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?).