Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

Standing beside my husband, my eyes have relished some of the most astounding things the planet has to offer. I have shed so many tears of joy in the face of the awe-inspiring gifts that nature presents to those who are aware and are looking. Today, as this remarkable flight of birds, including birds of a different feather, passed overhead, for the first time in my life, I named the tears I shed.  This morning, Kenn was given the extraordinary (perhaps even life-altering) opportunity to fly with the birds when we joined Operation Migration (OM) in Berlin, Wisconsin as they trained Whooping Crane colts to migrate following an ultralight aircraft.  In this picture, Kenn is in the lower aircraft seated behind OM CEO and pilot Joe Duff.T Yes, that's Kenn in the backseat of this odd "bird." And I watched them pass overheard, I shed tears for Kenn, as he so richly-deserved this life-altering opportunity. I shed tears for me, for being blessed enough to share my life with this m...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:  A big event is coming to northwest Ohio at the end of September, and local birders are excited about it. That in itself is not unusual. Northwest Ohio is no stranger to birding events. One of the largest and most important bird festivals on the continent, The Biggest Week In American Birding, makes a huge impact here every May. Another notable festival, the Midwest Birding Symposium, is held here in fall every other year. But the event in late September isn’t a birding festival. It’s the contest to choose the artwork for next year’s Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp—better known as the Duck Stamp. The Duck Stamp program dates to 1934, a time when waterfowl populations in North America were in serious trouble because of habitat loss. The federal wildlife agencies needed a way to raise money to purchase or restore wetland habitats. By producing the stamp and requiring hunters to buy it, they were able to immediately start ra...

South Georgia Pipit (Anthus antarcticus) From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: According to the International Ornithological Congress, there are over 10,480 species of birds in the world. According to us, every single one of those species is fascinating in its own way.  Take this one. It's not large, it's not colorful, it doesn't have the most interesting song. But it lives in an amazing place. This is a South Georgia Pipit. It isn't found in the state of Georgia in the U.S., and it isn't found in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. No, this bird lives only on South Georgia Island, out where the South Atlantic meets the Antarctic Ocean. South Georgia is huge, wild, remote. About 100 miles long and up to 23 miles wide, it is crowned with snow-capped peaks that rise as much as 9000 feet in the air. The island and the surrounding waters are home to many large and spectacular creatures: seals, whales, penguins, albatrosses, various other seabirds. This is also...

Eskimo Curlews, as painted by John James Audubon in the early 1800s. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Fifty years ago today, on Sept. 4, 1963, an Eskimo Curlew was shot on the island of Barbados. Many migratory shorebirds were shot every fall on islands in the Lesser Antilles. It was almost a fluke that this small curlew was recognized as something unusual and that the specimen was given, many months later, to an ornithologist from Philadelphia. And in another fluke, as a little kid and beginning birder, I heard about this only two years after the curlew was shot. I had joined the National Audubon Society at the age of nine, since it was the only bird group that I'd heard of, and one of my very first issues of Audubon Magazine carried the sad news about the curlew.  At that point the Eskimo Curlew was already a bird of legend. It had been abundant at one time, migrating north through the Great Plains in spring, nesting in the Canadian Arctic, migrating out over the Atl...

From Homebase in Oak Harbor (but still dreaming of Panama), Kimberly Writes: It's been quite some time since we last posted to our poor neglected blog, and we've had some pretty amazing adventures since then. For instance, we just returned from a sensational trip to Panama with our friends Jim and Cindy Beckman and their birding tour company  Cheepers! Birding on a Budget . Traveling with Jim and Cindy is like an extra insurance policy for having a great time on a trip. Their attention to detail, their fun loving spirit, and the fact that they travel along with their customers on every trip ensures a positively wonderful experience! To add to the supreme quality of this trip, our local guide in Panama was Carlos Bethancourt. We'd birded with Carlos in Texas a few years ago so we knew how great he was. We'd heard many testimonials of his skills as a guide in Panama, and now that we've birded with him on his home turf, we can testify that every great thing we heard i...

Filmmaker Rob Meyer in action, on the set From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:  Okay, here's the deal about being the director of a film.  It's like being God.  Only better, because people actually do what you tell them to do. Or at least, that's what I would have told you a couple of years ago.  That was just based on impressions from things I'd read.  Cecil B. DeMille demanding that Victor Mature wrestle with a real lion during the filming of Samson and Delilah .  James Cameron screaming at the extras bobbing around in the water during the sinking scenes in  Titanic.  And so on.  But until I visited the set of A Birder's Guide to Everything , I wouldn't have guessed that a movie director could be the most decent, kind person you could hope to meet. I first connected with filmmaker Rob Meyer by way of an email introduction from our friend, the great nature writer Scott Weidensaul.  Scott told me that Meyer had a screenplay that...

Kodi Smit-McPhee, who stars in the forthcoming film A Birder's Guide to Everything , is a young actor with phenomenal talent and a brilliant future. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:  Last August, as I described in a previous post, I spent a few days with the crew that was shooting Rob Meyer's forthcoming film,  A Birder's Guide to Everything .   I was involved as a consultant on the film, which has birding as a major plot element.  But while I was there, I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the craft of filmmaking. A movie looks very different when you see it from that perspective.  When you're in the theater, the actors and actresses loom larger than life, occupying all your attention.  On the movie set, there may be dozens of people hurrying around, focused on dozens of important tasks - lighting, sound, backgrounds, props, script details, makeup, costumes, and so on.  Everyone is a professional, everyone's work is essential. ...

From homebase in Ohio, Kimberly Writes: The Destination Nature team of Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer are celebrating the release of their new Falcon Guides book, The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things To Do In Nature Before You Grow Up. The cover alone makes this book worth owning!  Since a lot of our time and energy is devoted to getting young people interested in spending more time outside, Kenn and I are SUPER excited about this fabulous book, and we're honored to be a part of its official launch!  To let people know about the book, we invited our friend Ken Keffer to do a guest post. He is writing about Mothing, which is summer activity #21 in the book. We hope you enjoy the post, and if you want to win your own copy of the book, visit Stacy and Ken’s website. MOTHING! by Ken Keffer   Moths are the new birds. All of the reasons people love birds apply to moths, too. Plus you get bonus fun with moths, including fermented bananas and black ...

Katie Chang, Alex Wolff, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Michael Chen starring as young birders on a quest in the new Rob Meyer film, "A Birder's Guide to Everything." From out on the road, Kenn writes:  It's official!  The next birding movie will have its world premiere next month in New York City! You may recall that I've previously written about A Birder's Guide to Everything, the feature-length film-in-the-making by Rob Meyer.  Last July I introduced the film in this blog post .  Later I visited the set while the film was being shot on location north of New York, and I wrote about the experience (and about the amazing amount of hard work involved in movie-making) in this post .   Since that time I've been following the progress of the post-production work, as Rob Meyer and his team have worked through massive job of editing, mixing, and turning all the raw footage into a finished film.  Of course, I still haven't seen the finished product, but I...

American Tree Sparrow: Always at home in the snow. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:  When I was a kid, first learning about birds, I read that "snowbird" was the Dark-eyed Junco's nickname.  Juncos are easy to recognize, and for many people in the eastern U.S., they are characteristic birds of winter.  But for me, the real "snowbirds" are American Tree Sparrows.  Strictly winter birds anywhere south of the Arctic, they arrive with cold weather, and they visit Kimberly and me only when the snow flies.   American Tree Sparrows belong to the genus Spizella, which makes them relatives of familiar birds like Chipping Sparrow and Field Sparrow.  The main difference is that Tree Sparrows have their center of distribution at least a thousand miles farther north.  Indeed, "Tree Sparrow" is a misnomer:  many spend the summer far north of treeline, on the tundra, where the largest willows are only a couple of feet tall.  In winter, flocks r...