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Bird Is The Word

Caroline Gaskin

Nourish Your Mind, Heal Your Body and Detox From The Digital World

Bird Is The Word explores how we can nourish our mind and body by using the everyday practice of bird watching–just like yoga, meditation or reading- and access a powerful 'medicine' to heal our uncertainty, social distraction, and act as a digital detox.

  Nature & Environment   50,000 words   25% complete   14 publishers interested
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$4,371.00
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Update #5 - When The Redwings Come to Town Nov. 10, 2020

Well, we’re back in lockdown and it feels different this time in the autumn of 2020. We’re beyond the fruiting berries that we pick to eat and the birds are much quieter than in spring. Some have flown to warmer climates and others have arrived for wintering in the UK.

A few weeks ago I walked up Parliament Hill with a girlfriend very early one morning and it was busy with guys, all with binoculars watching the skies – birds about the size of our English thrush were skittering all over the dawn clouds.

They were redwings arrived from Northern Europe. Winter visitors ready to feast on the berries, particularly tree berries like rowans and mountain ash and hawthorn. You’ll also see them on the ground, feeding in flocks, more pointy than our thrushes and a bit daintier with a russet red flash in their wing. They’re easily startled and will fly off a short distance and come back to feed when the coast is clear.

My reflection is though is not that you need to know all this to appreciate what birds can bring but that watching the birds can be a joy wherever you are at.

Yes I felt a bit intimidated by the stance and the kit of the guys watching the skies and was a bit shy to ask ‘what’s going on?’

It’s a funny thing. Many women would say the same. Young women say they’d feel safer walking out with another woman. I love to walk alone and just pause and immerse, observe, listen and sense but I’m older and perhaps have a confidence I didn’t have when I was younger.

So that’s something that will be in the book – making birds accessible and easier to enjoy rather than having to know too much.

Here’s a recent podcast I did with Mark Pitcher from Smash The Box where we talk about all sorts of stuff but especially birds, bird watching and the book. Enjoy!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1WSrMfvWW5LQEOtzj3Xu6s