Julie Zickefoose - The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds

Copyright 2012 by Julie Zickefoose

Foreword copyright Scott Weidensaul

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zickefoose, Julie.
The bluebird effect : uncommon bonds with common birds / Julie Zickefoose.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-547-00309-2
1. BirdsBehaviorUnited StatesAnecdotes. 2. Bird watchingUnited
StatesAnecdotes. 3. BirdsWounds and injuriesTreatmentAnecdotes.
4. Wildlife rehabilitationUnited StatesAnecdotes. 5. Human-animal rela
tionshipsAnecdotes. 6. Zickefoose, JulieAnecdotes. 7. NaturalistsUnited
StatesAnecdotes. 8. Wildlife rehabilitatorsUnited StatesAnecdotes.
9. BirdsUnited StatesPictorial works. I. Title.
QL 682. Z 53 2012
598.07234dc23 2011036692

Book design by Melissa Lotfy

Printed in China

SCP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Ida Zickefoose. Thank you for your love of words, and for
letting me bring those things into the house.

For DOD, who knew a little something about everything.

For Bill, my heart's archer, and for Phoebe and Liam, sweet arrows flying.

A LITTLE PETTING ZOO at Maymont Park, Richmond, Virginia, perhaps 1964. I'm very young, barely able to reach over the woven wire fence. A large tom turkey stands on the other side, feathers raised into an enormous sphere, his fleshy red, white, and blue wattles and doodads fully engorged, wanting whatever a petting zoo turkey wants. Corn? A hen turkey? Me?

"There. Pet the turkey's head. Feel how warm it is," my father says. I still remember the jolt of pure empathy that coursed through me upon laying my hand on the bird's bare head. To my surprise, he didn't flinch, peck me, or turn away. The warmth of his skin awakened something deep and primal, a realization that, despite his bizarre appearance and feathered armor, there was someone in there, someone I could understand.

I thank my father, C. D. Zickefoose, for giving me that and countless other moments with birds, for knowing what to feed an orphaned dove, blue jay, grackle, or robin, and for leaving me to figure out the rest. Thanks to my mother, Ida, for letting me bring them inside, for letting me dream by myself in the woods and ride miles into the Virginia countryside on bicycle or horse-back. I know now, having my own kids, that you worried the whole time, Mom. Thank you for never clipping my wings. And thanks to my sisters, Nancy, Barbara, and especially Micky, for being incredible human beings, and for looking after Mom. And to my brother, Bob, for doing all the things Dad dreamt of doing.

Bird Watcher's Digest has published my writing and art since 1986 and brought it to tens of thousands of kind and enthusiastic subscribers. I thank Elsa, Bill Jr., Bill III, Andy, and Laurathe entire Thompson familyand their editor emeritus Mary Bowers for helping me reach this audience. As my writing has matured from simply expounding on the beauty and wonder of birds to grappling with more complex issues of human-bird interaction, I thank BWD for continuing to grant me a voice.

My husband, Bill Thompson III, editor and publisher of BWD, is intertwined in these stories in myriad ways, whether he's checking bluebird boxes, transporting an avian client, supporting me in baby bird season, hauling out the ladder for a hummingbird rescue, or suffering the stench of vulture vomit in the company van. He's got my back when I drop everything to help a bird, and he has lived many of the stories in this book. For his love, his vision and guidance; for bringing me out to this splendid pocket of Appalachian Ohio and putting a roof with a bird-watching tower over my head; and most of all for giving me the chance to be a mother to things without feathers, I am forever in his debt.

Phoebe, fifteen, and Liam, twelve, my things without feathers, you give me hope for the world with your delighted appreciation of nature and empathy for the small and helpless. Phoebe's helped me feed doves, waxwings, hummingbirds, chimney swifts, and phoebes; Liam has given our charges the love every young thing needs, and both have been troupers, growing up gracefully with parents of many interests. May you both eclipse your parents; may art, music, and insatiable curiosity be your shadows.

My editor, Lisa White, has been unfailingly kind, deft, subtle, and patient through the five years it has taken to produce this book. In an age when more and more of us read from screens, I am deeply grateful to see my paintings and words on pages, in the heft of a hardcover. I'm grateful to my agent, Russell Galen, who helped shape the book's concept. And I thank my Web wizard, Katherine Koch, for giving wings to my online aspirations. Jeanne Saunders, as always, dwells in my heart.

National Public Radio, delightfully personified by the anchor Melissa "Bird Friendly" Block and my editor, Ellen Silva, has been generous in airing my stories on All Things Considered. Enormous listener reaction to the hummingbird and macaw stories helped convince me that there was a book here.

Because these stories span decades, I'm indebted to a small village of people who have helped along the way. In Connecticut, Robert Braunfield shared my love of birds, woke me to the everyday miracles going on in bluebird nest boxes, sharpened my artist's eye, and supported me in a thousand ways. Susan Cooley, the last best boss I'll ever have, gently launched me into conservation work. Richard and Esther Goodwin gave me shelter in a miraculous sanctuary, and the time and freedom to be simply a naturalist. Rufus and Charlotte Barringer did the same. I thank the dozens of volunteers who helped me post and patrol least tern and piping plover nesting beaches, but two stalwarts stood out: Andy Griswold and Tom Damiani.

For their insights about the great woodpecker will-o'-the-wisp, I am indebted to James Tanner, Nancy Tanner, Thomas Murray, Don Eckelberry (who also lent a mentoring eye to my artwork), Virginia Eckelberry, Clifford Shackelford, John Dennis, Dennis Garratt, and especially Jerome Jackson, whose naturalist's skills and integrity I strive to emulate. Paul Johnsgard, Matt Mullenix, Paul Tebbel, Vickie Henderson, and Cyndi Routledge all informed my writing on sandhill cranes. I'm indebted to Alan Poole not only for his osprey observations but also for a decade of collaboration on my illustrations for the Birds of North America project. Thanks to Paul Spitzer for encouraging me to enter osprey time. I fondly remember time spent with "Madame Osprey" Anne Gaylord and George and Nancy Terpenning of Old Lyme. Sylvia Halkin kindly reviewed the cardinal chapter. For his poignant turkey vulture story, I thank Charles Kennedy.