Pigeon Guillemots on the Air Waves

Calling all bird nerds, guillemot groupies, and curious naturalists! This morning, Katie Campbell, host of the KUOW Book Club, posted her interview with me about The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet. (KUOW is the NPR station on the campus of the University of Washington, Seattle.) We were both pretty excited about the guillemots and we both sound like very chatty, excited, energetic Pigeon Guillemots during our half-hour interview. We had fun talking about what makes the guillemots so interested, unusual and important in Puget Sound; the origins of the long-running community science program studying them; and the joys of making a deep dive as a “one-bird birder;” and where to see Pigeon Guillemots around Seattle this summer. Listen here.

Further down the Pacific Coast in Oregon, Hannah Buschert hosts the “Bird Nerd Book Club” from Cannon Beach—a hot spot for many breeding seabirds and bird nerds. Our conversation covers questions such as: Why study a common bird? How do community scientists collect data on this bird? What are we learning from the guillemots? Listen here.

Hannah host two additional podcasts—”Women Birders (Happy Hour)” and “Hannah and Erik Go Birding” (with her husband, Erik). They offer all sorts of guided birding adventures around the globe and locally. June through August the couple offers free Tufted Puffin Walks to Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach. About 100 Tufted Puffins nest on the rock . Oh, but guess what? There are Pigeon Guillemots nesting there, too! You don’t want to miss them! For the meeting place and other details, visit their website here.

Join me in Cannon Beach on July 9th! I’ll be speaking about the Pigeon Guillemot at the Cannon Beach Library at 1 p.m. and then joining Hannah for a walk down to Haystack Rock right afterward to see the Pigeon Guillemots (and other birds). Spotting scopes and binoculars available for zooming in on those flaming red feet.

Flaming Red Procession of the Species

Twenty-eight Pigeon Guillemots—adults and young birds—flew, paddles, billed, dipped, and flocked through downtown Olympia last weekend at the annual Procession of the Species parade. And, as with the wild guillemots in the Salish Sea, there was at least one birder aiming binoculars at these flaming-red seabirds.

The twenty-eight participants are volunteers with the Salish Sea Guillemot Network, a community-science project focused on collecting data on the Pigeon Guillemots during their summer breeding season when they come to the shores of the Salish Sea to nest. Though we have studied these birds for more than a decade, it was surprisingly challenging for us bi-peds to choreograph our guillemot moves as we paraded through the streets of downtown. I think we got the message across that we were birds. We overheard people in the crowd identifying us as Pigeon Guillemots, but also as ninjas and red-legged bird known as Oystercatchers.

The raucous auks in the streets of Olympia for the Procession of the Species.

This is the first year Pigeon Guillemots have been represented in the Procession, which has been an much-loved and crowd-drawing event in downtown Olympia since 1995. For those of you unfamiliar with this event, it’s a non-motorized, no-signs, no-banners, no-singing, human-powered parade featuring music, dance, and so much creativity. A huge papier-mache sun leads the parade, with costumed participants organized into four groups corresponding to Earth’s four elements—earth, air, fire, water. It’s a spectacular spectacle that embraces all life forms from the microscopic fungal network to the blue whale.

The Pigeon Guillemot may not be a household word in every house, but now this seabird has some street cred.

A Twofer Launch for the Guillies!

This month marked there return of the Pigeon Guillemots from their wintering grounds to the nearshore waters of the Salish Sea as they prepare for their breeding season. And with this welcome event, copies of The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet were released in flocks to bookstores and online retailers. You can order copies from Mountaineers Books/Skipstone Press or your favorite indie bookstore.

The April 15 book launch party in Olympia suggests that there is a healthy appetite for stories about seabirds, “one-bird birding,” birding for birds, community science, deep connections to place, “Flaming Red Wine,” “Wing Patch White,” and very small plates loaded with appetizers, desserts, and prey items (Swedish fish). Thank you to the ~200 people who filed their taxes (or extensions) to find their way to Olympia Ballroom to celebrate the Pigeon Guillemot and its people.

And with the launch of the book came the launch of the uncommonly catchy song written by my brother, Jonathan Mudd, a musician based in South Carolina. Jonathan spent a morning with me on the beach where I collect data on the Pigeon Guillemots during their summer breeding season. And then he read a draft of my manuscript of my book. He totally got it. Listen on Spotify or Apple Music. The song reflects so perfectly my experience of watching the guillemots over the past thirteen summers, of following my curiosity, of deeply connecting to place, and of feeling the spin of the earth as is it moves through the seasons on '“guillemot time.” Read and enjoy the lyrics here (beware the ear worm!)

In this song, my brother plays guitars and sings vocals. Andy Luthringer is on bass, Jon Spurney plays piano and organ, Mark Williams is on solo guitar. And Eli Smith did the mixing. I’m calling it “alcid rock.” I think you will love it.

And then my brother outdid himself and made a music video combing this song with photos and videos of Pigeon Guillemots in the Pacific Northwest. The photos and videos were provided through the generosity of my fellow guillemot surveyors in Puget Sound, Washington and along Oregon’s central coast. You can watch the YouTube video here to sense the wild exuberance of this uncommonly common seabird.

Now…go forth and find your guillemot.

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”