HALLIE EPHRON: I remember years ago when I was just working on my first mystery novel, I heard a fellow writer talking about the birding mystery series she'd pitched to a New York editor. The editor wasn't interested -- said she'd recently acquired a birding mystery. What she was looking for was a bowling mystery.
I wonder if that birding
mystery would have met the same shrug today, given that birds are
definitely having their moment. Amy Tan's memoir and nature book The Backyard
Bird Chronicles has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 33 weeks. The
memoir Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper, about birding in
Central Park, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks.
And recently it feels
like newsfeeds have been full of birds. There was the widely reported story
about a pileated woodpecker that was terrorizing drivers in Rockport,
Massachusetts, pecking out car mirrors.
A pileated woodpecker is formidable --
it's as big as a turkey vulture, looks like Woody Woodpecker, and sounds like a
jackhammer when it goes after a tree trunk.
Reading about it, I was reminded of a male cardinal that spent a week attacking our car mirror -- apparently mistaking his reflection for a rival -- and leaving the side of our white Honda Civic bloodstreaked. I wonder what forensics would make of bird blood.
Then there was the lone wild
turkey (a female) who went in search of a mate in midtown Manhattan. We've got
herds of them here in the Boston. Named by locals as "Astoria,"
apparently she's is friendly (unlike a male turkey), walks on sidewalks without
bothering pedestrians, and forages peacefully for food.
As for me, my yard is full
of noisy poultry looking for mates and nesting. Cardinals, bluejays, song
sparrows, house finches, mourning doves, circling red tail hawks... I'm
thrilled when a Carolina wren or a yellow warbler shows up in my birdbath.
Maybe it's time for me to work on a birding mystery... Or maybe it's already too late. I'm sure I'm not alone enjoying THE RESIDENCE (streaming on Netflix). Set in the White House, it features rabid birdwatcher slash brilliant detective Cordelia Cupp (played by Uzo Aduba).
Do you notice birds or
are they like the weather, just the background to whatever else that's going
on?
