Armchair Birding

~ Anne Kilgannon Hold on, don’t look down, keep reading and you’ll experience—not “heart stopping” but a “heart opening” long moment of being aloft—175 feet aloft—at the top of a Douglas fir tree sharing with Marina a glimpse of Red Crossbills dining on cone seeds. An exhilarating and unexpected introduction and the beginning of many forays to places replete with old-growth trees and the birds that...

~ Anne Kilgannon This review is just a glimpse… an introduction to a Bird Hero we, who live in this state, should get to know. It’s also an exploration of the path that created a birder then and what helped shape the early conservation movements. William Finley was born in 1876 in Santa Clara County, California where his parents had migrated from the east with their families as children. Looking...

Armchair Birding: Sounds Wild and Broken, by David George Haskell ~ Anne Kilgannon My favorite place to read is sitting in our old Adirondak chair on the front porch, its wide flat arms offering room for a notebook and my cup of tea, its view open to the jungle of my garden and the neighboring street trees. My swathe of paradise is replete with bird song: chirping, wheezing, sonorous… the monotonous...

~ Anne Kilgannon Maria Ruth opens the story of her deep dive into the lives of Pigeon Guillemots with laughter and joy. As she watches these oddly named birds make their entrance by plunging helter-skelter into the waters lapping a stretch of beach at the bottom of Puget Sound it could have been her first time witnessing their arrival or the one-hundredth; they never failed to capture her attention...

~ Anne Kilgannon The dawn chorus is just beginning out there in my garden and there seems to be a lot of activity checking out possible nest sites and squabbling over invisible—to me—territorial lines. Though I keep watch on them from my windows or front porch—who cannot be cheered when a tumbling flock of Bushtits show up—how much do I really know about their lives other than to keep my feeders...

Armchair Birding: The Place of Tides, by James Rebanks ~ Anne Kilgannon I have often used this space to recommend nature-related and bird-specific books for holiday giving, but I know that this won’t be on your screen until rather late in the day unless you are truly a last-minute shopper! I leave that to you! My own feeling while reading this powerful story was more one of a call to re-examine...

Armchair Birding: Saving the Nisqually Delta, by Janine Gates ~ Anne Kilgannon This is a much-needed history of the long struggle to save one of the last unspoiled river deltas on the west coast. First, though, before engaging in this epic story, take a moment to gaze at the image of the delta that graces the book’s cover. In the hazy distance are the Cascades, crowned by Mount Rainier, the birthplace...

Armchair Birding: “Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay” by Merilyn Simonds ~ Anne Kilgannon As the days soften into earlier evenings and the birds prepare for the change of season—the nuthatches at my feeder are diligently intent at stashing all their morsels of suet in every hideaway possible—take time to absorb the scene, the light and colors as green...

Armchair Birding: The Light Eaters, by Zoe Schlanger ~ Anne Kilgannon This is a book about the exciting new discoveries reimagining the science of botany; should I begin with an apology that it’s not about birds, that birds are not even mentioned? Stay with me and you’ll have a fascinating journey reading about all the break-through reports describing what botanists are learning about plants, their...

~ Anne Kilgannon I’m reading the long anticipated new book by Robert Macfarlane wherein he poses the thought-provoking question, “Is a river alive?” He swiftly plunges us first into the Los Cedros Cloud Forest of Ecuador in his quest for an answer and I gingerly follow him, but I’ve also been reading river stories closer to home. I’ve been searching out the work of marine biologist Harry Branch as...