A conversation with...Jeff Reiter
New book features The Best of Words on Birds.
A new birding book has just been released and may be a perfect gift for the birder in your life. It’s The Best of Words on Birds, a collection of Jeff Reiter’s columns for the Daily Herald here in the Chicago area. Jeff and I have bonded through the years, as we are both fans of Cleveland Guardians baseball and have swapped information for various columns and posts on the local birding scene. I’m grateful to be noted in the acknowledgements of this new book, which is a thoughtful and entertaining look at birding. The following is an edited version of a recent conversation between Jeff and me.
TWiB: I appreciate your approach because you give an inside look at birding but also make your columns accessible to a wider audience. Has that been intentional?
JR: The Daily Herald is a general interest newspaper, and I try to remember that. Many readers are not birders, and I see that as an opportunity. I do sometimes get into the weeds about certain things that probably only birders would be interested in. But I do the column on a volunteer basis, not for pay, so I generally write about whatever I want to write about.
TWiB: What has the interaction with the public been like?
JR: I get emails from readers, people telling me about birds they saw, or asking for ID help. Or they might ask me why “Nothing’s coming to my feeder.” I consider them all birders, whether they think so or not. The feedback and questions are one of the joys of doing the column. People becoming interested in birds, seeing a Scarlet Tanager for the first time. That’s very gratifying. If nothing else, I hope that I’ve introduced new people to the hobby.
TWiB: Has birding changed since you began writing the column in 2004?
JR: It’s definitely more of a mainstream activity than it was 20 years ago—technology like eBird and Merlin have brought new people into the hobby and made it cool. If you have a smartphone you’re in business, which is just about everybody. And the quality of inexpensive binoculars has improved. I can’t think of a more accessible hobby—and it’s all because birds are everywhere. You can watch birds every day, for two minutes or two hours, indoors or out, casually or with intensity, like those birders in “The Big Year” movie.
[Birding] infiltrates my whole life and everyday routines. Every single time I walk by our sliding door in the kitchen I look out at the feeders, I can’t help it. I get distracted by birds all the time, even at baseball games. In the book I mention that most birders are never really NOT birding, and it’s true!
TWiB: What are your influences?
JR: I read a lot. Magazines like Birding [American Birding Association], Living Bird from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Watcher’s Digest, and Bird Conservation from the American Bird Conservancy. Some of my favorite birding books are adventure stories, like The Big Year, The Grail Bird, Kingbird Highway, and Birding without Borders. One of my writing heroes is Kenn Kaufman, and I was pretty much speechless when he offered to endorse my book—having his name on the back cover means a lot.
TWiB: What have been some of your favorite columns?
JR: I enjoy writing about my backyard as much as anything. A column called “Freaky Friday Fallout” is my favorite on that topic. I always recommend that readers start and maintain a yard list. It’s amazing what stops by or flies over if we take the time to watch.
A couple other favorite columns were about finding birds of my dreams, such as the Worm-eating Warbler (a long-time nemesis) and Great Gray Owl.
“Stakeouts” were the basis for some good columns, too. These often become social gatherings because you’re with other birders and everybody is at the same place because of a bird. You see friends and make new friends, and meet the owners of the property who often can’t believe all the excitement over a bird. I also wrote about a Varied Thrush stakeout in Evanston where I was late to the party and all by myself. I nearly froze but got the bird, and it was my 500th lifer.
TWiB: Much of your book is about birding in general, and not focused on Chicagoland. How did you choose what columns to include?
JR: That was a challenge because I had about 230 columns to choose from! The book includes about 65 of them. But I wanted the content to appeal to the broadest possible slice of the birding community, and to birders of all levels, no matter where they happen to live. The book has a Midwestern flavor but I generally avoided columns that are too Chicagoland-centric. I hope I’ve succeeded in sharing a wide range of short essays and stories that are fun, full of useful information, and add to the reader’s enjoyment of birds and birding.
My columns are mainly in Chicagoland, but a lot applies to birding in general. A narrowly focused book, the topics I cover in the book are pretty broad in a lot of cases. The personalities and local forest preserves—it applies everywhere.
The Best of Words on Birds is available for sale on the website of Eckhartz Press.
