I've been trying to collect good things over the last two weeks, gathering them carefully and holding them close. Stories about generous grocery store chains and photos of peoples' pets and hopeful conservation tales. Here's a big good thing: more people, every day are going out to look at birds. Maybe you're one of these new birders, or you know one of these new birders, or perhaps you've been an avian enthusiast for years of even decades. Either way, this list is for you.
My favourite bird ornaments
Gary Starr has been carving decoys for nearly sixty years. Sixty years! Since 1992 he's been making ornaments from basswood - https://starrdecoys.com/collections/bird-ornament-collectionhttps://starrdecoys.com/collections/bird-ornament-collection. I buy two or three every year, and our tree is by now a kind of aviary. It's hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to I'd probably go with the red-breasted nuthatch. Or the snow bunting. Or maybe the American oystercatcher.
A good binocular strap
I tell my students in my Binoculars to Binomials class a hard truth on the first day: It's impossible not to look like a dork when you're wearing binoculars. But you can look a little bit cooler with a nice binocular strap. I like these 8mm rope straps from Topologie that are available in all kinds of colors. These are easily adjustable, which means you can wear your bins cross-body when you feel like it.
Bird-y books
One book I keep on coming back to is Phaidon's Bird, a huge and gorgeous coffee-table type of number, which collects all kinds of work about... birds. It's very cleverly curated, with every facing page showing works that compliment each other in some way. If you're the kind of person who likes to wander through archives, I think you'll love this one.
I didn't read a lot of non-fiction this year. At least not by choice. But I did really enjoy reading Birding for a Better World by Molly Adams and Sydney Anderson. It's an extremely hopeful book, something that I suspect a great number of us could use to read (or re-read) at this exact moment in time.
Things to Wear I snapped up Wyatt Hersey's kestrel shirt as soon as I saw it because American kestrels are top quality birds. I can't post an image of the shirt so instead here's a picture of a kestrel.
While we're on theme, Camp Mustelid's Kestrel Tote is very adorable in a fierce murderbird kind of way.
Some beautiful bird-themed art
I stumbled onto these gorgeous drawings by Marina Gallagher on Bluesky the other day. They're little gems, one-of-a-kind things that will be perfect for that spot in your house where you go to think about nice things.
I've long been a fan of Alex Tomlinson's work. I have a couple of his t-shirts and I remain honoured that he drew the logo for my dormant (hopefully for not much longer?) podcast. Alex's store is full of delightful bird-y things, all of which I could put on this list, but I'm going to go with this extra cute rubber stamp, which would fit oh-so-well in your favourite birder's stocking.
Speaking of long-time favourites, I just found out that Rosemary Mosco has a store where you can buy prints of her comics, including the iconic Four Seasons of Birding. I'm putting this one about a purposely-vagrant cardinal on my own list.
I swear this post wasn't an elaborate setup to talk about my own bird-themed artwork but... I have my own bird-themed artwork! Every Bird is a series of data artworks celebrating the diversity of the world's birds and the tenacity of its birders. These ULTRA detailed prints show hundreds of thousands of observations of millions of birds in 14 different places. Each piece is available in light and dark variants, and as gallery-quality prints or as posters. 15% of the proceeds from Every Bird sales will go to the Wild Bird Fund, New York City's only wildlife rehab and education center. Make sure you click through to see the detail on these!
I imagine I'll be adding a few more things to this list as they come to mind. Do you have a great bird-themed gift idea? I'd love to hear about it!