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”

Judge This Book by Its Cover

What a joy to have received an advanced printed copy of my new book, The Bird with Flaming Red Feet. After years of seeing my manuscript on my computer screen and seeing it in parts, it was such a thrill to hold the book in my hands, feel its heft, touch the paper pages, and see the full integration of the text with the photographs and artwork.

The cover and title makes me smile every time I see it. It’s the work of designer Jen Grable and other creatives at Mountaineers Books (which is to say all the staff). Jen also designed the covers for my previous two books, A Sideways Look at Clouds (2017) and the reissue of Rare Bird; Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet (2014).

About the cover: The cover says the subject of this book is a lively bird with a lot to say. And, those flaming red feet, dangling like loose rudders from the top edge of the book, hint at the laughable and sometimes awkward way the Pigeon Guillemots approach the water when they land. The guillemot is an entertaining bird for the birdwatcher and I hope my book is equally entertaining for readers.

The cover with its bold colors and strong black and white subject make it eye catching. The all-caps, sans serif title is easy to read. An easy to read cover is important on bookstore shelves where there are plenty of bird books competing for attention (though none like mine!). An eye-catching cover is increasingly important at small scales because an increasing number of readers shop for books on small screens (cellphones) where book covers appear the size of postage stamps.

A word about the title: Why is the seabird pictured on the cover not in the title? Because “Pigeon Guillemot” is hard to pronounce and makes many people think my book is about a pigeon. The Pigeon Guillemot is most certainly not a pigeon, but a seabird. And “guillemot” is pronounced “gill-uh-mot,” which rhymes with nothing and seems like it is French and should be pronounced “ghee-ya-mow.” And because when many people first see this bird, they describe it as “the bird with the red feet.” Red is usually modified so its really red, bright red, fire-engine red, or flaming red. It’s what people notice and what distinguishes this seabird from most others on the water.

The subtitle, Seasons with an Uncommonly Common Seabird subtly tips you off that this is not a book about a pigeon. Birders tend to think of birds in two seasons—Summer and Winter—because they exhibit two very different plumages over the course of the year. In my book, the guillemots get all four seasons; they are, after all, Pigeon Guillemots year round, not just when they are in our binoculars. And “uncommonly common” because the guillemot is a relatively abundant bird, well distributed throughout its range. It’s not listed of threatened or endangered species. It’s extraordinarily adaptable in its nesting habitat. And it’s seems to be a bird that’s hidden in plain sight, one that’s overlooked by birders keen on seeing less common seabirds. Such as the iconic puffin, a cousin of the guillemot.

What’s behind the cover of my book is the story of the Pigeon Guillemot, a work of narrative non-fiction, a natural history. My book is based on more than a decade of research in the field as a volunteer community scientists and in the library (physical and digital) as a curious naturalist with a penchant for rabbit holes. My book is a tribute the community science, to volunteer data collectors and devotees of the Pigeon Guillemot. It’s an invitation to learn about and connect to the natural world around you in a new and deeply satisfying way.

I’m so grateful to everyone at Mountaineers Books for bringing my book into the world and for introducing readers to the world of the Pigeon Guillemot. It’s a big world and you’re in it. Even if you’ve never heard of a Pigeon Guillemot, I think it will soon become your favorite new bird. I hope that The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet will bring the guillemots—or your special backyard bird—into your life this year.

Pigeon Guillemots by Susan Morgan.