Category: Bird-Scobe

“Birdman” Robert Stroud Ain’t Burt Lancaster

Robert Stroud was a convicted murderer, later to become a famous ornithologist and author, who was known as “the birdman of Alcatraz” for his work in diagnosing bird diseases.  A movie starring the great actor Burt Lancaster was made about Stroud’s life which was – take a guess – titled The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Lancaster was an actor who simultaneously exuded strength and gentleness. He was also quite handsome and female fans were devoted to him. Just like Cary Grant, Lancaster had been a circus acrobat and his body and movements showed this even as he aged. His portrayal of Stroud was brilliant and earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor. His was a riveting performance.

Except Burt Lancaster’s performance had little to do with the real Robert Stroud. The real Stroud was like the Japanese bird monster Rodan to a pretty songbird who was Lancaster’s Stroud. Burt Lancaster’s Stroud was indeed strong in many ways and did challenge authority when it could be shown (in the film) that such authority was abusive.

In real life Robert Stroud was a psychopathic murderer, an unapologetic and vicious pimp, and a lover of chaos and struggle. He constantly fought and badgered the people he met and in prison he was no different; in fact, he might have been worse. You could say he was the top bird of prison fights, physical ones and verbal ones. His face was the sneer, not the smile.

Stroud didn’t like authority, that’s true; he also didn’t seem to like anyone at all. But he loved to argue and fight with fellow prisoners, with the prison guards and with the administrators. He even murdered a prison guard! This was not a Burt Lancaster type of man; women would not be fans of his. Homicidal pimps are certainly not good role models.

Stroud spent most of his prison career in solitary confinement. The other inmates hated him; they also feared him because of his mercurial personality. You never knew when an explosion would occur and they occurred often enough to keep everyone near him on their toes. In fact, had people near him been birds, they would have taken to the air.

Yes, we do owe this man a “thank you” for his groundbreaking work with birds. His books have been a great help for veterinarians and birders too; but we shouldn’t let a movie whitewash the awful facts. The prison psychiatrist labeled him a psychopath and indeed he seems to have been one.

The movie was good but the man was for the birds.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Good Books Defeat Virus

So you’ve been wandering through your house or apartment, looking to elevate your life from this coronavirus pandemic that has changed everything for every one of us. If you have kids you are at the stage where you are considering building a catapult and shooting them into “the wild blue yonder.”

Stop! I think I can help you, and maybe even your pre-jettisoned kids, by offering a reading and viewing list for you to check out. Most of the books are available on kindle or e-books but one isn’t – but so what? A good read is worth a good amount of money!

Wings for My Flight: the Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock by Marci Cottrell Houle (available on kindle): My favorite bird book of the 61 I’ve read thus far. It is a gripping true-life story. I’ve read it twice.

Wesley the Owl by Stacey O’Brien (available on kindle): A woman, an owl, and love. A fun, heartwarming and instructive story about the saving grace between a human and an avian. My second favorite bird book.

The next books are in no particular order but all of them are worth a read:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (available on kindle): If you have a parrot, you know how intelligent birds can be. This book will take you through the best and brightest of the winged world.

Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Masear (available on kindle): Hummingbirds are amazing creatures but life in the big city can be rough on them. Terry tells fascinating tales of how she has worked to save hundreds of birds in deep danger.

The Delightful Horror of Family Birding by Eli J. Knapp (available on kindle): He loves birds; he loves his kids. This book combines them.

A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman (available on kindle): The farthest I ever drove was eight hours, a few hundred miles in total. Now look at how far birds can go – amazing! This book shows you what migration is all about. I would never have made it as a bird.

Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Get Their Names by Stephen Moss (available on kindle): I have always been fascinated by names. This book is a fun read that explores where our favorite birds came to be called what they are called.

Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons and Vultures of North America by Pete Dunne with Kevin T. Karlson (available on kindle): I make no bones about it; I love raptors! They own the sky. They are the true royalty of birds. Pete Dunne takes us right inside their world.

Birds’ Eggs by Michael Walters: No, kids, these are not eggs to be thrown on Halloween. Eggs come in all colors and varieties. Beautiful look at the beginnings of a bird’s life.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

Bad, Bad Bird Movies

Most of us have had our worlds turned upside down in the past months. No, no, the birds had nothing to do with it; just some crummy virus – and not the bird flu either.

Sadly, birds have given many of us stomach aches at some of the truly bad movies in which they have appeared.

There are bad movies that are actually fun to watch because they are so awful they make you laugh. The best of those awful bird movies are Rodan, The Giant Claw, and Q which stood for the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl. I hope the Aztecs weren’t bored with their god as I was bored by that god’s movie.

In 1954, Japan’s Toho Studios came out with Godzilla, a radioactive monster brought back to life by the atomic bomb to destroy everything in his path. That movie stunk, although the monster was a great idea, a borrowing from a fun 1953 American film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Following up on Godzilla came Toho’s attempt to create a bird/reptile in the film Rodan. This movie was even worse than Godzilla, although Rodan was a great idea for a monster. Rodan actually looks great in the enjoyable American movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

The first problem we have with Japanese movies dubbed into English is the fact that the actors’ lips are not saying anything close to looking as if they are speaking English. In movies that are based on Romance languages (Latin-derived), the lips and the English words are often close approximations. Not so with Japanese movies.

In the Toho’s movies the actor’s lips will move and then a sentence or two comes out in English. There seems to be little correlation between lips moving and sound coming out of them.

Here’s how it goes: Actor points up to the sky and his lips move. Then we hear, after those lips have basically finished moving, “Look, it’s Rodan! Help! Help!”

The story of Rodan could have been a 10-minute short subject but Toho needed to make it an hour and a half. That means they had to stretch this thing out of all proportion. And that’s what you will watch; a movie that looks like a bad face-lift. Make some popcorn and enjoy.

Actors will take embarrassing roles in terrible movies in order to get paid because The Giant Claw is so awful – even “awfuller” than Rodan – that you feel sad for these professional actors in a movie where the special effects are so bad that my six-year old grandson said to me, “Grandpa Scobe, can we watch the news?”

Finally, we come to Q, a totally overacted movie by accomplished actors who should have known better than to lend their talents to this horrible project. Not only is the monster ridiculous in terms of special effects but the actors are all doing their Marlon Brando impersonations. At certain points in the movie you will shout out to an actor, “Please shut up! You’re not a contender!”

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. Frank’s books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.  

For the Birds

 

The critically acclaimed movie Birdman (or The Unexpected Value of Ignorance) starring Michael Keaton (a good actor) won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Here is the totality of my opinion, in short, this 2014 movie stunk. Even its long subtitle stunk.

It really stunk, as pigeon poop can stink from those city birds who value their own ignorance of the whole thing they are doing perhaps on your head while you walk under an overpass and – okay, let’s leave it at that; the movie stunk!

Birdman takes its place alongside another movie that gained huge critical raves, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring which was released in 2004. This South Korean movie was supposed to be a profound look at a young monk being shepherded by an old monk during all the seasons.

Saying it is “slow-moving” makes this movie seem to be going fast. It is slower than slow, although (if I recall correctly) we do get to see a bird flying overhead during the movie’s interminable length. That bird was damn exciting.

So how is it that film critics can glorify movies that should never have made it out of their canisters to be put into projectors to frazzle normal folks such as me and my wife, the Beautiful AP? This is one of the great mysteries of my life, along with the origin of the universe.

Seriously, am I so behind in my intellectual capacity that I can’t wonder in absolute wonder at a supposedly fantastically wonderful movie that actually drags you through a year of dullness, using endless hours of screen time on seasons that don’t look as good as the seasons look right outside the theater where I saw the movie?

Or how about a movie that is so dull that the death of the lead character is aggressively prayed for by this member of the film’s audience? Please Lord, please God, please, kill Birdman. Kill him, please. Do that for those of us who are suffering through this horror. Even buttered popcorn can’t make this movie stomach-able.

I used to be a book reviewer for a newspaper in my early years of writing but I found it hard to nail a book as being awful. Books are one usually poor writer trying his or her damn best to create something good. If that book failed? I would just put that book down and read a different one to review. I don’t have that problem with bad movies. I’m not quite sure why. If a movie stinks I’ll tell you it stinks.

Frank’s website is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

State Birds: Wild, Weird and Wonderful

 

They come in all sizes, shapes and colors. Some are plain; some are spectacular. They are state birds. But underneath it all is cut-throat competition among some states.

Alaska named the Willow Ptarmigan as its state bird.. Why is obvious because this bird can survive deadly winters and even has feathers on its legs. You might say it is the legging bird. It has bright colors and is a favorite of hunters in the British Isles; one of the reasons Alaska would have fought in the Revolution if it were a colony then.

Arizona has a dotted bird, the Cactus Wren, as its herald but it sounds awful when its calls hit the airwaves. Quite a lot of Arizona is stark and so is this bird. Hard to tell males apart from females; but it’s so hot in Arizona that I don’t think the birds have the energy to care.

California has a rather dull bird. I guess Californians didn’t want the dull birds to feel bad because they aren’t as beautiful as the beautiful birds so they picked the subdued California Quail. That’s progressivism for you. This bird looks as if it can survive earthquakes, mudslides, forest fires, homelessness and high taxes. It is a true Californian.

Delaware has a domesticated multi-plumaged bird, the Blue Hen Chicken, and is easy to find in order to eat after you’ve marveled at its colors. Barnyards are great habitats for it. Don’t kill it with a gun as you’ll then be eating pellets.

Georgia named the Brown Thrasher, a so-so-looking bird, as its peach. Don’t quite know why but then again we’re talking about Georgia which is rarely on our minds.

Hawaii is our most recently recognized state and a paradise to visit; but its bird does not match the state’s beauty. The creature is somewhat yuckaii. Meet the Nene or Hawaiian Goose.

Idaho has the Mountain Bluebird  and recently the falcon as its birds. The Bluebird is a stunning blue. Of course, like all songbirds it fastly flitters so you must have that “songbird patience” to get a good viewing. But make it quick because falcons eat Bluebirds.

Perhaps the prettiest thing you’ll see in Mississippi is its state bird the Wood Duck. Its other bird is the Mockingbird. That bird it shares with Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee.

Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio are at war as they all picked the Cardinal as their state bird. I see many Cardinals at my feeders (I live in New York); and they are beauties. However, I do not see any Kentuckians.

Louisiana picked the Brown Pelican. When Louisiana floods these birds feel happily at home.

Montana and Nebraska have a thing for the  Western Meadowlark, a yellow bird that doesn’t seem strong enough to hang out in these cowboy states.

Frank’s website is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at smile.Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

Franklin versus Franklin

 

This information may be apocryphal but so what? Apocryphal stories can be fascinating. A biblical apocryphal story titled “The Wisdom of Solomon” has the author (the smartest man of all time!) caution men not to marry more than one wife, as the anger and conflicts caused by those backbiting women couldn’t be contained.

Ben Franklin and his illegitimate son William Franklin were close for a while, but when the Revolutionary War was brewing William was a “loyalist” to the British, while Ben supported the Revolution. That didn’t enhance their relationship.

William and Ben also disputed which language should be used by Americans; it was a tossup between German and English.  The Germans dominated the northern populace throughout the early days and they were the first of the hated immigrants.  Ben wanted people to speak only English while William leaned towards German. That didn’t enhance their relationship either.

But their big blowout came about because of a bird or, rather, two birds—the bald eagle and the wild turkey. There was a big debate flaring in the colonies as to which bird should be their emblem and later on, the emblem of United States.

William championed the bald eagle because he and his supporters thought the bird was regal and a true monarch of the air. Ben advocated the wild turkey because it was combative and didn’t take any guff from other birds or people. It also tasted a lot better than the bald eagle. Perhaps Ben liked the wild turkey because it was quite promiscuous, enjoying the intimate company of as many lady turkeys as it could.

To this day Americans love turkey, consuming over 750 million pounds of it, according to the University of Illinois Extension.

William’s predilection for the regality of the bald eagle probably came from his love of the British crown and royalty in general. Although not as promiscuous as his father, William did sire his own illegitimate son much like Ben and King Solomon.

Although a close look at the bald eagle will reveal that although it does nail fish and small varmints, it will also chow down on carrion. So it isn’t as regal as William at first thought. Still, unlike the turkey, the bald eagle does not make a habit of attacking people. It’s generally a loner, while the wild turkey prefers gang colors.

Father/son relationships can be fraught with difficulties, as many of you know; just look at Luke Skywalker and his dear old dad, Darth Vader. That relationship cost Luke an arm, although I actually prefer the leg (of a turkey that is).

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at smile.amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, as e-books and at bookstores.

 

Birds and Bugs

I love birds. I hate bugs.

Now there are people who love bugs. They study bugs; they touch them, hold them, they even talk lovingly to them. These people are called entomologists or maniacs. The bugs I hate the most are mosquitoes—those flying derringers of disease who deposit death by way of itchy lumps on one’s skin.

I am a man beloved by mosquitoes. They attack me ceaselessly when I am outdoors or, if one or more have the brazenness to swoop into my house, they have an unquenchable lust to suck every last drop of my blood leaving me a formerly scratching, now lifeless husk on my bed or floor.

Let me give you an example: My wife, the Beautiful AP, and I recently took a leisurely bird walk at our favorite nature preserve at Jamaica Bay. I slathered myself in diethyltoluamide—Deet as it is known in the trade—in the hopes that my tiny but vicious enemies would leave me alone. That stuff is supposed to work, right?

Wrong!

When I got home I had the traditional bites on my exposed skin but these monstrous creatures had even penetrated my clothing, thereby making the rest of my body look as if I were turning into the lizard man.

On that walk in that bucolic environment, I wanted to see beautiful song birds and those awesome raptors dominating the sky, but instead I succumbed to a flying, buzzing, biting bug. We left the walk early and I commenced moaning about my lot in life. I am (I must admit) a good moaner.

Why are mosquitoes attracted to me? It could be my sweet blood or blood type (type 0 is one of their delights) but it can also be the type of bacteria I have on my skin. Yes, these little brutes are attracted to a certain type of bacteria that about 20 percent of us have. I must have it in abundance.

Mankind almost extinguished some of the most wonderful birds on our planet; the eagles, ospreys, and peregrine falcons, among other raptors, trying to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes by using DDT, which certainly did kill those little bugs that cause a host of diseases including Zika, West Nile, Malaria, Dengue and the new one Eastern Equine Encephalitis, also known as EEE or Triple E.

Killing the mosquitoes back when was great (in my humble opinion) but discovering that our raptors were laying eggs with shells that were so brittle they broke apart before the offspring could get a claw-hold on life was not so great. DDT was great at killing bugs but awful for raptors.

What am I to do now? I’m buying mosquito-repellant clothing because I’m itching to never have them bite me again.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at smile.amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, as e-books and at bookstores.

 

I Beat My Bird Bad!

 

What I wanted to do more than just about anything was beat my older bird, Augustus, and today I did it! I wanted to beat him bad, yes, real bad, for the years of his disdainful disobedience to me. Today would be the day.

Let me back up a little. I have two parrots, Augustus, a monk parrot, who is an old bird of about 22 – 24 (his life expectancy is about 25) and Mister Squeaky who is about seven or eight.

Mister Squeaky is a dynamo. More interesting is that Squeaky is a sexual maniac. I know I am about to lack decorum right after the word “but” but this parrot tries to screw everything. He screws the inside bars of his cage—top, bottom and four sides. He screws them when he is on the outside of them too, which is just about all day.

When he screws he makes all sorts of sounds. I assume they are pleasure sounds.

He screws the toys in his cage; the soft ones and the hard ones. He screws the handles of his cage which are used to transport him to wherever we need to transport him. Since Squeaky and Augustus’s cages are right next to each other, Squeaky goes into Augustus’s cage and screws everything he can find in there. Then he eats Augustus’s food, the same exact food Squeaky has in his own cage.

Oh, don’t feel sad for Augustus because he goes into Mister Squeaky’s cage and eats Squeaky’s food. Except Augustus doesn’t screw around. If a monk parrot can be a monk then Augustus is a true monk—celibate as a strict churchman.

Squeaky wants to be Augustus, who is the alpha bird in the house.

Mister Squeaky is my bird. He obeys my commands. If I tell him, even from across the room, “Go in your cage,” bingo! Squeaky goes into his cage. At 4 pm every day Augustus squawks that he wants to “go sleep.” That time is his bedtime.

So I call across my office, “Okay, guys, in your cage!” Squeaky zips in but Augustus sits atop his cage with his head tilted and his face telling me, “I don’t have to listen to you, bub.” At this point I bring Mister Squeaky’s cage into the dining room where he will stay the evening until he retires at 8 o’clock to have sex through most of his “sleep” time. Squeaky is with my wife and me as we have our usual evenings—meaning my wife, the Beautiful AP, tells me what I should do and I do it. “Lower the set! Stop watching TV and read a book instead.” That is, of course, marriage. Her demand is my command.

Squeaky does not obey my wife’s commands. He is also strong-willed, unlike Mr. Marshmallow, who is me.

Augustus, on the other hand, is my wife’s bird and he obeys her with true affection. They kiss and snuggle. Disgusting!

When I get back into my office Augustus is still on top of his cage, squawking that he wants to go to sleep. When he was young he could actually say, “Go sleep!” But words are not his thing anymore.

When he sees me, he deliberately moves to the back of the top of his cage where it is hard for me to reach him.

Since Augustus has aged he isn’t as dexterous anymore. He finds it hard to move down the bars of his cage and go inside, so I have to help him.

But every day, every damn day, I have to try to reach him across the top of his cage. He enjoys not making it easy for me to reach him.

“Augustus,” I say each and every damn day. “Don’t you want to go to sleep?”

Then I maneuver myself through the labyrinth of my wife’s desk, her chair, her music stand, and her treadmill to get to the back of the cage and that’s when Augustus scoots over to the front of his cage to force me to make the trip in reverse.

We do this several times every damn day, until Augustus relents and lets me pick him up and put him in his cage for a good night’s sleep. The last I see of him when I cover his cage with blankets is his head tilted and that superior smirk upon his face. Yes, a smirk. Parrot owners will tell you that even though a parrot’s face can’t change, you know exactly what it is thinking.

But today I had had it. I was not going to hustle through the obstacle course to get him. He would either come to me or sit outside his cage all night long.

I stood several feet from his cage and just looked at him, my face smirking as best as I could get it to smirk. “You’ll stay out here all night,” I said. “I am never going to chase around your cage again.”

From the living room I could hear Mister Squeaky screwing something. At least one of us was having fun, I thought. Or maybe two, if you count Augustus reveling in being his usual annoying self.

Augustus looked me. I looked at Augustus. Augustus tilted his head. I tilted my head. He squawked. I made some kind of sound back at him.

We looked at each other and then—yes! yes! yes! —Augustus walked to the side of the cage where I stood. I easily picked him up, placed him inside, and covered him for the night.

I won! I won! Yes, I did it! I beat my bird badly. In doing so, I once again established that man—that I! —was the master of the earth, not some recalcitrant parrot.

Flushed with triumph, I decided my next conquest would be my wife. Such a feat requires both strategic and tactical planning, as it is she who has won every encounter for the last 32 years. A man might be the master of the earth, but his wife, damn it! is the master of the universe.

Book Frank Scoblete to speak for your organization.

 

 

 

The Birds Are Coming to Get YOU!

 

“The Birds” is not a novel. Rather it is a short story by Daphne du Maurier that appears in her book The Apple Tree. I’m guessing that you probably know about those birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

The short story and the movie are quite different but that doesn’t matter. Both have our flighted friends, now turned enemies, attacking us with horrific designs such as —to put it mildly—wiping us out. Yes, “The Birds” and The Birds both feature fierce, feathered, beaking, clawing killers of planet Earth’s dominant creatures, meaning us, meaning you and me.

Not a nice thought is it? Those often spectacularly-beautiful creatures ripping us to shreds don’t fit into our concept that birds are peaceful, non-aggressive beings out to make the world a more beautiful and loving place. We don’t think of them as “fierce, feathered, beaking, clawing killers,” do we?

Du Maurier’s “The Birds” focuses on a farmer in England in post World War II whose native birds decide to take matters under their own wings and begin the extermination process. It appears that the birds have gone crazy throughout England but no person seems able to communicate with anyone else. The birds have cut our communication channels.

In Hitchcock’s The Birds the small town of Bodega Bay in California gets a visit from the beautiful Tippi Hedren and then from a massive influx of really nasty avian whose purpose is to not only slaughter Tippi, but also to make an unsanitary mess of the town.

Oh, well, this is all fiction, right? Not so fast: I was attacked by a blue jay in Chicago and by one in my backyard in New York. I’m hoping it’s not the same exact bird, because flying from Chicago to New York to dive-bomb my head seems like a very long trip for one bird to achieve basically nothing. Neither blue jay drew blood; both just scared me. I will admit I’m easily scared and blue jays are notoriously tough.

But seriously, birds don’t attack people except for the occasional blue jay protecting its nest, right? Again, not so fast: Just go to the Internet and write in “mass bird attacks” or “birds killing humans” or find out what’s going on in Houston, Texas. Our feathered friends seem to have more aspects to them than we think or wish or pray. Sometimes we are indeed their prey.

But look on the bright side; we eat more turkeys on Thanksgiving than turkeys have eaten us and we actually have chicken farms that allow millions of us such delight in eating those feathered morsels every day.

The birds have not yet evened the score. Maybe though, maybe though, they just need a little more time.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from smile.amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

 

Bookcase: Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler

 

The Book: Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Get Their Names by Stephen Moss

My 13-year-old grandson has a book review due in two weeks based on a book he read this summer – or, rather, was supposed to read. I asked him how the book was coming along. He told me that he didn’t actually read it; he’d write the review based on the cover.

Based on the cover? “Yeah, Grandpa Scobe, I’ve been getting A’s writing about the covers for all my book reviews.” Such are kids; such is American public education; such is genius – my grandson!

Why read the book? Just pen some stuff based on what you read on the cover—I never thought of such a thing. Here I am—for decades—writing book reviews on books I’ve read thoroughly. I’m writing between 500 and 1,000 words about entire books, trying to figure out what to say to capture in such short word length what often these books are about. How silly of me.

I am now letting a little child lead me in my review of Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Get Their Names by Stephen Moss.

The cover asks us, “What’s in a name?” Basically everything. Birds have some of the most lyrical, most ridiculous, most awe-inspiring names. Take the “wheatear” which has nothing to do with ears of wheat in any of wheat’s incarnations. The name means—if you are easily offended then skip to the next paragraph—white-arse (white-ass). Yep! Such a distinctive name in our age of racial consciousness.

How’s this? The Dartford warbler; once named, was never seen in Dartford again. So what’s in that name? Evidently no loyalty.

On bird walks with the South Shore Audubon Society I’ve asked some of our astute bird observers how did thus and such a bird get its name? Sometimes they know; sometimes they don’t. What’s in a name many people will ask; well, I think a lot. Sometimes everything. You are, perhaps, what we call you.

Birds have been named after positive things (sunbird), or negative things (go-away-birds). Some have very long names (Ruwenzori double-collard sunbird); some have very short names (ou).

States in the United States have birds named after them (Mississippi kite and Hawaiian akepa), while some are named after man-made objects (ovenbird and riflebirds).

Natural elements, metals, gems and precious stones have their share of birds named after them; as do mythological figures such as Lucifer. Indeed, birds have even been named after other animals and insects (frogmouths and antbirds). Royalty has its share of bird names too (emperor penguin). For all I know, you have a bird named after you.

Final disclosure: I am not my grandson. I didn’t review just the cover; I read the whole book. It is fascinating and takes us on a journey into the past and into the world where you saw a bird and could assign it a name. Fun reading!

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.