CHASING ALONG THE FLYWAYS

About the Book

Chasing Along the Flyways will take you on a grand birding odyssey, from the stately antebellum manor estates along the historic James River and boreal peat bogs high in the Appalachian Mountains to a north Indian tiger sanctuary.  You’ll be charmed by the saga of Bart and Clara—two lusty backyard house wrens.  

“Now that it’s mid-winter seed catalogues fill our mailboxes.  They’re harbingers of spring renewal and reminders of last year’s colorful blooms and birds.  This past spring we had the first residents in our new backyard nestboxes: a very active pair of house wrens.  The guy arrived first—I’ll call him Bart—all puffed up, big mouth, yelling at the other birds, flying around the backyard stuffing two nestboxes full of twigs and staking out his territory.  The quality of his handiwork at both doorsteps seemed hurried and shoddy. It was a pitiful job, with many long sticks protruding from the small entrance leaving hardly any room to squeeze through.

Not long after, a young lass arrived, whose name was surely Clara—quiet, diminutive, and low-key.  It was obvious that opposites attract!  She thoroughly inspected both houses, flying between the two over and over.

Amid the drudgery of a house wren’s daily grind we detected the sounds of new life within the nestbox.  The nestlings began to faintly “peep” whenever Clara or Bart left and returned to the nestbox…

Bart seemed to agree and commiserate that it was a lot of hard work keeping hungry mouths fed, and she’d roll her eyes as a knowing smile appeared at the corners of her beak.  Then, she’d get back to work and he’d return to his half-hearted arias…

One evening, only Bart showed up, signaling his arrival with a soft clicking sound.  He sat alone midway in the butterfly bush, vigilant and pensive, occasionally preening himself.  He stayed until the sun vanished, then flew into the dark alley and out of sight.  And, they were gone...”

Chasing Along the Flyways is saga of exploration and discovery in the mid-Atlantic and coastal Piedmont,  as well as exploring several western U.S. and foreign hotspots.  

“Our small caravan of pedal-powered rickshaws carried us slowly along the berms of  Keoladeo Ghana National Park, back to the lodge after a dawn-till-dusk day of birding.  Just before twilight, the sun’s last rays caught the pink tailfeathers and orange-reddish faces of painted storks huddled together on an oblong hummock, and their vivid colors were radiant.  All around us thousands of birds were preparing for darkness, and you heard their muted sounds and occasional splashing in the shallow water…

A visit to Northern India’s Keoladeo Park and Ranthambhore Sanctuary is a study in contrasts.  Squeezed by sprawling cropland, semi-arid desert and high-density population two undisturbed refuges with very different habitats survive.  Almost 300 species of birds rely on these sanctuaries either for nesting or resting along ancient migratory routes.  The variety and numbers of birds are simply stunning—who in our group can forget the iridescent colors of the blue Indian roller, purple sunbird, black redstart, orange-headed thrush, green bee-eater, and of course, those wonderful painted storks?”

This fast-paced armchair guide to local and far-flung birding hotspots is amusing and entertaining!  Chasing Along the Flyways is a birding tour de force, a wonderful smorgasbord of birding hors d’oeuvres and desserts.

About the Author

Author and nature writer Jerry Uhlman is an inveterate traveler and birding adventurer who has journeyed to many of the legendary hotspots across North America—the Texas gulfcoast and the Rio Grande Valley, Southern Arizona and the Nevada desert, Maine and Canada’s Maritime Provinces, the prairie grasslands of the Midwest, California, Florida and the Delaware coast. An escapee from endless workdays in healthcare administration, he now indulges his passion for birds and wayfaring with an unbridled enthusiasm that approaches hedonism. His nature and travel articles have appeared in Winging It, Camping Life, Outdoors Unlimited, Woodall’s CamperWays, Birder’s World, Living Bird, Birding, American Bird Watcher, Western Birder and Naturalist and Refuge Reporter magazines. Uhlman recently received the Virginia Writer’s Club 2000 Short Story Award for “Bart and Clara’s Backyard Tryst” in this volume. He currently writes the popular birding column “Flyways and Byways” that appears in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, and is the author of A Birder’s Guide to Metropolitan Richmond.