This Week's Best in Bird Blogging

White-crowned Sparrows are one of my favorite winter birds. I love their striking appearance and their winter song. I obtained the photo above by sitting on the cold sidewalk for a half hour at my new lunch-hour birding patch where a flock of White-crowns were foraging in the Russian Olives.  This handsome adult posed nicely for me just feet away. Bonus points if you can name the subspecies in the comments.

Here is my list of This Week's Best in Bird Blogging from the BiF! Contributors:

*  I really enjoyed Laurence Butler's post and photos of birds he found at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ; especially because that was my lunch-hour birding patch for about a year.
*  All of Scott Simmons posts this week had wonderful bird and nature photography. Don't miss any of them!
*  Kathie Brown got to hang-out with Julie Zickefoose at the Mass Audubon Visual Arts Center. Cool!
*  Lillian Stokes offers up some fun facts about some of your winter feeder birds.
*  Kelly Riccetti shares some close-up photos of an Anhinga on a nest.
*  Greg Gillson photographed a Golden Grebe in Beaverton, Oregon...not some new species, but rather a Pied-billed Grebe in a golden setting. Nice!
*  In addition to Jeremy Medina's Sparrow Anticipation post here at BiF! that got some ABA Blog love, he also posted on his own site a nice little Belted Kingfisher profile, his 200th bird species in Pima County.
*  Speaking of blog love, A DC Birding Blog mentioned Steve Creek's Bird Hygiene here on BiF! Steve's Birdtog has a nice assortment of bird photography posted this week too that you need to check out.
*  Dan Huber recently had a fowl day, so give why don't you stop by his blog and give him some love too.
*  Mia McPherson always comes through with amazing bird photography. You've got to see her Great Horned Owl, Rough-legged Hawk, and Prairie Falcon images. Very nice!
*  A trip to Florida gave Rob Ripma the chance to enjoy and photograph some awesome birds.
*  Pat Bumstead has a share-worthy guest post from Janet Plante sharing photos of finches in the boreal forests of Canada.
*  The ABA Blog also shared Rob Fergus' adventuring taking his kids to see the Snowy Owl in New Jersey.

More of This Week's Best in Bird Blogging:

*  Eagle Optics and the ABA partner up - buy certain binoculars from Eagle Optics and you can get a discount on ABA membership or gift the discount to someone else that is not yet a member. Cool idea!
*  Brownstone Birding Blog's Keys to Proper Misidentification of Birds was a fantastic and fun read!
*  Birding Bro's had a cool post about 10 Prehistoric Birds you didn't even know existed (but were totally awesome!)
*  Chris Petrak in Tails of Birding has thought-provoking post entitled Birding with Mudman
*  Bill Schmoker's post on the ABA Blog Playing with Food was a really good one. I'm such a sucker for photos of birds eating stuff.
*  I'm really enjoying following John Vanderpoel's Big Year. He's at 734 right now and most certainly chasing this week's North American rarities.
*  Alex Vargas never ceases to impress with his awesome bird photography from all over the globe being shared at BirdingBlogs.com.
* Linda Rockwell's bird photos from the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival make me anxious to go there in the future.