Year-in-Review: 2007

I posted a 2006 Year-in-Review that I picked up as a meme. I found it to be so much fun and so interesting that I’m repeating the exercise this year.

The rules are simple: go to your monthly archives and post the first sentence of the first post of each month of the preceding calendar year. To eliminate redundancy, I violate this rule by listing the second entry posted in two months (August and December).

January: Hundreds, if not thousands, of species of birds have been featured on untold numbers of postage stamps issued by countries around the world. (more)

February: An excerpt from this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. (more)

March: The fatal (to the bird) impact occurs at about the 8-second mark on this video. (more)

April: Introduction: A daily (or as often as I can find time to compile it) feature that highlights recent entries from North American bird blogs listed in my blogroll; also see here. (more)

May: Frank Gill and Mintern Minturn Wright’s Birds of the world: recommended English names (2006), produced on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee “to promote the use of a standard set of English names of the birds of the world,” is available in an online version. (more)

June: Lord God Bird is a colloquial name that has been widely applied to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) since the ‘rediscovery’ was announced in 2005, even though there is evidence that the name was historically restricted to the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) (see here and here), or, perhaps more likely, applied indiscriminately to both species (see here). (more)

July: An eclectic weekly collection of recent posts about birds, birders, and birding by bloggers throughout the blogosphere—but mostly from sources other than the mainstream bird blogs—that illustrates the universal appeal and attraction of our feathered neighbors, personally selected by me for your reading and viewing pleasure. (more)

August (2): In the aftermath of the Minnesota bridge collapse, this AP article raises questions about the possible effect that the accumulated dung from Rock Pigeons (Columba livia) might have on the structural integrity of bridges across the country. (more)

September: [No posts]

October: [No posts]

November: I guess it was only a matter of time before someone jumped on the matchmaking bandwagon and tailored a Web site to appeal exclusively to a special-interest group as narrowly focused as birding. (more)

December (2): Let me say right up front that I have no problem with pet cats (Felis domesticus) and the people who own and care for them; I was once a cat owner myself. (more)

Summary: In retrospect, my 2007 blogging year started out red-hot with 237 entries the first six months (40/month), but ended decidedly cool or at best luke-warm with just 26 entries the last six months (4/month), including an 89-day stretch in which nothing was posted. Ah, the vagaries of blogging. What’s in store for 2008, I wonder?