Just in time for the end of March Women’s History Month 2022, I’m sharing recent news in the birding world focused on women’s contributions in birding magazine and book media.
Bird Watcher’s Digest rises again!
Maybe you heard about the sudden closing of this 40+ year old birding periodical at the end of December 2021, but less than three months later (this month in fact) the new editor Jessica Vaughan and advising editors Julie Zickefoose and Dawn Hewiit announced its relaunch as the result of a successful search for a new publisher and owner. You can read all the details of the search and happy outcome at Julie’s website, and follow the now rebranded magazine on its Instagram or Facebook (as of this writing there is not yet a revised website for the magazine).
What does this have to do with women in birding? The previous publisher and owner, Wendy Clark, employed an all-female staff save for production and photo editor Bruce Wunderlich, and Wendy was building the magazine toward more women writer contributors across the pages. Wendy invited me (along with author and wildlife rehabber Katie Fallon and author and international birder David Lindo) as the newest columnists to the magazine about 18 months before it eventually folded. Prior to Katie and I joining, Julie Zickefoose was the sole female columnist with regular bylines in the magazine. For a short time, Bird Watcher’s Digest had the most female columnists of any newsstand North American birding magazine. My column even sang to being female, called “Bird Like a Girl.”
Female voices will continue as columnists with the resurrection of the little magazine that could, now rebranded BWD. Katie, Julie and I are staying on as regular contributors, with Jessica Vaughan as our editor (most of the male columnists are returning as well). Our four voices are a modest baseline of the vast demographic of female-identified birders. The opportunity to make the most of this platform is not lost on me, and readers of the column “Bird Like a Girl” will see stories about and by a diverse range of women birders. I intend to share this byline with creatives, birding industry insiders, scientists, media personalities and more, whose lived experience is outside the majority voice of traditional birding media.
With that said, please consider subscribing to BDW! Going forward, the magazine will be subscription only—no longer available on newsstands.
New bird books by women authors
The birding book world is generous with subgenres within its own distinct subgenre, and several new titles make the most of history, memoir and author-described “coffee table book” pleasure reading. Authors Rosemay Low, Susan Fox Rogers and Danielle Belleny have books out now, or forthcoming for Spring 2022.
Low’s Female Heroes of Bird Conservation is available now through Buteo books and features over 30 women across history and the world of bird conservation, many of them working presently in conservation. Low is herself an ornithologist and the book a result of her years of sororal history study and building contacts among female colleagues.
Fox Roger’s memoir Learning the Birds examines her observations of life and community as a mid-life birder convert. Fox Rogers is the author of another natural history themed memoir of kayaking the Hudson River, as well as the editor of numerous nature writing anthologies.
Belleny—a biologist and popular birder personality on social media— is just getting started in her output as an author under age 30 with This is a Book for People Who Love Birds. You can hear her describe her book and writing process on a recent episode of the American Birding Podcast.
Still more books by women authors are coming in 2023. Writer Rebecca Heisman examines the history of the study of bird migration in Flight Paths and therapist Tammah Watts shares the healing powers of birdwatching in her forthcoming memoir/guide, Keep Looking Up.
Are you as keen as I am to read all these books? I’ll be reviewing all of the above titles for various magazines in the coming months. If you like this post and want more suggestions for books in the birding genre, check out earlier posts here.