It's October 1st and we are enjoying a wonderful prolonged summer. Only I know that it's really not summer. I'm a four seasons person—would not change that for anything—so when the warm, sunny weather leaves us I will move on to real autumn. Still, the fine weather is lovely and should be enjoyed.
I was recently walking around the neighborhood and reflecting on how I had actually spent my summer. It would be easy for me to say that I didn't do much. But that wouldn't be exactly correct.
When I returned from my Finland and Norway trip at the beginning of June, I spent the next four weeks writing about it on this blog. It was a great trip and writing about it, episode by episode, was such an enjoyable activity for me. Then writing about F/N, lead to writing about our brief and distant sighting of a Terek Sandpiper for 10,000 Birds titled: There's a Shorebird on the Roof.
The July ABA Magazine article titled Lost on the Frontier by Brad Meiklejohn led me to write: Missing the Gray-headed Chickadee.
Then I listened to Nate Swick's prologue on the ABA podcast about the new documentary film by Owen and Quentin Rieser titled Listers and I was inspired to write: To list or not to list. I'm waiting for Quentin Reiser's book to arrive in the mail today.
I enjoyed remembering my experience in the Andaman Islands in March of 2023 and contributed to a collaborative post titled Our 6 Rarest Birds Seen So Far. My bird is the Ruddy Kingfisher.
Finally, having nothing to do with birding, I finished reading Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing of and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill, published in 2014. I'm a slow reader so it took me a while to finish. It will be the best book I read in 2025 and I felt compelled to attempt to write a review. This is a review of the sort that I do not feel qualified to write, but it turned out okay, I think. But then I was reading a 10,000 Birds blog post and I was reminded that I had left something important (to me anyway) out of my review. So I wrote: Florence Nightingale and her Little Owl.
I have other writing ideas for the 10,000 Birds blog. It is a fun blog. It's an international site, has a very engaged editor who is also a birder, and I encourage others to look it up and subscribe. You will see photos of birds you have no hope to see in real life, read of very different birding experiences, read about birding guides and lodges from all around the world, and perhaps be inspired to make a contribution of your own. After all, none of us can watch, listen or read about politics all day. Now is not a good time to put our heads in the sand (unfortunately, I have never been able to put my head in the sand, despite having examples all around me of how to do it), but even still it's important to have a diversion.
So this summer I wrote. You could argue that this also means that, true enough, I didn't do much. But this is not true. Writing about birds has helped me find the strength to pay attention to our Democracy and not put my head in the sand. I can't write if I have my head in the sand.
As the new posts I write come out, I'll also publish them here.
