Afield: Forty Years of Birding the American West

by Alan Contreras

For forty years, Alan Contreras has studied birds and natural history in the West. In Afield, he recounts his bird-watching experiences— primarily in Oregon, but also in Alaska, Arizona, California, and Texas. Sprinkled with comments made by ornithologists and early explorers of the West, his essays offer elements of natural history, personal memoir, and adventure travel. In the largest sense, Afield is a love story, reaffirming the practice of unhurried...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870714201
• ISBN13: 9780870714207
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Oregon State University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A love story

I found this "love story" to birds last August in a book store in Seattle, and read parts of it during a trip to the Texas Hill Country in October. From time to time over the past few weeks, I've dipped into the several essays here, with growing delight. I know almost nothing about birding in the Pacific Northwest and just a smidgen about the Texas Hill Country. Nonetheless, despite Contrearas's emphasis on Oregon birding (with a bit about Texas and Arizona) -- he has published several guides to Oregon birding and is the past president of Oregon Field Ornithologists -- it is his simple joy and humor in watching birds that shines through most strongly. After 40 years of high level birding, he writes that now he most enjoys simplier pleasures, watch common finches and chickadees squabbling over seed at his backyard feeder. "Birding, ultimately, is not really about keeping lists -- 'bird golf' -- but about awareness." About 20 years ago, I had a similar experience; three little tribes of chickadees scolded me as I lay on a rock in the Ramapos, each in their turn as they passed by. I put aside my life lists, and just soaked up the joys of birds as part of nature. He writes about the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon; from the front lawn of Malheur headquarters, one can see and hear more species of birds than from any other location in the state, possibly in the entire Pacific Northwest. Numbers and rarity are important, of course, but mostly "it is the kind of experiences that an observer can have there." "I am always looking for the next bird, not necessarily the rarest or most colorful, just the next one, as a confirmation of the explicable glory of life." If that thought resonates with you to any degree, you'll find reading this fine book a great joy. I sure did. Robert C. Ross 2010

Like the best books about birding...

... Alan Contreras's brief history of his birding life makes you want, more than anything, to put down the book, and get out into the field to see some birds. I recently read most of AFIELD during the Oregon Shorebird Festival, including some passages aloud between bird-watching stops. Contreras is based in Oregon and much of the action takes place there, but there are also lovely sections about birders' paradises in the Texas Hill Country and in Southeast Arizona. Wonderful stuff for anyone who enjoys reading about birds and birding.