I HAD A Big Week one week—at least in the armchair sense—reading about extreme birder Kenn Kaufman’s Big Year of 1973, long before Kaufman created his field-guide series and became a household name to nature-lovers such as myself.
With Kaufman’s memoir “Kingbird Highway” to guide me, I tucked in upstairs and traveled back in time and around and around and around the continent, virtually hitchhiking with him some 69,000ish miles.
I met 671 birds along Kaufman’s crazy route, in places as diverse as Gambell, Alaska, and the Baja peninsula—in sanctuaries and places of great natural splendor, yes, but also in insect-infested garbage dumps (a bird’s gotta eat, right?).
“Kingbird Highway” is set around the time of the beginnings of the American Birding Association, when a growing number of enthusiasts stepped up the pace and took to the road for “gonzo list-chasing,” as Kaufman calls it.
Spoiler alert: Kaufman ended up with that massive bird count that year, despite supporting himself on about $1 a day throughout the journey. Impressive, yes, but the richest result was not the fact of all those sightings (check! check! check!) but his sharpened awareness. It turns out the list is not the thing, he came to understand—or at least not the only thing.
“The lure of running up a big list made it all too tempting to simply check off a bird and run on to the next,” he writes, “without taking time to really get to know them. And there was so much that I did not know.”
It’s hard to imagine Kaufman ever not really knowing the birds—or other creatures. This is, after all, the man whose name is on the covers of various books in my cabinet of field guides. Books like “Kaufman Guide to North American Birds,” and “Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced
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Our gardens can be valuable habitats for birds, providing nutritious food, nesting sites, and life-saving shelter, especially during the coldest months when overwintering birds are challenged. If we are mindful of these basic needs as we design our beds and borders, we will be rewarded with a landscape rich in birds. Here are some things you can do to help our feathered friends when times are lean.
Birds make a great addition to your garden, they’re great to look at and they’re useful as well. For instance, they will eat slugs, snails, aphids, insects and other well-known troublemakers.
The extreme sport of ‘extreme pruning’ has just missed out on an award for this effort on an open planned garden tree in Yeadon. It will be revisited as it buds and leafs up later in the year. At the moment is strikes an interesting pose.
The Monarch Highway is busy this time of year. So, keep an eye out while you are driving or outdoors. First, you may only see one, but keep watching, and eventually, you will see them fluttering by in masses. Monarch butterflies are probably the most recognizable and beloved butterflies in the world. Monarchs are currently making one of the most magnificent migrations of any animal in the world. Some travel close to 3,000 miles to their wintering grounds in Mexico. The Upstate of South Carolina along the Blue Ridge Mountains is one of their prime migration corridors and fueling stops on their journey south. This migration is unique because, unlike whales or other large mammals, who have previous generations to learn from and guide them, the monarchs making this migration have no help and are making this trip for the very first time. They are making the same journey that their great-great-grandparents made the previous fall. This ‘super generation’ of monarchs will make this journey south only once in their life. Next fall, it will be their great-great grandchildren’s turn.
Spring is here! All the signs are evident, including walking into caterpillars hanging from trees by slender threads (which happened to me last week). These danglers are often members of the Geometridae family, also known as inchworms or loopers. I love that their Latin name means “measures the earth.” The distinctive gait of these caterpillars makes it seem like they are taking their measuring duties very seriously. First, they deploy their front feet, and then, unlike other caterpillars with intermediate appendages, they pull forward their rear feet. This causes them to arch their bodies in that characteristic manner. Unsurprisingly, this onset of caterpillars coincides with the first flush of spring leaves, a buffet for these newly hatched critters.
EVER HEARD the expression “birding by ear”? Despite my years-old collection of CDs (and even older tapes!), I have never gotten good at telling who’s who, sight unseen, perhaps knowing merely 15 of the 60ish avian voices who visit each year. A new online resource called All About Bird Song from Cornell Lab of Ornithology aims to improve our ability to retain the vocalizations by visualizing them—and also reveals what song is all about: its purpose, its mechanics, and just how amazing a feat it actually is.
THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE CELEBRATED BIRTHDAYS with me here on A Way to Garden any of the last four June 10ths know the routine: I show you my favorite childhood photo (above), and then try to make you read an essay that I wrote to mark my 35th. Or you can skip it and just chip in for a new umbrella as a gift.
First, a word about Summer Fest, which I co-founded in 2008: It’s a giant round-robin of sharing themed to a single garden-fresh ingredient each week. Get all the details and latest links below, just before the comments, and stock up on delicious ideas from around the web—or add your own.I READ UP ON CREAMED CORN this week (as did many of my Summer Fest colleagues—see the links below), and found a lot of variations included cornstarch or flour as thickeners, sugar, and even Parmesan cheese or bacon or any manner of extras. Once I shucked the fresh-picked corn from down the road, I thought: I can’t do that to this beautiful stuff, and went the ultra-simple route. Even adding cream seemed like gilding the lily. But I did.Corn in Historical ImageryMY VINTAGE PITCHER GOT ME THINKING how much a part of our heritage corn has been,
As the text on Boston Public’s Flickr photostream explains, Louis Prang (1824-1909) was a German immigrant whose highly successful Boston-area printing operation made high-quality prints and also, in the 1870s, began producing America’s first Christmas cards, virtually starting that tradition.But what caught my eye when Flickr-lurking friend Pam Kueber of the Retro Renovation blog passed me the Boston Public link, were juicy heirloom tomatoes (above) and tender portraits of familiar animals and local vegetation. Some of what I loved from the giant trove of riches you simply must “go” see is in the show below.Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside each caption. Enjoy!Giant thanks to Boston Public Lib
IT’S NO NEWS TO YOU THAT I’M A BIRD PERSON (and often described as “birdlike”); to me birds and gardening are inseparable notions. As close as I feel to my feathered companions, I can’t say I’ve ever been as intimate as zoologist Mark Carwardine in the video above. Unbelievable. More bits about birds from my recent travels around the digital realm:
CALL IT THE YEAR OF EXTREMES: An extra-early spring, an extra-dry summer, an extra-wet fall (or was that just the way it felt by contrast, since summer had been so rainless?). And lots of shoveling at both ends as one winter faded, and another eventually arrived.