I recall years ago, my parents bought me a sketchbook - but I was rather young at the time, so I would not use it for sketching. Instead, the sketchbook would be transformed - each page dedicated to one letter of the alphabet - and on that page, sticker birds for that particular letter. Looking back, it seems that the sticker-books that were sacrificed used for this endeavour were mainly those created by Dorling Kindersley [now known as DK, not to be confused with Nintendo's character DK] and also "Armadillo Books"' own sticker book, with illustrations from "The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds of the World: [...] More Than 1800 Pictures". Though, it does seem that there was also another sticker book used with a different style than these two; though what that one was seems to be lost to time. Trouble was; for the relatively few sticker books dedicated to birds at the time, fewer still represented these birds in a realistic manner - many such books choosing to go with a stylised approach. [It would seem that in this regard little has changed.] Even Dorling Kindersley, known very well for stellar visual performance in their Eyewitness series of books, resorted to illustrations for some birds not found in Europe or in immediate captivity for their sticker collection. Nevertheless, for the majority of 26 letters, birds were found - for letters the sticker-books would not provide, I recall mother drawing a bird on the page for that letter. And so it was that my younger self, by all accounts, would be quite proud of this thing. Fast forward several years later, having moved house, Guess what turns up amongst piles of old memorabilia? Of course, the sketchbook had re-appeared! Well, almost ... having been several years since it was last cared for, several pages of the book had disappeared - ultimately lost to time, something of an 'ex-parrot' if you may. Of 26 or so original pages, only 15 remained. I recall that last year [2021] it would be that I had the will once again to do something about this silly little sketchbook I loved so much in my younger years. For each page that was missing [C, H, everything from Q to Y] I created a new page on white paper - in contrast to the original, remaining, pages - now rather yellowed. I now had access to a sticker-printer, and now had the internet's photo library at my disposal - meaning that prior limitations were a moot point now. In this new addition, U and V share one page - as do X and Y. And so, the sketchbook is once again complete to some degree - no letters are missing now. All of the pages, old and new, are stored in a large binder. Sometimes I would still hope [not quite as much anymore] that someday the pages that were impossible to replenish would suddenly turn up, maybe like a bird who has come north for the summer, but, in the end, it was rather remarkable these 15 survived. It was also around this time that I took an interest in animal photography - and my animal photo-collection was revitalised again. Now taking better-quality pictures than before, this year I have had some rather significant additions to my collection - including all three species of true-hyaena, and some real nice species from Zoo and Tierpark Berlin. I hope, in the future, this refound hobby of mine will continue to go to new heights - perhaps broadening into photography of wild birds and other animals - and maybe further fleshing out of the birds altogether. I hope you have enjoyed reading this !
...An update... It has been for some time now that the internet has seemingly lacked much of a comprehensive animal resource - the powerhouse that was ARKive vanished - as has the accessible, yet supreme UltimateUngulate. What remained was - for the large part - heavily commercialised websites made to dish out largely unmoderated animal information with a side order of advertising of whatever dog chew toy was relevant at that time - or, websites comprehensive greatly in information, but lacklustre media performance. I believe that should any comprehensive website about nature feel a slight need to get its point across - it need some degree of quality media - as some somewhat famous animal person once said - 'no one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.' And so, in recent times, I have also started creating my own digital animal encyclopaedia - through which I hope to provide comprehensive information - the animal's taxonomy, evolution, morphology, biology as it is currently understood - Up-to-date taxonomy based on research papers - and, of course, this is to be supplemented by quality [I hope] images from a localised database. And so, fulfilling what the internet truly ought to be - humanity's highest powerhouse of information - general, and not-so-general. Knowledge need not carry with it the sentiment of advertising. The result? You can see for yourself - something I hope you will enjoy looking at!
