Julie Zickefoose on Blogspot: Mark Carroll

Julie in the Flesh

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Thurs. Feb. 27, 2020, 7 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Mt. St. Joseph University Theater, 5701 Delhi Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45233. Doors open 6:30 pm. For info call Colleen McSwiggin (513) 244-4864

Mar. 11-15, 2020: Bird Friendly Backyard workshop and Saving Jemima talk at Joint Conference, N. Am. Bluebird Society/Bluebirds Across Nebraska, Holiday Inn Convention Center, Kearney, NE. Right in the middle of sandhill crane migration! Call (308) 237-5971 for reservations.

Mon. Mar. 23, 2020, 6 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Morgan Co. Master Gardeners Event, Twin City Opera House, 15 W. Main St., McConnelsville, OH. Free and open to the public. Call (740) 962-4854 for information.

Sun. Mar. 29, 2020, 3 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Sunday With Friends,, Washington Co. Public Library, 205 Oak Hill St. NE, Abingdon, VA 24210. For more information, call (276) 676-6390

Apr. 30-May 2, 2020: Julie Zickefoose at New River Birding Festival, Opossum Creek Retreat, Fayetteville, WV. Friday night keynote: Saving Jemima. Curtis Loew, miracle curdoggie, presiding.

May 7, 2020, 7 pm: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Campus Martius Museum, Washington and Third Streets, Marietta, OH. Booksigning after. If you missed the Esbenshade lecture/ People's Bank talk in November 2019, this is your event!

Weds. May 13 2020, 5:30 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center's event at Essex Meadows, 30 Bokum Rd., Essex, CT 06426 This event is open to the public.

Thurs. May 14 2020, 6 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at New Haven Bird Club's Annual Banquet, Amarante's Restaurant, 62 Cove St., New Haven, CT 06512. This event is open to the public!

Sat. May 16, 2020: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" for Bergen Co. Audubon Society at Meadowlands Environment Center, 2 DeKorte Park Plz, Lyndhurst, NJ 07071 Time to be announced. Call (201) 460-1700 for more info.

Sun. May 17, 2020, 2 PM: "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at White Memorial Conservation Center, 80 Whitehall Rd., Litchfield, CT 06759. Call (860) 567-0857 for information.

Tues. May 19, 2020, 7 PM: Good Reads on Earth Author Series, by PRI's Living On Earth with Julie Zickefoose and Saving Jemima at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary, 208 South Great Rd., Lincoln MA 01773. Includes audience participation, and will be taped for airing on public radio! Get the book first, read up and call (781) 259-2200 for information.

Thurs. May 21, 2020 6 pm: Julie Zickefoose, "Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-luck Jay" at Bigelow Chapel, Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mt. Auburn St. Cambridge MA 02138. Call (617) 547-7105 for more info.

Jemima's last visit was Christmas Eve 2017. But she has achieved immortality!

Way back at the end of June, a magical thing happened. Mark Carroll, a natural history cinematographer absolutely dripping in awards (his latest, an Emmy for his work with filmmaker Ann Prum of Coneflower Studios on PBS Nature's "Super Hummingbirds,"), arrived at Indigo Hill.

Through the magic of social media and college connections, Ann, wife of my birding buddy and fellow Harvard classmate Rick Prum (himself a MacArthur fellow for his work studying bird plumage, his book the Evolution of Beauty, and mating systems), had become aware of Jemima. It occurred to her that Jemima might be the perfect semi-wild bird to play the Avian Predator in Coneflower's butterfly special, in production for Nature.

Jem had been free since the 11th of June. Could I keep her around, train her to come in for caterpillars; get her to cooperate for the shooting? From those questions hung a big story and a LOT of stressing on my part. I laugh every time I think of it.

Working with Jemima and Mark to get video of her, in the wild, bashing and eating caterpillars, is a rollicking story in itself. For obvious reasons, I won't tell it here, but it's one of my favorite chapters in Saving Jemima, the book I'm working on for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Due out October 2019. I keep saying that so I will meet my deadline of Oct. 1, 2018. Yikes that's coming up fast.

It was such an honor to be able to make this sequence happen for Mark Carroll and Coneflower and Nature. As I'll relate in the book, it was allll up to Jemima whether or not to cooperate. You probably can't imagine what that was really like. Arrrrgh.

Jemima tickles Mark Carroll as he sets up a shot on a hot June day in our yard. Photo by Bill Thompson III

The result of Mark's work and my worry will air TONIGHT, Wednesday, April 4, at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, on PBS's Nature. I will probably be bawling my head off in awe and wonder as my tatty blue daughter does her worst to hapless caterpillars right on the TV screen in the living room where she played. I plan to put my iPhone on a tripod aimed at the TV so I can watch it over and over (I lack the ability to record otherwise). I hope you'll be watching!