Zick Alert! Spotted, Heading East!

The season is upon us, that season of woodcocks, cardinal song and leggy seedlings crying for transplant. The season of greening grass and mucky mud and days when the sun pops out and threatens (if you don't open the greenhouse door) to flash-fry in minutes everything you've been growing in a big plastic box since November.

First harvest of greenhouse-grown Swiss chard. Went into two quiches! Needs planted out!!*

It is also the season of travel and speaking engagements for Zick. I've just aired a new talk, half based on The Bluebird Effect and half on my new book, whose working title is Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest. That one's due out in spring 2016, if I can finish it by this time in 2015.

Praying helps.

I've learned to accept that, once spring travel and yardwork start, once the phone begins to ring constantly with baby birds and cottontail rabbits, busted hawks, orphaned bluebirds and baby owls and the latest poor creature that's been pulled from a housecat's jaws, I get essentially nothing done at the drawing board. This is who I am in spring: a frantic, fragmented, giddy, sore-muscled garden mule/public speaker who leaps one hurdle after another trying to keep up with the unkempt, dizzy life I've crafted for myself. I sent in my rehab permit renewal late this winter, shaking my head, knowing that I wouldn't be able to do anything more than answer the phone and counsel everyone who's found a baby whatever, knowing that I'd have to start wincing whenever the phone rang after April 1. I sent it in because everybody has my number anyway, and I might as well be legal about what little I can do for lost and injured wild things. I renewed my permit also because I am crazy.

Yes, that's a headless mouse in my glove. Phoebe took this photo. She loves it because I look so happy and the owl looks so pissed off.

Having said all that, I am very much looking forward to traveling east tomorrow, even though the roses need pruned** and the garden needs tilled*** and the brown thrasher is singing in the yard and we all know what THAT means. The peas need planted!**** HOWEVER. I've been hoping for years to be asked to speak to the

  Linnaean Society of New York, at the American Museum of Natural History. That will happen at 7:30 PM Tuesday, April 8, 2014.

The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be held in the Kaufman theater. Enter the museum on 77th St. between Columbus and Central Park West, and follow signs to the Kaufman theater on the first floor. You may want to arrive early to take in a 6 pm presentation by Jeffrey Kimball, filmmaker of The Central Park Effect, one of the birdwatching films that presents a realistic picture of our odd tribe. More information at the Linnaean Society website.

If the weather permits, I will be signing and selling copies of my book,  The Bluebird Effect, under the dome just outside the 77th St. entrance to the museum after the talk. Please let it be warm that evening. 

The next evening, I'll give the same talk in Connecticut.

Greenwich Audubon, 613 Riversville Rd., Greenwich, CT, 6 pm. Wednesday, April 9, 2014.

$10 per person. Under 21 years old free. Reception and book signing with the presenter: 6:00-7:00 pm. Presentation starts at 7:00 pm. RSVP greatly appreciated. RSVP via email:greenwichcenter@audubon.org or leave a voicemail at 203-869-5272 x239. Directions at this link.

See the excellent writeup on the Greenwich Audubon website , in which they make this somewhat reckless statement: "The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds is likely the only nature book ever to have been reviewed favorably in the New York Review of Books (by Linnaean past president Robert O. Paxton) and to have been chosen Book of the Week by Oprah Winfrey."

Har.

The next night, I'm traveling up the Connecticut coast to speak to Potapaug Audubon. I was active with the chapter from 1981-1991, and I wanted to see if anyone still remembered me in Old Lyme and Essex. I wanted to go around some of my old stomping grounds, see a couple of dear friends. 

Thursday, April 10th, 2014, 7 pm. "The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds"
Location: Old Lyme Town Hall

52 Lyme St., Old Lyme, CT

More information at this link. 

Then I'll go see my two sisters, their families, and my mom, Ida, who turns 94 in May.

It'll be a busy, sweet, and bittersweet time. Join me if you can.

*, **, *** and ****: Southern Ohio vernacular. After 23 years here, it has seeped into my everyday speech. The horror! Can "ain't" be far behind?