Birding Babylon

The cover of Birding Babylon, a new publication from Sierra Club Books, shows a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater perched on a strand of razor-wire along the perimeter of Camp Eden, a military outpost in Iraq. It's an image that nicely captures the subject of Sargeant Jonathan Trouren-Trend's book, which the New Yorker recently described as "a slender, handsomely illustrated distillation" of the blog the National Guardsman kept during a tour of duty in Iraq.

A birder since age 12, Trouren-Trend found that Camp Anaconda, the heavily fortified encampment near the Tigris River where he was stationed, was prime birding territory, smack in the middle of a major migration route between Europe and Africa. As the binoculars-wielding sargeant added species to his "life list," he also maintained a blog that gained fairly wide readership and eventually grabbed the attention of Sierra magazine and Sierra Club Books.

Trouren-Trend told a reviewer from American Scientist that he was surprised at first by his blog's popularity, but eventually came to understand it. "To read about something as universally familiar as the migration of birds, or watching ducks in a pond, fulfilled a need to know that something worthwhile or even magical was happening, even in the midst of suicide bombings and rocket attacks."

Birding Babylon's official release date is May 1, 2006. You can order a copy here.