I just realized that Dawn Chorus has been running for over four years now. Yikes. That's kind of a long time in blog years. (Of course, there have been many guest hosts during that time, which helps immensely for avoiding burnout and keeping the series going strong.) What was I thinking???
This has been rattling around in my head for a while now, and it seems like a good time to test the waters for a regular (or at least pretty reliably semi-regular) bird blog. I'm guessing that at least a fair number of Kossacks are birders, or at least find them sorta interesting in a general way. Even if only 1% of the community are into birds, that's still 1,000+ potentially interested people.
Okay, not quite a thousand regulars, as it turns out. But still good numbers of folks show up most weeks, and all the folks who show are good awesome.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of tasty grubs!
A little bit more from that first diary, because it has worked pretty well, as it turns out:
Why birds? (Besides that fact that I like 'em, that is.) Well for one thing, they are quite entwined in two things that are important on DKos: politics and community. Warblers and politics? Climate change, land use policies, energy policy, agricultural policy, even health (pandemic flu, anyone?) - all of those directly affect birds, and are sometimes affected by birds. Community ties come with birding as a social pursuit, and as it relates to other interests like gardening, outdoor life, science, art/photography and travel.
But here's the part that really strikes me, in retrospect. It turned out to be true, but in an unexpected, additional way:
One other great thing about birds is that they seem to be one of the very few things that can get people to work together across social and political divides. An obvious example is wetlands preservation, which brings together the tree huggers and the duck hunters. (The parking lot at refuges have some real interesting assortments of bumper stickers.) We may not agree on much, but we all get behind saving these open spaces. Likewise, some Evangelicals have been getting serious about the concept of "stewardship". When we share one common goal with others, it's easier to open a dialogue and discover what else we have in common - a desire for a economic justice, concerns about health care and education, and yeah - ending this pointless war. I think that's one of the things that helped make inroads into some of the western states in 2006.
At the time, I was thinking about trying to work with people who had voted republican but might find their interests better served by voting for Dems. (Those people are still out there, but it's going to take a lot more than birds to get their attentiona.) As it turned out, it also applied to the primary wars. In the birdblogs, I had no idea who different people supported - it was really surprising at times to wander into a candidate firefight and see someone I knew as a sparrow lover going at it hammer and tongs with a supporter of the other candidate. As things got uglier out there, this place remained a place of respite (rather than spite). After the nomination was settled once and for all, the community diaries (including Dawn Chorus) seemed to be where people drifted back first, before jumping into political stuff.
Hopefully, we don't go through that kind of crap next election cycle (though maybe it's preferable to the current meta-raging). But for us... FOUR MORE YEARS.
Anyone know the drive from Fargo to Des Moines? My friend Walter (the amazing photographer) is making the drive today, going by way of the Red River. If anyone knows of any great stops along the way for birding (or photo ops) please share...