"I and the Bird" No. 48

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy not too far away but so long ago that it was in my youth, picking a shampoo at a super market was easy. Of course it was easy because I was far too young to go to a super market myself and it was my mom who'd buy the shampoo, but it was mostly easy because there was only a limited variety.
Standing in front of a shampoo shelf was a rather straight forward thing, you quickly scanned through the two to three different brands and just had to decide if your hair was more on the dry side or less on the dry side of the scale. On you went as a decent mom to the candy section to get your son whatever he asked for (I wished).

Nowadays, with globalization and all that fancy stuff, getting a shampoo is nothing short of a nightmare. First of all, finding your shampoo section can be a real problem because it is rather easy to mistake the conditioner or body wash section for the shampoo shelf. And when you've asked a few people for directions, got guided (in tears) through the maze that used to be a super market and are standing in front of the shampoos, you're not really closer to your aim of obtaining the right one. The masses of different products are just unbelievable. And as if having to choose from / cope with all these different brands wasn't already hard enough, you now have to decide or - gasp - know what hair type you are, and the classification system of hair types nowadays is more complex than that of South American hummingbirds!
Complete, overwhelming chaos.

And this, my dear and inclined reader, is what bird blogging and buying a shampoo have in common: an overwhelming and -honestly- unmanageable supply of possibilities. How can you be sure you're reading the right bird blogs (easy: link to Belltower Birding), how can you know you're not missing out on posts everybody else is reading and talking about, how can you stay up-to-date with your bird blogging?

You say it's difficult?
Think it is impossible??

Ha !!

Not anymore, thanks to "I and the Bird", the bird blogging institution that facilitates life and brings you and your bird blogging up to scratch.

The latest edition of "I and the Bird" is hosted by Greg Laden on his incomparable blog here and is the ultimate "Field Guide to the Bird Posts".

This is what others have to say about Greg's Field Guide:

"A new classic." - Scientific American
"A treasure of valuable information." - Time
"Superb ... Unequaled." - The New York Times
"Undoubtedly the finest guide to Global Bird Posts." - Birding

Well, maybe these are the comments Sibley received for his field guide, but Greg's Field Guide, as the natural supplement to Sibley's Work, can certainly be included in these reviews.

A new classic is born!