TODAY is the day! My owl book (A Charisma of Owls) is out today! This is the first book which I have made any major effort to promote, and I need to do more. It’s tiring. I know my books won’t sell just because they exist. Sigh. So, I am actually having an event to promote this one. Below is my “ad” for the event. I hope somebody shows up or I will have to eat a lot of cookies!
What’s Happening – BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
for A CHARISMA OF OWLS by Lynn E. Barber
When – Saturday, February 7 at 2 pm
Learn a few things about owls, see beautiful pictures of owls and hear stories about owls, hear Lynn read a few words from her new book, maybe, buy a signed copy of her new book, and most importantly, eat some of Lynn’s cookies
Where – Peace United Church of Christ, 1530 Grand Ave., Schofield (park in back; go to upstairs fellowship hall)
I love to write. I love to write about birds and I love to write rhymes. And that has mostly been the extent of my writing in the past. Although I have never written while being specifically mindful about it, I think of myself as being mindful, although I don’t actually know for sure what that means.
For the past 5 days, I most happily participated in an online free “course” just finished yesterday, the “Mindful Writing Challenge,” that has given me a much better idea about it. In fact, it helped me write paragraphs and whole essays that surprised me. After you sign up for the course, you get a link each day that you can click on whenever you want to listen to that day’s session. Beginning with about five minutes of guided meditation, the formal part of each day’s session only lasts fifteen minutes, but of course one can continue writing long after the online session ends. This course immediately helped me to get away from my constant production of rhymes. I wrote prose about all sorts of topics, not just birds. I am not being paid or rewarded or coerced into writing this, but I definitely recommend Nadia Colburn’s “Mindful Writing Challenge (nadia@nadiacolburn.com) for all writers or would-be writers or people who might want to move from a practice of meditation to writing something.
After the five sessions are all over, there is of course the possibility of paying for additional inexpensive sessions, but I did not feel pressured to do so. I may sign up for more. Whatever I do, this course helped me feel more excited about the process of writing, not just about the outcome of the process.
Of course, the outcome is also important. I refer you to my published books, including the one just published.
A CHARISMA OF OWLS (available now from me, see my “shop” page)
I am currently in a whirlwind of trying to figure out how best to tell the world about my new owl book. I almost forgot that I need to update my blog site!
Drum Roll — my book is scheduled to be published on January 27, 2026, which is 26 days away! It is now possible to order copies from me and from the usual booksellers. Books from me, of course, can be signed and additional notes to the purchaser or an intended recipient can be added. I will have copies of the softbound copies by the publication date, with my hardbound copies probably arriving later. To order from me, you can call me at 682-365-6531, or you can go to my “shop” page and then to my “cart” page. If you have any questions, please call or text me.
I am at the end of the second day of a 3-day trip to Sax-Zim Bog, a mega birding hot spot a bit less than an hour out of Duluth. I went there last year in early February and had planned to join this year’s Wausau Bird Club trip there which begins tomorrow, but their schedule wasn’t quite right for me.
Although I enjoy wandering the roads here to see what birds are around, my real goal is owls, and in particular, this year I mainly wanted to see a Boreal Owl. A few days ago, they had apparently been numerous east of the Bog, but reports had dwindled. My only previous Boreal Owl sightings were in Alaska when we lived there. My second most wanted bird for this trip was Great Gray Owl, which I saw last year here, but just cannot get enough of.
While there were a few Great Gray Owl reports in the Bog yesterday, I did not see one, and there were no Boreal Owl reports there yesterday. It all changed today. In addition to a very cooperative sleeping and then hunting Great Gray Owl that someone else found and reported and which I visited three times from late morning to late afternoon, there also was a Boreal Owl sleeping and then waking less than a mile from the Great Gray. On my way back to my motel, I found another Great Gray Owl on my own. LIFE IS GOOD!!!!
The first six photos are of the huge (over 26 inches long) Great Gray Owl that I just could not resist.
The three photos below are of the very tiny (under 10 inches long) Boreal Owl.
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?).
Most of us who appear to be even remotely interested in birds have at least once been asked what our favorite bird is. It can happen at the end of a group field trip when the leader might ask the group to tell their favorite bird of the trip. Or it might happen when people first meet each other at a bird club or when out birding. It is a good conversation starter.
I never know what to say when I am asked. I usually just blurt out the most memorable bird that I have most recently seen. Probably a colorful or cute or funny bird. If I am allowed more than one bird and better yet, can generalize to groups of birds, it is much more easy for me to answer. I can at least say that my favorite birds are hummingbirds, cranes, and owls. The smallest, the biggest, and one in between in size. Hummingbirds have yet to arrive in Wisconsin for the year, and owls, while always around, are usually not that easy to find. But Sandhill Cranes have arrived. There are usually at least two cranes, and sometimes small flocks, in many of the fields around where I live, and probably all across the state. Their scrawky calls delight me as I drive along with my windows open, or hear them overhead.
Nowadays owls are on my mind the most though. I am mostly through the process of writing the text for a book about owls and have painted over 40 of the 50 owl paintings that my publisher is allowing me to have in the book. I am to submit my manuscript and paintings by the end of June to Texas A&M University Press, which published my three other books. Although this process is very time-consuming, I have been enjoying putting this all together. If all goes as planned and I don’t have more than a zillion rewrites, it may actually become a real book by early 2025.
