This year I hope to attend several birding festivals to build my life list, learn new birding hotspots and find new birding travel destinations to review, but in researching where I want to go, I've found it a bit of a challenge to discover all the possible festivals out there. Because of that, I've decided to build a bird festival directory as a travel resource all birders can refer to, but to make it as useful as possible, I need your help! How would you like such a directory organized?

• By Month: Would list festivals in order by date, with quick access to each month.
• By Location: Would list festivals by general location, such as state or (outside the United States) country.
• Both: Would be two separate directories, one each by month and location.

Vote in the poll below, and share your thoughts in the comments!



Painted Bunting
Photo © Dan Pancamo

In celebration of Australia Day today (the official national day of Australia), our featured bird this week is a widely recognized avian ambassador of that unique nation - the laughing kookaburra. Though this bird prefers woodland habitats it is a type of kingfisher, and its familiar laughing call has been used in many movies to depict the call of monkeys in the African jungle; even though the laughing kookaburra is found nowhere near Africa!

Have you seen laughing kookaburras in the wild or in a zoo or aviary? Share your experiences in the comments!

Laughing Kookaburra
Photo © Richard Fisher

A few months ago, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology unveiled a game to decipher bird colors as part of the first phase of building their Merlin bird identification tool, and now the second phase is available for all birders to contribute. The new Mark My Bird game shows birders a photo and asks 18 questions about the bird, including colors, body parts and markings to help clarify the species. The more contributions the tool receives, the more refined its abilities will be to help birders identify their mystery species.

It only takes a few minutes to complete a round of identification, and birders can play over and over with different photos to help build the tool. Not sure about your bird identification skills? It doesn't matter! Both beginning and advanced responses are needed to help the tool learn how birders of all abilities see different birds.

Want to clarify your bird identification skills before you begin? Learn the parts of a bird and where to find field marks, then get playing!

Purple Finch
Photo © jnyemb

With a total of 43 entries from 18 very talented photographers, it was a struggle for me to bring this month's photo contest down to just three finalists, but I'm happy to announce them! In no particular order, our finalists this month are...

• A colorful, smiling female galah from Dave_Kelly.
• A stunning yellow-billed hornbill from JoanBudai.
• A thoughtful, exquisite muscovy duck from Kate.

Not only is each of these photos a terrific portrait of a bird that befits January's contest theme, but they are beautifully composed and technically superior shots, and each bird is complemented by its respective background. But don't take my word for it - look at the full-size finalist photos and cast your vote in the poll below for the shot you think should take home the honors as January's winning bird portrait. Voting will continue until January 31, and the winner will be announced in early February. Many thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to all our fabulous finalists!