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BIRDS OF THE SIERRA MADRE In August, I traveled into Mexico for a Sierra Madre Alliance Board of Directors meeting held in a Tarahumara Eco-tourism lodge located in Copper Canyon near the town of San Juanito, deep in the Sierra Madre. While this was primarily a business trip, I took my binoculars, as I knew there would be early morning opportunities for birding. I was determined to see birds that I had not seen before. We flew from Tucson to Los Mochis in a small private plane, then drove to a charming Eco-tourism lodge in El Fuerte. The lodge was...

OUR GREAT AMERICAN ROAD TRIP Adventure, text and photos by Clarisa, Paloma and Justin Friedman On the road This is a love story. It’s a story about the love of family, the love of nature, the love of wildness, the love of adventure, and yes, the love of birds.  Starting the first week of June, we began our journey from Tucson, practically the southwestern most point in the U.S.,  to nearly the northwestern most point in Washington state and back.  Racking up over 5,000 miles, we spent almost a month on the road, and saw much of the American west...

THE DEMISE OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING AHEAD (Part Two) By Jon Friedman [Part 1] [Part 3] (Author’s note: The following article contains passages that include graphic descriptions that some readers may find disturbing. The historical record goes into much greater detail in describing methods of “harvesting” birds to the point of extinction. I have purposely avoided the more gruesome and gory details that would cause some readers distress.) Male Passenger Pigeon by Tim Hough (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons Introduction – Causes for extinction Part One of this article dealt with the historical...

THE DEMISE OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING AHEAD (Part One) By Jon Friedman [Part 2] [Part 3] All thinking people now realize that man alone was responsible for the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon so that further discussion of this phase of the subject is unnecessary. – A.W. Schorger Introduction Male Passenger Pigeon by Tim Hough (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons No one born in the twentieth century, and alive today, has ever seen a Passenger Pigeon in the wild, or in captivity, Male_Passenger_Pigeonr that matter. While it’s true that this species, extinct since...

THE DEMISE OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON Part 3: Can Extinct Species be Brought Back? By Jon Friedman [Part 1] [Part 2] Male Passenger Pigeon by Tim Hough (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons Introduction Parts 1 and 2 provided a history of the most numerous bird species ever known to inhabit North America and the gruesome slaughter of billions of the species, ending with its extinction around the turn of the last century. By the last decade of the 19th century, Passenger Pigeons had all but disappeared from the skies of their normal range in the eastern and...