Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From Boston, Mass., Kenn writes:   So far we've had very little time to walk around outside; so after 2 days, the species list from our book tour is still under 100.  But we've had some good sightings even in urban Boston.  Red Admirals had a very good flight in 2012 - here's a photo of one from Ohio from last April. On October 17th, we saw a lingering individual in downtown Boston. With our book tour happening so late in the season, we figured we wouldn't be seeing many butterflies or other insects, but Kimberly spotted a Red Admiral flying right past the car as we crossed a bridge on our way into downtown Boston. With temperatures predicted to reach the mid 60s on Thursday, we might see a few other butterflies down on Cape Cod. This morning (Wednesday the 17th) we got to visit with classes at Pierce Middle School in Milton.  Science teacher Jeff Stoodt invited us to come speak to an assembly of 6th and 7th grade classes, and later in the morning we we...

From Cambridge, Mass., Kenn writes:   Our book tour for KFG to Nature of New England will take us through all 6 New England states, October 16-30, with public programs, book signings, media interviews, store visits, etc., so we're going to be somewhat busy for the next two weeks.  Our friends Taryn, Lisa, and Katrina at the publishing company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, decided that we weren't going to be quite busy enough, so they suggested a challenge: "Why don't you try to identify 350 species of living things while you're traveling through New England?"  As evidence of how crazy we are, Kim and I immediately said Yes to the idea.  Why not, indeed?  New England is loaded with natural wonders; and even in late October, past the main season for butterflies and flowers, after many birds have flown south, we are still going to see a lot of nature over the course of 15 days.  So that's our listing challenge: the Book Tour Big 350! We arrived in Boston l...

From on the way out the door in Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:   We're heading to Boston to start our trip to introduce the brand-new Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of New England!   The official publication date is Tuesday, Oct. 16, and we will kick things off at the New England Wild Flower Society and Massachusetts Audubon Society before going on to events in all six New England states.  We are looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting lots of new friends as we travel through one of our favorite regions in the world! Here's a preliminary schedule; we will try to update this with more information as we get more details.  We are immensely grateful to Taryn Roeder and her staff at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for making arrangements for this whole tour. Here's our new "baby" - its official "birthday" is October 16th! October 16 at Framingham, Massachusetts : 12:30 p.m. program and book signing at New England Wild Flower Society. More inform...

CITIZEN CALL TO ACTION:  Help BSBO's efforts to stop a wind turbine proposed for a Globally Important Bird Area in Ottawa County We hope you will email your Name, City, State, Zip, and email address (with "RWE" in the subject line) to: ResponsibleWindEnergy@bsbo.org to support our efforts on the troubling issue outlined below. Your name will then be included along with an official letter that BSBO, along with other conservation organizations, will be submitting to local, state, and federal officials. Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) has learned of proposal to place a large wind turbine at the Camp Perry National Guard facility on the Lake Erie shoreline, just a few miles east of the world-famous birding hotspot of Magee Marsh.   The Camp Perry facility itself includes wooded areas near the Lakeshore that provide important stopover habitat for migratory songbirds. The site also lies directly between the Darby Unit of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and the N...

CITIZEN CALL TO ACTION: Help BSBO's efforts to stop a wind turbine proposed for a Globally Important Bird Area  We hope you will email your Name, City, State, Zip, to: ResponsibleWindEnergy@bsbo.org to support our efforts on the troubling issue outlined below. Your name will then be included along with an official letter that BSBO, along with many other conservation organizations, will be submitting to local, state, and federal officials.  Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) has learned of proposal to place a huge wind turbine at the Camp Perry National Guard facility on the Lake Erie shoreline, just a few miles east of the world-famous birding hotspot of Magee Marsh.   The Camp Perry facility itself includes wooded areas near the Lakeshore that provide important stopover habitat for migratory songbirds.  The site also lies directly between the Darby Unit of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge and the Navarre Marsh, site of BSBO's primary songbird banding ...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:   Back on July 14 I wrote about a feature-length film, A Birder's Guide to Everything, that was about to start shooting under the direction of a remarkable young filmmaker, Rob Meyer.   If you don't want to scroll all the way back to that date, you can read my earlier post at this link. In August, at Meyer's invitation, I had a chance to visit the set for a few days.  Now, I've watched a lot of movies but I didn't know much about how they were made, and it was fascinating to have this behind-the-scenes view.  Although this isn't a filmmaking blog, this particular movie has birding as a main element, so I figured it was legit to write about it here.  To keep things manageable I'll break this up into multiple posts rather than writing one incredibly long post.  So, class, today's lesson: there is a HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK that goes into making a film! Seriously.  I was stunned to see the dedication and the att...

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise - Silent, upon a peak in Darien."                      -- John Keats, 1816 From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: The verse above, the latter half of a sonnet, represented Keats's reaction after first reading the George Chapman translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey .  In modern language, Keats might have written, "Whoa!  This knocked my socks off!"  But fortunately he didn't.  His historically inaccurate, but surely vivid, reaction is still being quoted two centuries later as an example of how a work of literature can produce a powerful emotional response.  We thought about this last night, when we looked at a new book for the first time....