Product Description

A frequent commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, Julie Zickefoose has painted nature virtually all her life. At the age of seven she knew that she wanted to paint birds for a living, and her lifelong dedication shows in her paintings, which are meticulously accurate as well as beautiful. The paintings used here, of scenes from her beloved home in southern Ohio, illuminate well-crafted essays based on her daily walks and observations. Wild turkeys, coyotes, box turtles, and a bird-eating bullfrog flap, lope, and leap through her prose. She excels at describing and exploring interactions between people and animals, bringing her subjects to life in just a few lines. Her husband and young children make appearances, presenting their own challenges and pleasures. The essays are arranged by season, starting with winter, providing a sense of movement through the year.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99176 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
Cleveland Plain Dealer : Zickefoose finds [a connection with nature] often and documents it in words and paintings in her beautiful new book.

About the Author
Sy Montgomery is an author, naturalist, newspaper columnist, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator who writes for children as well as adults. Among her award-winning books are "'The Snake Scientist"' and The "'Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans"'. She made four expeditions to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon. She lives in New Hampshire. Julie Zickefoose is a widely published natural history writer and bird artist. Bill Thompson III is the editor of "'Bird Watcher's Digest"', a bi-monthly magazine with 70,000 subscribers. Bill and Julie live on an eighty-acre nature sanctuary with their two children. Julie Zickefoose is a widely published natural history writer and bird artist. Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest, a bi-monthly magazine with 70,000 subscribers. Bill and Julie live on an eighty-acre nature sanctuary with their two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Catching Paul

I was picking over the green beans when I saw it—a flutter of wings against
the banks of fluorescent lights in the grocery store ceiling overhead. My heart
sank, as it always does, to see a bird in a grocery store. I muttered a wish
that it would be a house sparrow, but my bird watcher's eye had already
decided it wasn't. I followed it through to the store's bakery counter, where I
eventually located it, perched calmly in a revolving rack of birthday candles. I
smiled when my eye fell upon it. In the little wire candle tree it had found the
only remotely shrublike structure in the entire store and was quite well hidden
amid the Barney and Blue's Clues birthday decorations. I could see just a
part of its breast—white, heavily streaked with brown. Song sparrow, I
decided, just as it took off over the beverage aisle, headed back to produce.
Now, a sparrow, even a song sparrow, can live a mighty long time
in a grocery store. Years, I'd guess, if the management doesn't decide to do
it in as a health hazard. It's got everything it needs, except, of course,
freedom, a decent habitat, a mate, and other sparrows to hang out with. It
can nibble the fresh kale and lettuce, peck the apples and grapes, scrounge
for spilled seed in the pet and wild-bird sections. It can drink and even bathe
in the automatic mist hissing down on the salad greens. It can hide in the
candle rack or the houseplants, perch in the high light fixtures at the slightest
hint of threat. Make no mistake, it's probably pretty unhappy, but it survives.
The chances of its finding its way out through the double front doors or the
heavy swinging loading dock doors are about nil. This store backs up onto a
marsh preserve, and I guessed the sparrow had entered via the darkened
loading dock and flown toward the lighted store proper when the swinging
doors opened. I wanted to get it out of there.
I began asking around in the bakery section, where the ladies
were quite forthcoming. "He's been in here about a week," one told me. "He's
just as tame as can be. He'll let you come up and talk to him as close as
you are to me, but you'd better not have a bass net in your hand!" She
motioned to a large aluminum-handled fishing net leaning against the pastry
counter. "He knows when you're after him, and he doesn't want anything to
do with you if you've got that net in your hand."
I could sense the respect in her voice, respect for a tiny brown
bird. "I named him Paul," she added a little sheepishly. Paul. It was the
perfect name for this modest sparrow, and it told me volumes about how she
felt about him.
I came back the next day with a sparrow trap, one designed to rid
the premises of house sparrows. Baited with seed or bread, it's a simple wire
box with a spring-loaded lid. When the bird jumps down onto a treadle, the lid
slams shut and the sparrow is yours. I set it, mounded seed enticingly
inside, and put it atop a doughnut case next to the birthday candle rack. I left
my number with the bakery ladies and the store manager. A week later, I still
hadn't gotten a call, so I returned. The trap was still open, unsprung. Paul
had cleaned up all the stray seed around the outside but hadn't so much as
stuck a toe inside the trap. This was going to be harder than I thought.
The store manager expressed his frustration. "Used to be when
we'd get a bird in here I'd just turn out all the store lights in the morning
before anybody got here and open the loading dock doors, and out it would
go, heading for the light. I got rid of any number of birds that way. But since
they remodeled, a computer controls all the lights and I can't override it. I
can't even turn out the lights in my own store!" I pondered the implications of
this statement. The situation seemed to me to be akin to a car whose
windows couldn't be rolled down. This sounded like a plan that made sense
at corporate headquarters, but not in the field. I assured the manager I'd try
my best to catch the sparrow some other way.
I took the trap home and rigged up two red plastic jar lids. One I
taped to the top of the trap and partially filled with seed. The other I taped just
inside the trap chamber so it could be reached with a short hop down into the
chamber. This would accustom Paul to entering the chamber, even if he only
had to hop an inch inside it. Finally, I wired the trap open so it could not
spring shut. I wanted the trap to become Paul's happy place, his kitchen. I
left it there for five days.
When I came back to check the trap, Paul had been in the store
for over a month. The bakery ladies were ready for me, their eyes
shining. "I'm not so sure you'll ever catch him," one woman said. "He sits on
the trap all day, but he doesn't go inside it."
"We'll see about that," I answered. I climbed up and retrieved the
trap from the top of the doughnut case. Both food dishes were completely
empty. Seed hulls were littered all around the cage. Paul had definitely been
inside the trap chamber and he would go in again. And when he did, he'd be
mine.
This time, I taped a jar lid directly to the treadle inside the trap
chamber and filled it with millet, sunflower, cracked corn, and peanut butter
suet dough. It was irresistible fare for a hungry sparrow. In the lid atop the
trap I put a meager single serving of the same food. Cackling, I climbed back
up and replaced Paul's kitchen.
"You know, that crazy bird will light on the trays of hot rolls just
out of the big oven," a baker told me. "I'll try to shoo him off, but he comes
right back. And he goes way back into the deli. I don't know what he's after,
but he's not scared of anything and he knows his way around here pretty
good." There was obvious affection in her voice. She lowered it
conspiratorially. "I just feel sorry for him, though, and I'm afraid one of these
guys is going to try to get him one day." I grasped her meaning immediately.
It can't be within the health code to have a sparrow hopping around on the
bakery trays.
I reassured her. "I predict that Paul will be in that trap by tomorrow
morning." It was noon when I left the store.
I was finishing up the dinner dishes at 6:20 P.M. when the phone
rang. It was the store's manager, and he was clearly excited. "Is this Julie,
with the bird trap?" he asked.
"Yes, it is!" I answered.
"Well, we have a bird in the trap!"
I whooped with joy. "I told you! I told you I'd get him! That's
fantastic! Hang on to him while I call my husband! He'll be by in a couple of
minutes to pick him up."
I hung up and did a dance of joy around the kitchen. Phoebe and
Liam danced, too, hollering and whooping. "WE GOT HIM! WE GOT HIM!
WE GREEN AND YELLOW GOT HIM!" we sang.
We turned on the porch light and waited breathlessly for Bill. He
came in, leading with the trap, a frantic Paul ricocheting around inside. I
clutched the trap and peered inside. Paul gave a small peep of fear, and there
was something familiar about his voice. His brow was faintly yellow, his
streaking too fine, his belly too white . . . he was altogether too small . . .
This is no song sparrow, I realized. "Hey!
This is a Savannah sparrow!" I exclaimed, agog. What were the
odds? An uncommon migrant through the Mid–Ohio Valley at best, a
Savannah sparrow would be one of the last birds I'd expect to see perched
atop a birthday candle rack or a tray of hot buns.
"I'll be darned," Bill said. "I didn't get a chance to look at him in
the excitement, but he didn't look much like a song sparrow to me when I
picked him up."
Carefully, I reached into the trap and brought Paul out into the
light. So tiny, so sleek, so . . . fat. His high-carb diet had clearly agreed with
him. Paul was padded. I took a bad snapshot of him clutched in one hand,
then released him to the comparative comfort of a pet carrier, its floor covered
with straw and natural perches. He settled down quickly and enjoyed his first
dark night in more than a month. His temporary home had been a twenty-four-
hour establishment; the lights never went out. I imagined all Paul had been
through and what he must have been thinking. Was he thankful for the
darkness? Glad for the feel of straw and wood beneath his feet? Happy for
the quiet, away from humming refrigerator cases and floor buffers and the
incessant beep of scanners? Aware that he was one heck of a lucky bird?
Wondering what would become of him in the morning?
At 8:00 A.M., we donned coats and shoes and solemnly trooped
out the front door with Paul's carrier. Liam said, "I want to see that bird fly!"
Phoebe made sure she would be the one to open the carrier door. Paul
hesitated, then shot out like a streaky brown arrow to the top of a birch tree,
its leaves golden and drooping in a warm November drizzle. He looked down,
up, all around. A few goldfinches settled in beside him. For twenty minutes
Paul perched, his feet fumbling on the twigs, feet that were now more used to
the feel of plastic and metal. He watched the juncos and goldfinches, the
song sparrows and cardinals. He watched me scattering millet beneath his
tree, talking softly to him. Then Paul wiped his bill, gave a soft tweet, and
was gone, flying straight and true out over the meadow, headed south.

Copyright © 2006 by Julie Zickefoose. Reprinted by permission of Houghton
Mif...

Customer Reviews

I found a little bit of Heaven
When I first saw this book I felt a little bit like a kid again--and that's exactly where this book took me--Every Sunday I would go into our sun filled living room and sit down and read a chapter in Julie's book--Every one of her outdoor "Nature" experiences took me back to the unencumbered days of my childhood --seeing nature through her eyes made me feel at peace while learning more and more about the things in nature that I would have liked to understand years ago--I just wish she would write another one just like this one--Have you ever read a book you wish would never end?? This was one of them--Thank you-

Letters From Eden
This is a wonderful little book. Julie Zickefoose is a writer, illustrator, and contributor to NPR. In this book, organized by the seasons of the year, she shares her experiences living on her 80-acre farm in southern Ohio. She brings a sense of wonder to seemingly mundane things such as squabbling starlings and the wreck of her vegetable garden.There are sad points, such as euthanising a little opossum caught in a steel trap, but most of the book is devoted to happier topics. I really enjoyed reading it.

What a wonderful book, full of everyday wonders
Experience the seasons with Julie and her family on their wildlife sanctuary in the Appalachian foothills in southern Ohio. A gem of a book, if you love birds and other animals... very real and full of the wonder of everyday happenings - if you keep your eyes open.