My thanks to Ralph for this cartoon – his idea, not mine. Monday is the day when I send in the manuscript of ‘A message from Martha‘ to Bloombury and everything is on track. I hope they like it. I’ve been liaising with the artist who is producing the cover – looking good to me…
Category: AUTHOR: Reflections, Inglorious, Message from Martha, Remarkable Birds etc
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
This is just slightly spooky, because when Ralph sent this to me what I was writing in ‘Message from Martha‘ would have fitted this perfectly – and vice versa.
Sunday in Liverpool
Sunday was, do you remember, the 99th anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon in the world, in Cincinnati Zoo, at around 1230 local time? At 1230 local time in the Central Library in Liverpool, I was looking at one of only about 120 remaining complete volumes of John James Audubon’s Birds…
99 years
99 years ago today the passenger pigeon succumbed to extinction when its last surviving individual died a few feet from where this photograph was taken, in Cincinnati Zoo. A few decades earlier there had been billions of this bird flying around the forests of eastern North America. And so next year will be the centenary…
Feedback
When I sent out my short recent ‘newsblast’ to over 1300 people one of them replied as follows: “No,don’t send me anymore of your crap.When you start considering all bird life instead of just raptors then by all means.I put a bird table up 30 yrs ago,had it full of garden birds untill (sic) the…
Cartoon and bits and pieces
Apologies for the non-appearance of yesterday’s blog – I wrote it and then pushed the wrong button (and then spent a lot of time driving on snowy roads). Is it snowy enough for you? Imagine its impact on wildlife. A week tomorrow it is Big Garden Birdwatch – time to get those bird feeders filled…
Fighting for Birds – ho! ho! ho!
If you are really struggling to think of a Christmas present for that wildlife-friendly friend or relative – then how about a signed copy of Fighting for Birds? You’d make my Christmas too! Signed copies are available at £15 (inc P&P). Email me at mark@markavery.info and we’ll get it all organised. Don’t delay as Christmas…
Book signings
At the beginning of the Bird Fair weekend I had never done a book signing – but by the end I had done 10. You might imagine that this involves a team of helpers marshalling the eager crowds of expectant book-purchasers into an orderly queue whilst the author pens witticisms in the title pages of…
Saturday 7
I’ll tell you what day it is. On this day, 98 years ago, at 1pm local time, 6pm (I think) UK time, there was a dull thud in Cincinnati. The last passenger pigeon in the world, called Martha by her keepers in Cincinnati Zoo, had died and fallen off her perch. It was the end…
Saturday 5
You do know what day it is, don’t you? What has been in the news recently? There was ‘Buzzardgate’ (see here, here, here and here for example) back in May, but if Fighting for Birds had been published by then you would have known that it was coming. I wrote as follows on page 210:…