Charlotte photographer P. Brian Machanic has produced an 82-page volume titled This Book Is for the Birds, but of course the book is really for bird lovers.
Machanic notes in a preface that there are some “50-60 million” birders in the United States, that is, obsessed individuals “whose affliction for monitoring things avian is all consumptive, leading to forays afield at ungodly hours, while being viciously attacked by the biting insects which birds are supposed to eat.” The author admits he is not one of these people:
I’m more of a bird-watcher sort, which means that I enjoy sleeping in once a month, and stop looking for nighthawks when the thunder and lightning starts. I have only a couple of well-worn bird field guides, the second of which was purchased when I thought I’d lost the first.
What Machanic is afflicted with, however, is “a penchant for spending hours and hours at a time waiting for that perfect shot” — that is, with his camera. (The detail at right is from “House Wren.”) The right photograph, he imagines, might catapult him into “the Bird Watchers’ Hall of Fame and allow me to generously dip into the multi-billion-dollar industry devoted to supplying every imaginable need of the birding world.”
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
