written and informative. For instance, I’m not a photographer but I’ve still found the “Picture Perfect” columns interesting. These columns occupy 2-5 pages each.

Dunne’s “The Catbird Seat” is a short one-page column that appears on the last page of each issue. If you’ve ever read any of his columns then you know what to expect here. And if you haven’t, I don’t think I could do justice to them. Just trust me and immediately go read one (or preferably all) of the collections of his stories (you can find them here). His column actually makes me look forward to the end of every magazine.

About half of each issue is comprised of three or four featured articles. Here is a small sample:

King of the Western Sage (Greater Sage-Grouse)
In the Land of the Maya (birding the Yucatan Peninsula)
In Search of Haiti’s Birds
Digiscoping Revisited
Name that Warbler (a fascinating discussion of a hybrid New World warbler documented by a bird bander in 2006)
Serengeti Safari
The Birds of Vadim Gorbatov (a Russian wildlife artist)
A Celebration of Shorebirds (Copper River Shorebird Festival in Cordova, Alaska)

From the titles you can see that this magazine has a world-wide focus and that a variety of topics are covered. However, there is one topic that has been conspicuously absent: bird identification. This magazine seems to have focused on other aspects of birds and birding, and has left ID for others. While I greatly enjoy learning more about identification, the lack of it here in no way diminishes my enjoyment of this title. But if you’re looking primarily for ID information, then you should look instead to the many other publications dedicated to that topic.

Beautiful color photographs profusely illustrate each installment, along with paintings where appropriate.

The only way to subscribe to this magazine is by becoming a member of the Cornell Lab. Membership starts at $35 ($45 for those outside the United States), and includes this magazine, a separate newsletter (BirdScope, also published quarterly), and some various discounts. This is a great magazine, but even so it is hard to recommend at $8.75 per issue! However, there are other reasons for joining the lab. Your membership fees will help the lab carry out research, education, and conservation programs. You’re probably familiar with some of the projects that they sponsor such as Project FeederWatch, the Great Backyard Bird Count, and eBird. As an added bonus for those in the US, your entire membership fee is tax deductible.

Given all of these benefits, joining the lab is an easy recommendation.

If you’d like to check it out for yourself first, many articles have been archived on the lab’s website.