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Member: Facetious_Badger

Library150 books — see library

ReviewedNone so far

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

TagsTo Be Reviewed (16), Fiction (11), To Be Read (6), Non-Fiction (4), Dystopian (3), Horror (2) — see all tags

Groups50 Book Challenge, Ancient History, Archaeology, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Birds, Birding & Books, BookMooching, Ecology and the environment, Environmental history, Evolve!, Geologyshow all groups

Favorite authorsC. J. Box, Pat Conroy, Jared Diamond, Walter Farley, William Faulkner, Brian Greene, Rudyard Kipling, C. S. Lewis, Jack London, Alister E. McGrath, Philip Pullman, David Allen Sibley, J. R. R. Tolkien (Shared favorites)

About me I'm a fairly average nerd from the sticks of Mississippi, and as my username implies I tend to err on the side of facetiousnes. I'm an enlisted member of the Marines, and currently am touring scenic, lovely Afghanistan. After my pitstop in government work is done, I'll hopefully be able to attend a decent college and major in something as nerdy and eclectic as I am ;-)

About my library My interests run the gamut from horses to musings on theology to physics and astronomy, so you'll find a pretty wide range of books. That's also why you'll very rarely see a full collection from any author since I never like to spend too long focused on one thing. The major exception to that would be Walter Farley's books, which were hands down my favorite through Junior High and part of High School, and I still enjoy perusing now and again. I tend to have high ratings for my books since I never finish a book I don't like unless I'm forced to.

Currently (Re)Reading
1. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Books I Just Got/Will Be Reading Soon
1. Basic Math and Pre-Algebra
2. Algebra For Dummies by Mary Jane Sterling
3. A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow
4. On The Shoulder's of Giants by Stephen Hawking

Also onBookMooch

Real nameAnn

LocationCherry point, nc

Emailrhodesaf24meufwd.usmc.mil

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/Facetious_Badger (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Facetious_Badger (library)

Member sinceMay 22, 2008

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Facetious Badger, I, too would be quite interested to read about your birding experiences in Afghanistan. A friend of mine just returned from Afghanistan and it was comforting to know that he could spend some bit of his time with a hobby to bring some normalcy to his life. To answer a question you posed earlier...

There is only one book I know of that intentionally covers all the birds of Afghanistan. That book is "Birds of South Asia - Volume 1: Field Guide" by Rassmussen and Anderton, 2005, (ISBN 8487334652). This is an excellent book with outstanding illustrations of all species between Afghanistan east through India, Nepal, and over to eastern Myanmar (aka, Burma). Volume 1 contains exclusively the 180 color plates and Volume 2 holds all the text and species accounts. This set of two books is a bit pricey, starting at US$100. The cheapest purchase site I've found is at http://www.hbw.com/lynx/en/lynx-edicions... --

I can recommend two other cheaper books:
1) The Birds of Kazakhstan by Wassink and Oreel, 2007 (ISBN 9789081146210). This country borders Afghanistan on the north.

2) Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East by Porter, Christensen, and Schiermacker-Hansen, 1996 (ISBN 0856610763). This book does not specifically cover Afghanistan, but it does cover all of Iran, which sits on the western border.

These three additional books include all the birds in Pakistan, which borders you on the east:
1) Field Guide to Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Kazmierczak, 2000 (ISBN 0300079214)

2) Birds of India by Grimmet & Inskipp, 1999 (ISBN 0691049106)

3) A new book coming out in November 2008 is Birds of Pakistan by Grimmet and Inskipp (ISBN 0713688009)

Lastly, here is a very good website for photos of birds in Kazakhstan. A large percentage will be in common with Afghanistan. -- http://www.birds.kz/photosonlye.html --

Just as a little factoid, there is only one bird endemic to Afghanistan, the Afghan Snowfinch (Montifringilla theresae).

Best of luck to you.
Badger: Yes, I had a feeling that you'd be dealing with a slow-speed computer. Pretty frustrating.

I did find this list of birds seen around the Kandahar base by someone who may have been a Dutch soldier (not sure) during a six-month period in 2006-2007:

http://www.surfbirds.com/trip_report.php...
Badger: Me again. As you will have noticed, there are a lot of bird photos missing on the site I sent you. However, if you go to Oiseaux.net http://www.oiseaux.net/photos/photo430.e... where the generally high quality photos are arranged alphabetically you can fill in a lot of the gaps (eg. desert wheatear).

Cheers!
Hi Badger: Here's a site containing quite a few photos of the birds of Afghanistan:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...
Facetious Badger: I used the term "adventures" unadvisedly, being well aware of your dangerous situation. As for the people of Afghanistan, as if things weren't bad enough, it sounds as though the food situation is very dire, what with significant and continuing increases in the price of bread.

Recently I stumbled upon this site - Russian soldiers describing their tours of duty in Afghanistan (in translation, with photos):

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...
Facetious Badger: I'm sure I'm not the only person who would very much like to hear about your birding (and other) adventures during your service in Afghanistan.
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