Sometimes birding is not about chasing birds, or even about seeing them, but is about watching for and waiting for them. Right now, while we still have the residents, such as Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, most of our summer birds have left for southern climes, not knowing we were going to have a mild fall, and basically no winter yet.
Our normal wintertime birds are mostly somewhere north of here in Canada, with only a few having finally drifted down to the northern part of the state recently. Although we’ve had a few light snows, right now there is no snow on the ground. It’s mid-December in central Wisconsin!
So birding now is more about watching squirrels eat bird seed in my yard than it is about watching birds.
Winter is coming they say- it’s supposed to dip below zero (degrees F) at night two days from now and to barely rise above it during the next day. And maybe there will be an inch of snow. Slowly, slowly. Maybe more birds will arrive soon…
As mentioned in my last post, I have written an autobiography in rhyme and prose that I am calling BIRDING TIMES, A LIFE IN RHYMES. After much angst and uncertainty, I have decided to try Amazon Publishers Online for my “self-publishing” process (meaning not a “real”/traditional publisher). Hopefully, my dreams will be realized and something resembling a real book, in online, paperback and hardback versions, will at some point appear out of this process. While I hope to have a cover with one of my bird paintings on it (see below), I also hope that the Amazon Publisher folks will be able to help with the cover design (or at least I believe that is part of what I am paying for). We shall see – there’s always a new adventure awaiting….
I got the word this morning – there was a Snowy Owl, perched on an electrical pole, IN Wausau (WI) where I live, and not out in a field somewhere! I had not seen one in all of 2024, after much looking for one, even when I went up to Minnesota last winter to search for owls. I hurriedly put away my breakfast dishes, gathered up my binoculars and camera, and took off. When I arrived at about 7:40, it was obvious to see where the owl was. There were some 6-8 cameras aimed in its direction, still perched at the top of the pole. About 10 minutes after I arrived it (probably a she, or perhaps a very young he, because of how much black striping it had) flew across the road and landed on the top of a green building, where it poked at its foot and fluffed its feathers after being dive-bombed by a couple of crows. It was still there when I left, seemingly dozing.
It turns out that blogs may be infinitely revivable. At least that’s my hope. I love to write in them, but then life just gets in the way, again and again. Since bloggers can put their work out into the world without being stopped by review or rejection by anyone, it has only been me (and my tendency to happily overcommit) that caused me to stop posting.
This revived version of my blog will be a bit different from previous iterations. It will still cover bird-related topics but will primarily cover my bird-related writing endeavors, month-by-month. Should I have any birding adventures or especially interesting sightings, I will, of course, note them. I may also include updates on activities of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology (WSO), of which I currently am President. With perseverance I will post at least monthly. That’s the plan.
My two current “bird-related writing endeavors” have the running titles of: 1) A Charisma of Owls (my “owl book”); and 2) Birding Times, A Life in Rhymes (my “rhyme book”). Both are completely written, or at least I have written a complete draft of each of them.
My owl book draft is currently somewhere in the recesses of Texas A&M University Press (TAMU), being evaluated by them to see whether it might, when sufficiently edited, be worthy of being included in their book offerings. Their outside reviewers both concluded a month or so ago that it should be pursued, but the Press’s editorial board needs to make their decision, which I await. They previously published my three other books (Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year (2011); Birds in Trouble (2016) and Big Years, Biggest States: Birding in Texas and Alaska (2020)). I would be delighted if they would take on this fourth book. It covers all the known North American owls, with an emphasis on the owls of the United States and Canada. It also includes summary information on all the world’s owl species, highlights of owl-related lore of the world and summaries of many previous owl-related books, both non-fiction and fiction. All the North American owls in the book are illustrated with my acrylic paintings (sample shown here). The schedule: if all goes well with TAMU, this book will be available in Spring, 2025. If things do not work out there, I will work on self-publishing it. In any case, I will have copies available to sell at some point and will also be on the lookout for places where I may give talks on it. I will keep readers updated on progress on this book.
My rhyme book is a rather odd autobiography with my rhymes and prose interspersed to tell the story of my birding life so far. The poems were written over approximately 70-plus years from when I was a grade-school student to the present. Much of the text in the book, whether poems or prose, relates to birds and my bird-related thoughts, covering my international birding trips, pelagic birding, and big years (TX, ABA area, SD, AK and WI). There are also non-bird sections about my life, the lengthiest being poems on why I have put my thoughts into rhyme over the years. This book is illustrated with black-and-white copies of my bird paintings and sketches. The plan: self-publish soon, somehow, and then sell the books myself, in person and online. I will let you know in upcoming blog posts just how well this self-publishing process goes (does anybody know of a publisher of bird-rhyme books?).
