What do I have to show for another year of producing content in the birding world? My byline count for 2023 was pretty sedate.
Well, guess what, this post is actually about what’s coming in 2024, because 2023 was the year of living the research for forthcoming stories. And deciding I want to more than just write what I share, starting now! I’m plotting some teaching, some guiding, some speaking, some eating (yes! eating! For upcoming stories about Bird Friendly® cocoa). I want to expand how I share stories and I welcome your ideas and suggestions for collaboration (for a reminder of how I might provide content for you, click here).
So on with the 2023 round up of “living the research” for stories to come!
Winter 2023 kicked off with my joining the Be Bird Wise campaign, a Skagit County, Washington-based initiative made possible by the cooperation of multiple conservation organizations, government agencies and agricultural stakeholders. The purpose of the initiative is to educate visitors to Skagit Valley who are drawn to the region every fall and winter by the presence of thousands of migratory birds like snow geese and swans. I joined the committee as a local birder and resident of the Skagit, and well, one thing leads to another and I’ve been commissioned by the hosting organization Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland for a series featuring the diverse users of this landscape in response to the birds. The series launched Fall 2023 and will continue into Spring 2024.
Through Be Bird Wise I’ve met a wonderful group of people in my community from dairy and row crop farmers to tribal elders. I also drew on my existing network of friends and colleagues in the birding scene to include their voices as visitors to the Skagit. While writing with wild bird advocacy in mind, I deepened my understanding of the complexity between a working landscape and the wildlife that inhabits it. I also got to be a “woman birding” for their media campaign, fun times!
Image from the Instagram site of Be Bird Wise. That’s me with the bins!
Spring 2023 saw the publication of two fun stories (albeit they were written in 2022, so goes the pace of birding and travel media): The Birder, Illustrated: How Women Artists are Capturing the People Side of a Practice for BWD (formerly Bird Watcher’s Digest) and my first story for The Seattle Times, How to Go Birding by Boat in Western Washington. What’s satisfying about writing in this niche of birding culture is even when a story is done, the people and experience remain in my life.
For instance, thanks to friends with boats (quiet boats, with sails or necessitating a paddle; no birds disturbed!), I had occasion to continue experiencing birds via water this year and think about more stories from that vantage. Nothing like seeing mergansers at eye level in their habitat in a quiet channel accessible only by paddle craft. And one artist in particular from the Birder Illustrated story made another appearance at year’s end, so keep reading!
September 2023 I visited the site of the former Chelan Ridge Hawk Watch Station in Eastern Washington State. Janet Millard was my host and reason for my visit—for years we’d corresponded about my writing a story about the Hawk Watch station, and then funding was cut for 2023 (and ever after) as Hawk Watch International decided to divert funds to other sites. Janet works for the US Forest Service and ran point for the site as part of her job in the collaboration with Hawk Watch International. The station is now closed to official counts, but birders can still visit and watch for migrating raptors in early September. The wind that buffets you off your feet at the craggy site is what brings the birds in, and in they come! With clockwork regularity, we saw mostly Sharp-shinned hawks riding the gusts like little stealth bombers, zipping by and challenging our identification skills. Can you tell I want to write a story about hawk watches, still? Yes, this trip was research, despite the station’s closure. Watch this space.
Janet Millard watching for raptors along Chelan Ridge, Washington, September 2023.
To round out 2023, I flew to Uruguay in November for a birding trip with my mother, Noel Angell and my twin sister, Gilia Angell. Despite appearances of a family trip (really!) I am going to write about it in 2024. Uruguay is a relatively undiscovered gem of a birding destination and my ambition is to promote this country to both mainstream and birding travel media. Florencia Ocampo of Birding with Me designed our trip and Rafa Tosi of Colonia Birding guided us on a laugh and bird-filled road trip across coastal and interior Uruguay. The landscape is the stuff of ocean swept and pampas dreams, with romantic stays in a hotel fortress near the Brazilian border, and later a private estancia nestled in rolling hills of grassland and ravines hiding streams and grottos where roosted Scissor-tailed nightjars. Sound pretty great? Can’t wait to tell you more in print.
And now the revisited detail alluded to above from The Birder Illustrated story. That story features a mural of a woman watching a heron through a scope by the Uruguayan artist Ceciro (Cecilia Rodriguez Oddone). While in Uruguay in November, I visited the mural at its spot in a side street of a residential neighborhood in the capital city of Montevideo. A gratifying pilgrimage and close for 2023, with this apt mural of a lady birder appearing twice in my year of birding life.
Visiting Ceciro’s Mural from The Birder Illustrated, in Montevideo, Uruguay, November 2023. Two lady birders (three if you count my sister Gilia Angell taking the photo)!
Writing this reminds me just how much the people in this scene is what makes it rich (you don’t see a ton of mention of birds, do you?). Thank you to all the people who trusted me with their stories, shared resources with me for this research, hosted me on overnights or adventures, and support the outcome however that looks (publication, broadcast, event, class, who knows what else!). Thanks as always for reading.
Ps. If you’re interested in learning more about Florencia Ocampo in Uruguay, read the interview I did with Florencia here and another one with her women bird guiding colleagues, for Bird Watcher’s Digest. Flor is representative of country national women establishing space in bird guiding, and she is especially distinct for founding, designing and guiding the trips of her own country-wide company for over a decade.