Marc Parnell is an ornithologist, author, and wildlife photographer. He is best known for The Birding Pro's Field Guides, a series of photographic identification guides to the birds of North America, and is the second-most published ornithologist in the world, based on books in active print.[1][2][3][4]
Background
Parnell was born in Greenville, North Carolina, where the immediate proximity of his childhood home to the banks of the Tar River fostered an early love of nature.[5][6] These seeds of childhood curiosity began to take greater root after a move to the city of Jamestown, New York, the birthplace of American naturalist Roger Tory Peterson.[7] Parnell cites Peterson among his early influences, having received a green, fabric-bound Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians on the occasion of his fourth birthday.[8][9] After several additional moves, Parnell spent his teenage years in small-town Pennsylvania before attending Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he would eventually reside.[10][11]
During his time away from home, Parnell had arranged a set of bird feeders in his mother's backyard to serve as a regular topic of conversation, and eventually composed a short, 20-page guide to the local birds that she would be most likely to observe.[12][13] After having failed to identify a suitable, comprehensive replacement for his mother's booklet, he began to compose the framework of what would eventually become his collected series of field guides.[14][15]
Career
In early 2021 and 2022, Parnell released a series of 41 photographic bird-identification guides, The Birding Pro's Field Guides, several of which reached bestseller status in multiple countries.[2][8] These field guides, which each focus on an individual state, city, or province, provide information specific to the local area; for instance, his first-of-their-kind monthly birding forecasts for each species give month-by-month values for local frequency and ease-of-finding.[14][16] Parnell is known for also having pioneered the birding-by-comparison approach, which allows birders to identify new birds by comparing them to those which they already know, primarily by using size-based and behavioral categorizations.[15][17][18]
Parnell follows a multi-step approach to the writing process. Firstly, he locates and observes birds all throughout the calendar year, in a variety of different habitats and geographic locations, so as to best understand each species' evolving behaviors through the passing months. Secondly, he reflects and logs entries in a personal diary, placing emphasis on a contextualized "day-in-the-life" approach to each species.[19][20] Finally, he uses data analysis to make wider conclusions and to inform the data presented in his final drafts.[21] In addition to the naturalist-specific works of Roger Tory Peterson, Parnell cites Herman Melville, Jack London, and Jorge Luis Borges as literary influences.[19]
.jpg)