Why I Do This...
...and this, and this, and this...
I never meant to get carried away. My Birding with BillBow enterprise started with a simple and familiar sensation—the persistent creative itch that has been with me, like a permanent case of shingles, my entire life. As a kid I drew monsters and wrote comics and poems, mostly in tandem with my BFF Mike. During sleepovers we would write and draw our brains out, all while Weird Al Yankovic blasted in the background. Weird Al dared us to be stupid, and we obliged. Happily, most of our stupidity was preserved in book form when Mike compiled our complete oeuvre and bound it together in hardback form.
Among our earliest collaborations was The Monster Book, dozens of the most disturbing and diabolical creatures our young minds could conjure.
Look out for “hongker!” It’s never been clear to me what’s coming out of hongker’s nose, but I can assure you it’s bad news.
I defy you to get one minute of sleep after beholding “eye loser!” It may not be your fault that his eyeball popped out, but eye loser is sure as hell going to take it out on you.
Not even the birds were safe from our troubled third-grade minds. You’ve heard of birdwatching, sure, but what about a bird feeder that watches you (and poisons your birds)? Pray you and your birds never cross paths with the unfathomably evil “Poisonis bird food!”
We were creating content only a mother could love, but what a time we had with some paper, a couple of pencils, and a Panasonic portable cassette player.
Hit fast forward on the Panasonic to my adolescence—that’s when I got the idea I was a competent writer of humorous prose, and I reveled whenever tasked with a creative essay in English class, assignments I always took as a mandate to make my classmates laugh. Looking back, those page-long, 500-word scribblings laid the groundwork for what was to come. I got pretty good at telling a story with economy.
In my 20s, I eschewed economy and channeled my inspiration into an ill-fated, Tolkien-esque fantasy trilogy that languishes in my laptop and I suppose always will, barring some breathtaking change in the part of my brain responsible for organization. Too long. Too ambitious. Too much for a blogger’s brain to corral.
Time to get back to what worked. Enter my 30s and Stabbone and McGraw, AKA McBone. The blog I launched in 2007 with my idiot brother Jeff satisfied my creative needs for many years. Short form really seemed to be the thing for me—I could write about whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and I could take shots at that most repugnant of condiments in the bargain (it’s said that mayonnaise consumption plummeted by 23% from 2007-13). At my peak I was dashing off 15+ posts a month and was in a groove to the point they were essentially writing themselves. Though I do look back at a few of those pieces and cringe, the majority I can say I’m proud of, like the tale of our first son’s birth, and the tale of our second son’s birth.
Ironically, our fledglings represented both the culmination and the demise of McBone. I kept things going for a while, but when you have two jobs, two kids, and a blog to sustain, something’s gotta give. My creative drive was still in gear, but it took a detour to the kitchen. If concocting essays was taken off the table, I could at least concoct tasty, nourishing meals to put on it. A family has to eat, after all, and you can’t eat a blog post, no matter how delicious the prose.
When the kids got big and I suddenly found myself with no jobs (thanks, pandemic), I had a lot more time on my hands. I also had a lot of beer in my gut and a touch of depression in my brain. Being glued to the 24-hour news cycle will do that to you. So will too much time indoors.
Falling deeply in love with birds saved me from the anxiety that comes with living in a world run by degenerate corporations and their stooges in high office. Nature is healing, it turns out, and there’s joy in discovering what’s out there. And boy is there lot out there! Nature is so generous, because its gifts are infinite.
Being outside with the birds made me healthier and happier, but I still had that creative itch. What better way to scratch it than by spreading bird joy? Like the Cedar Waxwing who gobbles berries and shits the seeds onto fertile soil, I wanted to shit joy, if you’ll forgive a repugnant metaphor, and hope it would land on a few readers.
And so here I am, back at my laptop, back to blogging, writing in the name of birding and conservation and hoping to spin an entertaining yarn while I’m at it. How gratifying this has been, now 52 published posts into the journey and with well over 700 subscribers. Thanks to every single one of you, dear readers, for letting me be your Cedar Waxwing.
The weekly post has been satisfying, but just a few weeks after launching, the itch was still there, and during one of my hikes it occurred to me that learning more about the birders I admire could add a rich layer to Birding with BillBow. I floated the idea of a written interview by my wife Alex. Written interview? she scoffed. Nonsense. Podcast!
Thus, Ten Birding Questions, the Birding with BillBow Podcast was born. Three episodes later, what I knew proved unequivocally true—birders are interesting. Birders are knowledgeable. Birders are fun to talk to. I’ve learned so much from my guests—
Frank Izaguirre, editor of Birding, the American Birding Association’s amazing magazine. You’ll see field guides in a new light after hearing this inaugural episode.
Dr. SK Winnicki, the Ohio State University ecologist who loves and defends the most reviled birds in the ABA area. Yes, even the dreaded House Sparrow!
Anuj Ghimire, the North Dakota State University ecologist who teaches us all about birding in his native Nepal and his adopted home of North Dakota.
You’d think a weekly newsletter and a monthly podcast would be enough to worry about in the first year. Apparently not. Short-form content can get even shorter, it turns out, and I’m pleased to announce the debut of my newest venture, a series of shorts I’m calling—
Let’s Rate a Bird
Let’s Rate a Bird is meant to be a fun, twice-weekly way of better knowing the birds I encounter, sharpening my skills with the camera, disseminating some bird trivia, and, yes, rating birds. I hope you’ll enjoy the first installment, in which I subject the wee Piping Plover to my meticulous rating system, formulated after years of rigorous research and based on thousands of data points.
All of this hasn’t been a birdwalk in the park. I’ve had to learn how to use Riverside to record and Audacity to edit my podcasts. I’m learning Adobe’s Premiere Pro for the shorts and Canva for my graphic design. My dear wife, who helped develop the final products you see and has coached me through it all, has been patient with my slow, gummed up, 49-year-old brain and forgiving of my grouchiness when I’ve wanted to strangle the software and feed my laptop piece by piece to the garbage disposal. My creative itch didn’t know what it was up against, and there’s been some real misery en route to what I’m delivering to your screen.
So why bother?
I’ll say it again—joy.
Joy is a word I use a lot in this publication. I don’t like repetitive writing, but joy is at the core of BwB’s ethos. There’s joy in birding. There’s joy in gardening. There’s joy in bugs and slugs and nature in general. Joy is a precious commodity in the world, now more than ever. I won’t revisit my Waxwing metaphor, but I want to spread joy as far and as wide as I can. If these creations can beam a little light into the world, I want to do that. If I can brighten someone’s day, make them giggle or smile, I’ll consider it mission accomplished. If I help spawn a new birder or two, all the better.
Even if the process isn’t joyful yet, I know it will be. At some point I’ll stop wrangling with the various softwares and my nagging self doubt and every other challenge that made these last few months an emotional mind job. And then? On to the next. More is coming. I haven’t put pencil to my sketchbooks yet, for one thing. I’m looking forward to doing some drawings, hopefully more sophisticated than what’s in the Monster Book. But if I have half the fun doing them as I did with Mike, it’ll be worth it.
There may be some other stuff kicking around as well. Stay tuned ☕ 👕 🧢
Featured Photo—laser bird
Perhaps my finest contribution to The Monster Book, prehistory meets the future in the form of this flying dinosaur. Though armed with horned head and tail, “laser bird” prefers to use its retractable laser guns to pick off prey and destroy major cities. As for birders? Say goodbye to all that joy I’ve been blathering about. Laser bird’s long shadow is the last thing you want to see in your local patch. Submit your eBird entry while you can, dear readers—you just might be vaporized in the next instant.
10/10 Recommends
Speaking of spreading joy, here are three Substacks that fill my days with light. I hope they can do the same for you!
.Birding, love, and high adventure converge in some of the best travel writing and watercolors you’ll find on this site. You think birding is easy? You think birding is safe? You think birding is all leisurely hikes along the beaten path? Think again!
Wild This Week and Birdfolk by
+Gem paints such a beautiful portrait in words and photos of the birds and nature in her corner of the world. Every time I read one of her posts, the urge to return to England surges to almost uncontrollable highs.
If you need a break from the very loud, very cruel voices polluting our airwaves and our brains, enter Brewtonia’s (and Substack’s!) hub of caffeinated kindness, the Coffee Queer Café. Expect the unexpected, and come as you are—Betty welcomes you.
That’s all for this time. I hope you enjoy my latest bird-themed amusements. Do you have any creative projects in the works? Do you have past or extant projects you’d like to share? Do you have gnawing doubts about your talents? Are there any birds you’d like me to rate? Let me know in the comments👇
Until next week, thanks for reading and watching and subscribing to my seemingly innumerable ventures, and don’t forget to create your ass off!
nwb
Birding with BillBow’s weekly content will always be free, but you can help support my mission of shitting bird joy in the form of a paid subscription (save $10/year by choosing the yearly plan!).
Not up for an annual subscription? Consider buying me a beer instead.
No not this beer!!
Things are tough out there. If a financial commitment isn’t possible, I’d be so grateful if you shared my post!
This post was human generated. All media by Nathaniel Bowler, except where noted.
Hey, check that out. Thanks, Nate🙏💐
That Monster Book is pure GOLD! (And it all is starting to make sense.) Also, thank you for the shoutout!