Slow Birding

April 1, 2026, will go down in my calendar as one of my favorite April Fool’s Day. Not because after years of playing mild-but-devious pranks on friends and family (and then eventually avoiding communicating with those same family and friends altogether on this day), someone “got me” early this morning with an April Fool’s joke. No, today someone else “got me,” which is to say they totally got the message of my new book, The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet.

The “gotcha” took the form of a book review in the newsletter of the South Sound Bird Alliance (formerly the Black Hills Audubon Society). The newsletter arrived by e-mail and I clicked the link to “The Armchair Birder” column as I usually do before diving into the rest of the birdy news. I started reading and felt like someone had been reading my mind and heart for the past several years.

 The reviewer did not attempt to summarize the book, excerpt passages, or get into the particulars of the Pigeon Guillemot’s life history or the community science project focused on this Pacific seabird. The reviewer took a 30,000-foot view of what it means to spend time among the birds in the 21st century and wove in Roger Tory Peterson’s essay “What Are you Really?” (on how birders identify themselves) and Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

I wasn’t familiar with Peterson’s essay and hadn’t read Suzuki’s book since college but the short excerpts from  these two works in the review of my book aptly addresses my struggle to figure out what kind of a birder I am given that I don’t keep a life list or know much about any birds other than the Pigeon Guillemot and the Marbled Murrelet (the subject of my book, Rare Bird). It was only after a decade studying the Pigeon Guillemots on the same beach near my home in Olympia, Washington, that I began to think of myself as a birder—a “slow birder” or even a “one-bird birder” (absurd as that may seem).  

And it was only after reading the “Armchair Birding” book review this morning that I realized how deeply satisfying and novel it is to let one bird guide you into its life and shape how you think about its unique life.

Video of Pigeon Guillemots on Puget Sound, Washington. Courtesy Hillary Smith.

A Star for the Guillemots

This lovely review is from Booklist, which is a trade review magazine run by the American Library Association. Booklist reaches many librarians, booksellers, and other publishing industry professionals. A starred review denotes a work judged to be outstanding in its genre. NOTE: unlike movie, restaurant, and hotel reviews, one star is the maximum number of stars awarded by Booklist.

As the author of The Bird with Flaming Red Feet, it’s heartening for me to read a review by someone who really gets my book and goals of the community science project at the center of it. My story of the Pigeon Guillemot reflects at least two complete overhauls of my original concept and outline, which was deemed by my fabulous editors at Mountaineers Books/Skipstone to be a bit too “heady.” I took this as a compliment and also realized that some grounding was essential. I needed to bring readers onto the Puget Sound beach with me for our weekly surveys of the guillemots. This gave me the opportunity to describe field work, data collection, and all the good things that came from those one-hour surveys of our teams of “guillemoteers” as I like to call us. I poured many of those stories into the final version of my book. I was so pleased to read that the “…genuine fun, thrills, and joy…” of studying the Pigeon Guillemots was palpable by the Booklist reveiwer.

The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet will be winging its way onto bookshelves, online booksellers, and e-readers later this month. The official launch date is April 7th. Please visit my events page to find an event near you—mostly in Western Washington to start. Don’t expect the standard author book reading (i.e., introduction, reading of a few passages, Q&A, and book signing). I’m hoping to mix things up a bit and honor the spirit of the Pigeon Guillemot with some “genuine fun”

THE YEAR OF THE AUK

Is is something in the air? Possibly, but more likely something in the water—salty water. The family of seabirds known as auks, or alcids, are having a bit of a heyday in the publishing world. For those of you unfamiliar with this varied and fascinating family of birds, it includes twenty-four species including the most familiar puffins as well as auklets, dovekie, razorbill, murres, murrelets, and guillemots. They are the web-footed, surface-diving seabirds of the Northern Hemisphere.

Whidbey Island writer and artists Frances Wood has just published a blank, spiral-bound journal with her watercolor portraits of the guillemots on the covers (above). Frances is a co-founded of the Salish Sea Guillemot Network, which is how I found my way to these wonderful seabirds. France’s art is as lively and charming as the guillemots themselves. And just think—fifty blank pages for you to weave a tale of your favorite seabird or begin your Spring journal or field sketches of your feathered friends. Order your copy of this blank journal here. See Frances's watercolor aviary of other birds here.

Yes, a bird with flaming red feet can improve a Grateful Dead album cover.

Also from Whidbey Island, Govinda and Matt Holtby have published a delightfully quirky and authoritative book that takes a look at 40 Grateful Dead songs, and pairs them with 40 Washington State birds, plus encores. They have managed to carve the connection between birders and deadheads. The book is filled with fun facts, unusual facts, and interesting facts about the bird and or the song that it is paired up with. Our grateful guillemot (prominently featured on the book’s cover, below) is cleverly paired with the song “Cassidy,” “Ah—child of the boundless seas.”

This book is a fundraiser for two non-profits: LittleBIGFest, and Whidbey Audubon Society. LittleBIGFest is a nonprofit organization based on Whidbey Island. They are dedicated to supporting regional musicians and artists and creating scholarship opportunities for local students. They produce annual festivals and events featuring local, national and international musicians and artists. Whidbey Audubon Society founded the Salish Sea Guillemot Network, a community science program for surveying our beloved Pigeon Guillemots. Govinda is a long-time Pigeon Guillemot surveyor on Whidbey Island. This is a must read for Deadheads, birders, music lovers, admirers of creatives like Govinda and Matt. Order copies of Govinda and Matt’s book here.

A new natural history of two more auks (auklets and puffins) due out in March from University of Washington Press.

Seattle-based biologist and writer Eric Wagner has a new book coming out in March 2026—Seabirds as Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters and the View from Destruction Island (above). This small, rugged island off the Washington State outer coast is the site of a long-term research project to study the thousands of Rhinoceros Auklets—an alcid the comes to land to nest each summer. It’s deep earthen burrows and nocturnal nesting habits make it a formidable challenge, an exercise in stamina, and a source of wonder for Eric and his colleagues.

I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of Eric’s book and endorsing it with these words: "With his trademark honesty and passion for his subject, Eric Wagner has left no stone unturned or question unasked in this timely and deeply informative natural history. With the seabirds front and center, this narrative also brings into intimate focus large-scale ecological processes, ocean dynamics, cultural and maritime history, and—most importantly—the vital work of the many scientists studying seabirds in the field and in a time of uncertainty."

You can order copies here. Eric and I will be speaking together about our featured seabirds at The University of Washington’s Burke Museum in Seattle on May 6, 2026. More details on my events page.

Gone but not forgotten, the Great Auk lives on in Tim Birkhead’s new book.

It wasn’t a suite of environmental pressures, but human greed—a “destructive obsession”- as one reviewer wrote—that drives the narrative of The Great Auk (Bloomsbury 2025). Written by biologist and prolific author, Tim Birkhead, this beautifully written and definite natural history account tells of the largest member of the auk family, the extinct Great Auk. This flightless bird, measuring some three feet in height, was once abundant across the North Atlantic Ocean and nested in colonies of hundreds of thousands of birds. By 1844, the last of its kind was killed on the coast of Iceland. Birkhead weaves a gripping tale, a tragic one, of the demise of this bird with his surprising and personal story of its afterlife. Purchase The Great Auk through your local indie bookstore via Bookshop here.