I became an avid bird watcher or ‘birder’ because of an event described in “The Siren of Good Intentions”.  It should have happened earlier in my life.  My mother, though never much of an outdoors person, nevertheless knew all the birds of Connecticut that visited her garden.  While she never instilled in my younger self that particular passion, I likely did absorb some predisposition toward a curiosity and observance of our avian co-inhabitants.

The expression ‘canary in the coal mine’, derives from a practice of miners in the 17^th and 18^th centuries to take caged birds, often canaries, into the deep earth mines.  The birds were particularly sensitive to depleted or fouled air thus providing miners an early warning system if the mine atmosphere started to deteriorate.  Today, many organizations regularly count bird populations of all types and use the extended data to investigate changes in their – and our – environment. Bird populations are affected by changes in diet, habitat, diseases and infections, predators, air temperature and currents, etc.  Not all of these observed changes are for the worse.  Just most of them.  And like the miners of history, our survival depends upon how we heed the warning.

But I’m not an environmental scientist, just, as I’ve said, an explorer.  More precisely, an observer. Watching birds of all kinds is a sheer delight.  They bring color and life, noise and guano.  Some are solitary and mate only during a certain season, some mate for life. Some birds form communities and assemble for protection and migration.  Some are pests and others are majestic and inspiring.

In my forthcoming books, I will include vignettes of birds who have shown me amazing behaviors.  Some of these will have direct connection to the story and/or characters. Others will be no more than a deep breath for a protagonist taking on a world that defies comprehension. 

If any of my readers would like to share stories of their bird watching with me, I would love that.  I commit to including those that I can in this blog and perhaps even in my novels.  Come fly with me!