In Praise of Laura Erickson printable
version
The Enderis Park
Bird Watching Club hosted a book signing on Thursday June 14, 2007 from 6:00 –
8:00 PM in the Mayfair Mall Barnes and Noble Bookseller. The
Laura has been; a contributing writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and YourLife Magazine. Spring season field note compiler for The Passenger Pigeon (the journal of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology), former Education chairwoman for the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, Former licensed rehabilitator, educator with federal and state permits to possess and use for educational purposes a screech owl, banquet speaker for the Denver Audubon Society, the Black Swamp Bird Observatory near Cleveland, and the spring birding festival in South Bend, Indiana.
Laura’s Eastern Screech-Owl –
(teaching owl) is named, “Archimedes”. She is gearing up for the next J.K.
Rowling book release in July 2007.
She’ll be stationed with Archimedes in Duluth’s train museum next to an
old locomotive dressed up to resemble the Hogwart’s Express in a witch costume,
where she’ll adopt the persona of “Professor McGonagowl”.
Ms. Erickson is a charming woman. She speaks about birds in an engaging, and knowledgeable manner that pulls in the listener into a world filled with songs, antics, flight and fascinating behavior. She comments about the need for bird education and conservation of habitat to all ages. Her latest book entitled, “101 Ways to Help Birds” is a testament to her devotion and passion about birds fostered over 25 years. It is a book that examines the many things that are hurting birds in today's world and the things that are keeping a few species at unhealthy and unsustainably high levels. She also searched for positive, concrete things we can do to help that will really make a difference.
Time just “flies” in her presence. Just sit with her for 2 minutes and she is guaranteed to captivate and impress. She is as effusive in her praise about her own three children, as she is with those whom she has met in her world travels. She regaled those present with adventurous and humorous stories about her recent travel to Guatemala in search of the Horned Guan, a large, approximately 33 inches long, turkey-like bird with glossed black upperparts plumage, red legs, white iris, yellow bill and a red horn on top of head. The Horned Guan is distributed in humid mountain forests of southeast Mexico-(Chiapas) and Guatemala of Central America. It is found in altitude up to 9,000 feet. Laura boasted about being the “oldest woman to have ever climbed” up the volcanic dust coated path, in the pitch black. (FYI: She’s not “old”)
Other interesting
facts about Laura include; helping to identify the charred carcasses of two birds
sucked up into an Air National Guard F-16 engine, causing the plane to crash on
takeoff in
Laura is one of my new favorite people in the birding community (or in any community, for that matter). She is a joy and a pleasure to know. Buy her wonderful books, listen to her radio program and get to know her too.
Joseph Devereaux