Birdtober Day 16: Pygmy Nuthatch

I have three nuthatch species on my life list: White-breasted, Brown-headed, and Red-breasted. Not the Pygmy, though. It's found in the western half of North America, usually in coniferous forests. According to All About Birds, "Pygmy Nuthatches cache seeds year-round by hammering them into crevices or under flakes of bark on the tree, saving them for later.  . . . Sometimes more than 150 individuals sleep in a single tree, stacked up in squares, triangles, diamonds, oblongs, or tiers of birds."

 

Life among pine cones

Storing seeds to eat later 

Sleeping in a pile

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

Birdtober Day 15: Ringed Kingfisher

 

I love this video because it is such a specific sighting, not a collection of various photos from who knows where. We can see the effects of the wind on this bird as it sits on a branch. We can hear the wind. And at the end the videographer pulls back to show us the larger context.

 

I have seen this bird; it's on eight of my checklists, all from Paraguay. When I think of this bird, I recall standing on a particular bridge with my brother as he identified it for me. I can feel the heft of my binoculars around my neck and the heat of the Asunción evening. There are no generic birds and no generic sightings. 

 

 

 

Megaceryle torquata 

with your rattling sound

and your burrow home,

how glad I am to see you

on this one unrepeatable evening

in my life that is short

and yours that is even shorter.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Reading Update

Book #82 of 2025 was Maine Characters, by Hannah Orenstein. Summary: nobody in this book had a life that turned out the way they wanted, but in the end they worked it out. 

 

Book #83 was a book club pick, The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel. This one was the third Harmel title we've read together. Colette Marceau is a jewel thief, which gave a new wrinkle to the Holocaust themes Harmel has explored before. 

 

Book #84 was my first Tana French book, the fifth book in a series. I chose The Secret Place because it was available from the library app without waiting, and as soon as I had read it, I checked out the first in the series, In the Woods, which became book #86 of the year.

 

Book #85 was The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. I loved some parts of this book, but I thought it was a bit uneven. I found some revelations to be quite unbelievable. 

 

Book #87 was Married to Bhutan: How One Woman Got Lost, Said 'I Do,' and Found Bliss, by Linda Leaming. This was a fascinating memoir about an American woman's experiences in Bhutan. Here's her website.

Birdtober Day 14: Costa's Hummingbird

 

I've written quite a bit about hummingbirds in the past; here's one post from Birdtober in 2022. I've never seen this one and I sure would love to. Look at that bright purple iridescent throat! This species lives in the desert in the western United States. I looked into who Costa was, and it turns out that this hummingbird was named after a French nobleman by an ornithologist friend of his. Kind of a nice gift, I guess. With the eponymous bird names due to be changed soon, I spent some time wondering about what kind of name could be chosen for Costa's. Amethyst is already taken -- there are several hummingbirds with that purple gem as part of their names. I thought of royalty being related to purple, but there's already at least one hummingbird species with royal in its name, in addition to an empress. I didn't find any kings or queens, so those are some possibilities. Several descriptions compare the Costa's purple throat to a mustache, so how about the Violet Mustache as its new name?  And Louis Marie Pantaléon Costa, Marquis de Beauregard himself, the source of the Costa name, had a pretty impressive mustache.  Some sources that have been suggested for the new names are the bird's behavior (and there's a lot of overlap in behavior among different species)  and the indigenous names. The bird's habitat could also be a source, and this one is described in a couple of places as the only true desert hummingbird. So how about Desert Gem? The name Costa won't be lost, no matter what new name is chosen, because it's part of the bird's scientific name, Calypte costae. (Take a look at this list of hummingbird names to give you an idea of how much variety there is, and here's an article about some of the issues involved in bird names.) 

 

 

 

What shall we name you, little bird?
Do you prefer being named after a French nobleman,
a precious stone,
your physical appearance
(stunning, if I may say so)?
Would you like us to describe your behavior
or your surroundings?

I’m guessing, little bird,
that you don’t care at all what we call you.
You’re too busy living your best hummingbird life.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Birdtober Day 13: Gray/Grey Heron

 

 

I've written a lot about herons in the past; here's one post and it contains a link to others. Herons are so beautiful to watch, and the Gray Heron (Grey is the British spelling) is one of the most common ones we get here in Uganda. The scientific name of this heron is Ardea cinerea, meaning ash-colo(u)red heron.

 

My husband and I went camping by Lake Victoria on Saturday night and I took this picture on Sunday morning. You can see the mixture of mist with the smoke from our campfire. As I thought about the ash and the Gray/Grey Heron, this poem came to be:

 

 

Smoke rises
from the campfire,
Mist rises
from the lake,
Grey Heron rises,
the S of her neck 
writing serenity
across Sunday morning

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Birdtober Day 12: Gyrfalcon

 

This is an amazing bird, the largest falcon in the world. It's pronounced JER-falcon. 

 

 

Gyrfalcon lives in northern cold:

A hunting bird since times of old,

Providing meat for baby gyrs

Or catching prey for falconers.

Snowy, silver, black or brown,

An awesome sight when swooping down.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

 

 

Birdtober Day 11: Arctic Tern

 

Two summers a year

The Arctic Tern seeks the light

Record migration 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day 10: Kalij Pheasant

 

I'm enjoying doing Birdtober for the fifth time. Andrea Holmes puts out these prompts every year for visual artists, but I use them to learn about birds and write poems every day of October. I always find that my busy days are more fun when I'm doing some tiny little creative thing like this.

 

Here are this week's Birdtober posts:

 

Saturday: Wyandotte Chicken 

Sunday: Javan Green Magpie 

Monday: Green Pigeon 

Tuesday: Common Loon 

Wednesday: Diamond Firetail Finch 

Thursday: White-crested Helmetshrike 

 

Today's bird, the Kalij Pheasant, is found in the Himalayas and has also been introduced to Hawaii. And apparently, it lives in constant fear. (See the video.)

 

 

(Summary of the video in case you don't have four minutes for it: the first minute shows Paras getting up in the morning, getting his coffee, and sitting down at his desk. Then he explains that he'll be talking about the Kalij Pheasant, the "Big Boss," who is an "escape artist." He gives more information about the habitat and behavior of this bird. And then he shows details of the kind of danger they face from humans and why they'd feel the need to escape as fast as possible.)

 

Kalij Pheasant, run away!

You're in danger if you stay.

Lovely Himalayan pheasant,

I wish your life could be more pleasant.

 

@Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

(I wrote about another pheasant species here.)

 

Linda is hosting Poetry Friday this week. 

Birdtober Day 9: White-crested Helmetshrike

I haven't seen this bird, which eBird describes as "cartoon-like," but I do live in its range, so the possibility exists! How fun would that be? I typed into Google, "Where can I see the White-crested Helmetshrike in Uganda?" and the AI responded that there have been no sightings in Uganda, but that is not true. Here's a better response from an actual human being.

 

 

There’s one thing I would really like:
To see White-crested Helmetshrike
To look in their startling yellow eyes
To say, “It’s nice to meet you guys.
I’m glad our acquaintance is now official
in spite of intelligence that’s artificial.”

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

 

Birdtober Day 8: Diamond Firetail Finch

 

I've written about quite a few different dramatic-looking finches here in the past: the Zebra Finch in 2022, the Saffron Finch that same year, the Strawberry Finch in 2023, and the Red-billed Firefinch last year. In the US, House Finches are so very common that it's hard to imagine this array of finch diversity. 

 

I would love to see these in the wild (they live in Australia), but they can also be seen in cages, like a couple of the birds we've already met this Birdtober. I read that they fly in long lines, with their bright red rumps very visible. 

 

Row of burning coals,
of bright, glittering diamonds, 
little birds in flight

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Birdtober Day 7: Common Loon

The Common Loon is the ABA Bird of the Year for 2025, and I wrote about it here, along with a poem by Miller Oberman. I've never seen a Common Loon but I very much want to. 

 

Chessboard of a bird,
Haberdashery model of stripes and polka dots,
Red eyes:
Diving 200 feet down in the lake,
Flying at 75 miles an hour,
Wailing through the winter night.

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

Birdtober Day 6: Green Pigeon

I wrote about the African Green-Pigeon last year during Birdtober, so this year I decided to learn more about the larger family of Green Pigeons. There are thirty species of them across Africa and Asia. I enjoyed looking at many photos of different varieties.  The video below shows one of them. They are green because of carotenoids in their fruit diet. I wondered whether humans could turn green from eating carotenoids but found that occasionally people turn orange when they overconsume. But don't stop eating them, because carotenoids are antioxidants, great for your eyes, your heart, and even cancer prevention.

 

 

The genus Treron, to which Green Pigeons belong (some species have a hyphen and some don't), was first introduced by French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot, who lived in Haiti during the 1770s and 1780s. He worked in his brother's spice business and fled to the US during the Haitian revolution. He lost one of his daughters to Yellow Fever. I read the novel Fever 1793 with one of my middle school classes during Covid, and we were interested to learn that the Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia was blamed on the refugees from Haiti. It was easy to draw parallels with anti-Asian sentiment during Covid. All subjects do eventually lead back to Haiti with me, as you may have noticed.

 

You are what you eat, Green Pigeon
Carotenoids and all
But don’t hold back a smidgeon:
Fruit makes you beautiful.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Birdtober Day 5: Javan Green Magpie

 

When I first started Birdtober this year, I'd never even heard of the Javan Green Magpie, but within moments of beginning to research for my poem, I learned that there may be only about 50 of them left in the wild. So no sooner did I learn that they exist than I had to mourn that they are almost gone. Because of their dramatic appearance, they are popular as caged birds, so they have been captured into near-extinction. Some people think they may already be extinct in the wild. eBird doesn't even have a photo. 

 

Then I discovered that Chester Zoo, in England, is part of a program working on breeding them with a goal of returning them to the wild. Watch the video below for more details!

 

 

Once their romances
played out in tea gardens in Java,
but now their privacy is over
as zookeepers try to encourage them to mate.
Bright green feathers and orange bills
in an enclosure in Chester,
and then a squirming, naked baby bird.

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

If you're as interested as I am, watch this video from Chester Zoo! I've seen several of the birds in this video in the wild, which makes me feel extremely privileged. While in a sense these birds are in captivity just as much as the ones kept in cages in people's homes, at least they are in habitats with lots of room and they are cared for by experts. And let's hope some day they can all be plentiful in the wild again.

 

 

 

Birdtober Day 4: Wyandotte Chicken

I love that today's prompt is a chicken. The first prompt for 2022 was a rooster, and I waxed eloquent about how ubiquitous and beautiful these domestic birds are, even though we can't list them on eBird (wild birds only, please). 

 

 

Black and white with other hues - 

Gold, silver, sometimes even blue.

If you like eggs and you eat lots

Get yourself some Wyandottes!

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

 

Poetry Friday: Birdtober Day 3: Boreal Chickadee

 

Shy bird

Mountain dweller

Boreal Chickadee

Stores winter food in many trees

Prepared 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey

 

 

Here are the other Birdtober birds so far: 

Day 1: Banded Penguin (African Penguin) 

Day 2: Venezuelan Troupial (SJT prompt: Compassion) 

 

 

Matt is hosting Poetry Friday today. 

Birdtober Day 2: Venezuelan Troupial and SJT: Compassion

I wondered how I could combine the Birdtober prompt, the Venezuelan Troupial, with the Spiritual Journey Thursday prompt, Compassion. Read on to see how I did it.

 Photo Source: eBird.com

 

The Venezuelan Troupial 


As I read about the Venezuelan crisis -
collapsed economy
hunger
millions in exile - 
I’m overwhelmed with the sadness and loss

As I read about the Venezuelan Troupial, though,
the national bird,
and look at its cheerful orange feathers
and the blue teardrops around its eyes - 
I’m overwhelmed with its beauty.

When refugees leave behind everything
they might not think of the birds in their country,
their biodiverse home,
until, far away,
they listen to the sound 
of the Venezuelan Troupial on YouTube
and read on eBird that its conservation status is
“Of Least Concern.”

And they might be glad that there’s one thing
they don’t have to worry about. 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Some links I looked at: Wikipedia on the Venezuelan Troupial, Birds of the World on the Venezuelan Troupial, Venezuelan biodiversity, Why wildlife is at risk in Venezuela, FAQs on the Venezuelan crisis, eBird on the Venezuelan Troupial

 

Kim is hosting the SJT roundup this month. 

Birdtober Day 1: Banded Penguin

 

There are four living species of Banded Penguins, and one of them is the African Penguin. Someday I want to go to Capetown to see them, and since they are critically endangered, I hope it will be soon. I wrote a found haiku using words from the eBird description here.

 

African Penguin

supreme swimmer, black and white,

pudgy braying bird 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

Reading Update

Book #73 of the year was The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong. This book is desperately depressing. Its picture of late-stage capitalism is almost unbearable, as is the way it portrays drug addiction. And Hai's mother! I nearly had to stop reading. But I was glad I finished it.

 

Book #74 was Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall, another very sad, very atmospheric book. I couldn't put it down.

 

Book #75 was a re-read, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor. In this post you can see what I wrote about it the first time I read it, in 2016.

 

Book #76 was another re-read, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, by Kristin Harmel. I first read this one in 2021, but I didn't write anything about it then. It's a Holocaust story about people who hid in the forest in Poland. The first time I read it, I found it unbelievable, until the author's note at the end explained that it's actually based on true events. It's amazing that people were able to survive the conditions described. This time I read it with my book group, and book #78 was another Harmel title, The Book of Lost Names, also a book group pick. This one is about forgers in World War II, saving Jews by making them fake papers. It was, to me, more believable and exciting than the other one. We're currently reading our third Harmel book, so expect something on that one soon!

 

Book #77 was yet another re-read, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. When I read this in 2020, I also read The Hours, and I'm planning to read that again too. Here's the post where I wrote about both of them. It sure takes me back, since I read The Hours while waiting for an endoscopy in Haiti.

 

Book #79 was A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny, by Amy Julia Becker. I read Becker's Substack, Reimagining the Good Life. It's super thought-provoking. She writes a lot about disability and about what the good life really is, versus what current culture tells us it is. This book is about when her daughter was born and Amy Julia and her husband learned that baby Penny had Down syndrome. I so recommend it.

 

Book #80 was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a book of short stories by Raymond Carver. Both my kids are really into going to movies at their independent theaters, and so this past summer we saw Short Cuts, based on Raymond Carver stories. That's why I wanted to read some Carver stories, but this book was the only one the library had. A couple of the stories from the movie are in it, but there's another collection (not owned by my library) called Short Cuts that contains all of them. (The clerk at the theater to our kid: "Wait, you're taking your parents to see this movie?!")

 

Book #81 was The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett. This has been out a long time and I'm quite surprised I hadn't read it yet. Patchett is a really good writer. This is about a brother and sister and their relationship over decades. It's so affecting and beautiful. 

Reading Update

Book #62 of this year was The Labors of Hercules Beal, by Gary D. Schmidt. I mentioned recently that there are a few of Schmidt's books I hadn't read, and this was one of them. Whew, it's so good! Herc is a memorable main character, joining Holling Hoodhood, Doug Sweiteck, Henry Smith and the rest. I'd love to read this one with a class of middle schoolers. 

 

Book #63 was the latest novel by Gaël Faye, Jacaranda. (I read it in French and it looks as though there may not be an English translation yet.) Like his first novel, Petit Pays (Small Country, in English), this one is about the Rwandan genocide, but it goes much more in depth into the repercussions on individuals and the whole country. I really love Faye's work, and I hope he writes much more.

 

Book #64 was Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Hope Against All Odds, by Craig Keener and Médine Moussounga Keener. When staying with my parents, we attended an event where Mrs. Keener led in prayer, and my dad asked me if I had read this book. I hadn't, but I'm glad I have now. What a wonderful memoir of love and God's faithfulness!

 

Book #65 was You Are Here, by David Nicholls. Nicholls also wrote One Day, which I read in 2023 (the link is to my review then). The two books are quite similar, and I enjoyed both. This one is about hiking, which I love, so that was also entertaining.

 

Book #66 was Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway, by Stephanie Duncan Smith. It's a beautiful memoir linking the ecclesiastical year with one family's experiences of loss and birth. "The range of the liturgical story," writes Smith, "becomes for us one of its greatest gifts, expressing the radical empathy of God with us in every human moment -- the I AM incarnate in our joy, fear, sorrow, and surprise. God in every gradient of the color wheel that composes a life." Very much worth reading.

 

Book #67 was a reread, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons, by Jan Richardson. I got this with birthday money this year. I'm sure I'll read it many more times. I absolutely love Richardson's poetry.

 

Book #68 was another reread, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, by Tish Harrison Warren. In this post you can see what I wrote about it the first time I read it.

 

Book #69 was The Arctic Fury, by Greer Macallister. It's billed as a historical novel, but actually it's more of an alternative history. It's about an all-female Arctic expedition that didn't happen, but could have, in the 1850s. It becomes a courtroom drama. It's so well done, and like all good books about such things, it made me shiver as I read it even though it was July and August in the northern hemisphere!

 

Book #70 was The Stolen Queen, by Fiona Davis. This one was so much fun! It was about Ancient Egypt, and 1970s New York, and the Met. 

 

I had book #71 on my shelf for years in my classroom in Haiti, but I'd never read it. A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park, won the Newbery Award in 2002. It's a beautiful book, with sensory writing that makes it read like a haiku or maybe a painting. It's a story about a young boy living in extreme poverty who learns about the ancient art of Korean pottery. As I read about the celadon color I remembered seeing some of this at the Art Institute of Chicago, and sure enough, I found a photo that I had shared on social media in 2018. "A famed Chinese scholar had once named twelve small wonders of the world; eleven of them were Chinese, and the twelfth was the color of Korean celadon pottery! The children of Ch'ulp'o learned this story almost before they could walk....Today's potters have been unable to exactly reproduce the glorious color achieved by past artisans."

 

 

Book #72 was Heartwood, by Amity Gaige. I loved this story of a hiker going missing while doing the Appalachian Trail.

 

 

SJT August: Family

My husband and I spend most of the time a long way from family, but this summer we got to see many of the people on my side. During our visit there was a family wedding, a family funeral, and a celebration of a 60th wedding anniversary, in addition to all the usual everyday moments -- conversations, meals, trips to the store or a museum, a boat ride down the Ohio River. It is so good to be close for a while, even in sadness, close to the people who have known you forever. Family is one of God's greatest gifts.  

 

 

Sara Groves' song "Precious Again" talks about those things that we take for granted or don't even notice, like family love. When we're blessed enough to grow up in a family where it's just there, it's just there. And then, there are those moments when it's all precious, so precious again. 

 

Leigh Ann is hosting this month, and chose the beautiful prompt "Family." Head over and see what everyone else has to say.