Peregrine falcons who’d resorted to building their nest 41 floors up Rhodes Tower spread their wings and took their first flight lesson. Or at least one of them did. Five-week-old Swoop hit the sidewalk just east of the building, abruptly ending his first flying lesson and life. Fortunately, Swoop timed his death to coincide with the lunch rush, so people in downtown Columbus had something to ponder while eating at Big Bowl.

More and more magazines are going this style of interactive, online content. Wend has done a remarkable job embracing the online format, and the style opens a lot of doors for advertisers and editors alike. Photographers for Skiing will have to work a little harder with their DSLR video to get winning shots, and the advent of tablets and the iPad are built for this kind of surfing. Hopefully the magazine writers and shooters will see the benefits from this style in the form of more frequent, larger paychecks.

Whoa, who said anything about Nature Deficit Disorder? Kids are getting all the nature they need by identifying city tress using iPhone applications. My Nature’s Tree Guide costs $6.99, but it will prove invaluable when trying to identify which berries are edible and which are poisonous before you can get a cell phone signal to call in help. It also identifies fruit: “Is it yellow, shaped like a crescent moon, did Kirk Cameron call it ‘The Atheist’s Nightmare?‘ If so, it’s a banana.

via Get Outdoors

The Videograss crew’s latest is Bon Voyage, a snowboarding odyssey that’s part urban, part backcountry, a lot of hick, and plenty of antics backed up with serious riding skills. Enjoy.

Thanks Colin

After skiing across all of Greenland over 43 days while being dragged by kites, a duo of adventurers decided to try to break the single-day kite skiing record. The record had previously been held by a Norwegian, but on June 6 with some high-powered winds, the pair covered 370 miles in 24 hours. They broke the record with the help of the midnight sun and powerful wind, and then they slept for about 15 hours. Hopefully they arranged a ride back because that would be one long walk into the wind.

via The Adventure Blog [The Adventure Life]