The Bluebird Effect

Julie Zickefoose is known as one of the two best natural history writers in the country sharing top honors with Scott Weidensaul. Both were Migration Fest speakers at the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, with Zickefoose there on Sept. 20.

Dan Kunkle, Nature Gap director, first heard of her 25 years ago when she wrote a column and did artwork for Bird Watcher's Digest, and was on NPR's All Things Considered.

Zickefoose describes her Ohio home as her 80-acre piece of heaven made into a wildlife preserve. She built a 42-foot tower to be closer to the birds.

She graduated from Harvard University and became a songwriter, artist and author. Her latest book, "The Bluebird Effect, Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds," is a collection of nature stories.

Zickefoose said our ancestral hunter-gatherers knew the plants and creatures; their lives depended on it. Now people don't know where their food comes from.

Situational awareness, said Zickefoose, is the perception of elements in the environments within a value of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of the status in the future. It is important to everyone.

She said people should get down low. Think what it's like to cross a road when you are a red eft, a juvenile red newt. On one of her pictures an eft was shown compared to her finger. It was tiny and the road is big.

"Seek the ephemeral light. As a painter I know how important it is to get out early in the morning," she said. "Seize the evenings especially after a thunderstorm. Look for shadows."

Because of where the light comes from a shadow can be high on a wall or way down low. She suggests learning the meaning of clouds. As the seasons pass the clouds change and affect views differently.

"Bad weather always looks worse from inside a window. Get out there and feel it."

Revisit beloved places. She spoke of the three trees that she termed the graces a red maple, a sugar maple and a black tupelo. There are gifts that come just for checking every day, she said. An abandoned church with its adjacent cemetery is always good for more visits.

Look where it's hardest to look, she said, showing a picture of a tree with the red and yellow of autumn, and in the tree was hidden a scarlet tanager.

"I love photographing animals in nature. Don't let a track go unidentified," said Zickefoose.

A tree sparrow and junco were busily eating the seeds of a goldenrod but could not readily be seen.

She suggests watching for the tracks of the first whitetail fawn each spring.

She described tiny white spots on a red flower as hummingbird tracks. A tobacco hornworm has white stripes that break up its green color so it fits into its surroundings better. Jamaican fruit bats, slightly different colors as they age, were snuggled inside a flower.

"Everything has significance," said Zickefoose.

A red-eye vireo had been sitting on a nest next to a large pole. Both birds were out of the nest, an unusual situation, as they planned to protect the nest from a black snake coming up the pole.

"It enriches your experience if you can make friends of animals. Share, pry, listen, eavesdrop we are not here long," she said. "Take a good dog along. Nature has stories every day."

Zickefoose earned the Appalachian Achievement Award and the Oprah Book Club award.

She finished her talk on a personal note with a song while showing a turtle on the screen "Pick him up and carry him across," she sang, from the "Realm of the Blest," a song she wrote for her band, the Rain Crows.