Making Suet Dough: The Movie

This is a video Zick and I made showing how we (as crazy people) make our suet dough for bird feeding. It also features cameos by Chet Baker, Boston terrier and by Liam Thompson, creeper. Much of the video footage was shot by Phoebe Linnea Thompson.

I hope you like this short how-to video. It felt like we were shooting some weird cooking show for bird watchers.

Persimmony Pursuit

When the fall colors paint the woodlands we know that soon the trees will be naked. Perhaps the only redeeming thing about this transition from blazing scarlets, oranges, and yellows to bare leafless branches is that it reveals a delicious fruit treat known well to woodland sprites and observant humans: the persimmon.

Phoebe, Liam, and Chet on our persimmon quest.

Off we go to the site of last year's best persimmon tree, out at the end of the meadow. Once there, we turn our eyes skyward, hoping to see this:

Persimmon fruits stand out against the sky in the leafless persimmon tree.

After locating the source tree, we scour the ground below it for "drops." These are persimmons that have already fallen. Conventional woods wisdom holds that persimmons rarely fall before the first hard frost. And if they DO fall before that event, they will be bitter and not fit to eat. This autumn the persimmons we found—well before the first hard frost—were perfectly juicy and delicious.

Phoebe and Julie looking up and down for our quarry.

We shake the tree, gently encouraging it to share. As the small fruits (about the size of a large grape or a small Brussels sprout) drop we try to catch them. If they make it to the ground, they seem to disappear—their warm orange hue blending in with the leaf-covered ground.

Tenacious persimmon.

We gather them up in handfuls, sneaking one or two into our mouths "just to check them for eatability." Here's how to eat a persimmon: You squeeze the insides out of the persimmon's skin, and then begin the exquisite process of divining pulp from seeds. The seeds, which are the size of pumpkin seeds, but thicker, are most of what's inside the fruit. One by one these are ejected onto the ground. Animals that eat the persimmon fruits eject the seeds another way. Scoured by the mammals' stomach muscles and digestive juices, these seeds are the start of a new generation of persimmon trees.

The late-season haul from the line of wild persimmons in our east woods.

In our east woods there is a line of persimmon trees, all about the same age and size. These were probably "planted" by mammals that visited some older, now departed persimmon tree day after day in the fall and early winter. As they chewed up the fruits and took in their pulpy goodness, yesterday's seeds came out the other end, thus ensuring that this symbiotic relationship would continue in our patch of woods into the future.

Knowing all of this makes me thankful that I'm part of this giant web of life.
Happy holidays to one and all! May your new year be full of wild and delicious fruits.

eBWD: An Award and Video Guide

A screen-shot showing the new issue of eBWD. Click to watch a video!

This just in! Well, OK, it happened back around Halloween...

The digital edition of Bird Watcher's Digest (the magazine for which I humbly work as editor) has been awarded a Silver Award from the 2010 Digital Magazine Awards! Everyone here at the offices of BWD is buzzing with excitement over this award, so I just had to share it here on BOTB.

We've produced six issues of eBWD thus far and each one has helped us refine our thinking and offerings for the digital realm. One thing has remained constant: All subscribers to the print edition of Bird Watcher's Digest automatically get free access to our digital edition.
That's correct, amigo. If you subscribe to the print edition of BWD, you get access to eBWD as part of the deal. Feeling the urge? Subscribe now!

As we'd hoped, we have lots of people subscribing solely to eBWD, the digital-only edition. Increasingly readers want to receive their favorite content in some digital medium, and we're happy to oblige.

If you have not yet checked out our "award-winning digital edition" (it's neat to be able to say that) please do so. Some of the features that set our digital edition apart from a print magazine include:

• videos of featured bird species
• bird sounds and songs embedded into text links
• recordings of select authors reading their articles
• hot links throughout the content and advertisements for immediate exploration

This screen shot shows some of the navigation options in eBWD.

But why read about eBWD when you can:

A: Go there yourself and sample some of the pages.

and/or

B: Watch a video in which I and (several of my well-dressed colleagues here at BWD) take you on a tour of eBWD. Here it is:



And remember it's not too late to get a BWD subscription as a holiday gift for that special someone who loves watching birds.