Birder on Berry Lane: Three Acres, Twelve Months, Thousands of Birds by Robert Tougias
This book is a gentle, thoughtful, sometimes comical,
and poetic homage to the little feathered beings who flit about in the background of our lives, the kind of blessing we tend not to notice until it has vanished. It’s human nature to love and appreciate things more once we have lost them. The whole world seems to have gotten the message that bees are at risk and we must work to keep them from going extinct. We might do well to consider bird numbers as well.
If Robert Frost were a Birder on Berry Lane, he might have written this poetic bird-opic. Robert Tougias is a nature-loving bird watcher and columnist, highly sought as a speaker. With a gentle tone, a sense of reverence, and poetic prose, he takes the reader with him into his world, three acres in Connecticut which are anything but small or dull, even in the dead of winter. If you think an entire book about the birds in some guy’s yard would be boring, you are just the kind of person who needs to read it.
While others are cozy, comfy, warm, and dry on their sofas at night by the flickering light of the TV, Tougias might be caught under the stars on the coldest night of the season, hooting at owls. His teenage daughter summons him in from these unusual forays around the neighborhood. Instead of being written off as an eccentric, he has made converts to birding and habitat-creation among his neighbors. With twelve chapters that correspond to the months and changing seasons, Tougias takes us with him into his ow world of birding. You might not be too eager to rush back to your sofa. It’s a beautiful world, and you have one too, probably, right under your nose if you look up from that smart-phone that connects you to people and places all over the globe while blinding you to the marvelous friends, furry, feathered, human, or otherwise, that lurk in your own neighborhood.
The cover art and 25 black-and-white sketches of birds by artist Mark Szantyr add visual interest to the book, for those who might need more than beautiful words from a kind, wise soul. Maps, an appendix, and pages of suggested resources also may help get you out of the house and closer to nature.
This is a timely invitation to readers everywhere to pay attention to the birds that live near you. And no matter where you live, you’re sure to have birds living nearby. Birds are everywhere. But don’t take them for granted. As novelists such as Nancy Kress have taken up #FrogWatch observations, birdwatchers are becoming “the eyes of the world” monitoring a steep decline in bird populations. Project FeederWatch, supported almost entirely by its participants, is a November-April survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. Participants keep track of birds in their own backyard to help scientists track long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.
Even if you don’t want to count and report birds, you would do well to pay attention to their antics. And you don’t need gadgets or road trips to see, hear, sense, and feel more at one with your world. Tougias writes, “I find birding without binoculars or through casual observation can be the most rewarding. Some may travel to the ends of the world just to see a specific bird and then turn around and never see that bird again. Most of the birds I see on Berry Lane I’ve seen countless times before, but I don’t ever want to overlook their lives. Seeing them each day, throughout the year, is the essence of knowing what it is I see.”
I never want to overlook them, either, and I hope this book will inspire others to feel a sense of affection and protectiveness toward birds, beasts, and small things that have no words. They need us, and we need them.
If you don’t read this book, I hope you’ll at least read these words Tougias wrote in the Introduction:
My experience in birding here on Berry Lane is really a state of being. It’s a state of being that’s in peace and in harmony with the cycle of life, which you and I are part of. I look up at the clear, icy heavens in January and know that they are just a reflection of where I am and what I am. We are just a small part of the magnificence—a small but significant piece of it.
Robert Tougias is an established nature writer and author. Tougias contributes nature articles to newspapers throughout New England and writes several outdoor columns for newspapers in #Connecticut. His articles on cougars have appeared in many magazines, including Appalachian Trailways and Fur-Fish-Game. He...is known by many wildlife biologists for his extensive knowledge on the cougar in the East. His fascination with the cougar began early in life and matured after encountering a set of large cat tracks near the family cabin in northern Vermont.... After receiving a degree in Natural Resources from the University of Massachusetts, Tougias offered his service to the Massachusetts Audubon Society and was later employed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He lives in rural Connecticut with his daughter and their dog Zoey, where he is president of a local wildlife club.
Birder on Berry Lane: Three Acres, Twelve Months, Thousands of Birds by Robert Tougias, illustrated by Mark Szantyr (Watertown, Massachusetts: Imagine! Publishing (a Charlesbridge imprint), March 17, 2020; 224 pages; $19.99; hardback ISBN 978-1-62354-541-3).
- Beautifully illustrated with 25 line drawings
- "a book of sublime simplicity that teaches an appreciation for what we commonly overlook"
I received an ARC of this book from AmazonVine in exchange for an honest review.
Also in my TBR (To-Be-Read) list:
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature
Paperback – June 13, 2017
"I saw my father, in large, through the land, and I saw the land as my father's heart."
Drew Lanham grew up in Edgefield County, S.C., on the farm his grandfather built in the 1920s.
source
https://orionmagazine.org/article/forever-gone/
Dr. J. Drew Lanham is a writer, birder, hunter, and naturalist wandering on the edge of the Blue Ridge in the Upper Piedmont of South Carolina. Lanham considers "conserving birds and their habitat a moral mission that needs the broadest and most diverse audience possible to be successful."
J. Drew Lanham @1blackbirder
Black man wandering in the wild! Watching, wondering, thinking. Hunting & gathering words to evoke wonder. #blackbirder #wildandincolor #coloringconservation