Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder: A Memoir

When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of thirty-five, she didn't expect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled into birdwatching, initially out of curiosity for the strange breed of humans who wear multi-pocketed vests, carry spotting scopes, and discuss the finer points of optics with disturbing fervour. What she never could have predicted was that she would become one of them. Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder follows the peregrinations of a narrator who learns more from birds than she ever anticipated, finding new meaning in midlife. Coming from a Russian immigrant family of concert pianists who believed that the outdoors were for "other people," she recounts the challenges and joys of unexpectedly discovering one's wild side and finding one's tribe in the unlikeliest of places. Not only does she come to identify proudly as a birder, but birding ultimately leads her to find love, uncover a new language, and lay down roots. Her thoughtful and witty observations about that journey illuminate the joyful experience of discovery and offer keen insight into what it takes to find one's place in the world.

Author: Julia Zarankin
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Published: 01/05/2021
Binding Type: MP3 CD
Weight: 0.15lbs
Size: 4.90h x 5.60w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781662071201

About the Author
Zarankin, Julia: - Julia Zarankin is a writer and self-proclaimed birdsplainer. Her essays have been featured in several anthologies, and her writing has appeared in publications such as Threepenny Review, Birding Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. She won the Eden Mills Writers' Festival nonfiction prize and has been a runner-up for PRISM International's nonfiction prize, a finalist for the TNQ Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and twice longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. She lives in Toronto.McNamara, Nan: - Nan McNamara has spent over twenty years performing on stage, film, and television (including Criminal Minds) and working behind the microphone as a voice-over artist for radio/television commercials, audiobooks, and video games (including voicing "Anya" for the Gears of War franchise). Her passion is to tell good stories, regardless of the medium. An L.A. Drama Critics Award Winner and an L.A. Weekly Award Winner, she holds a BA in theatre and is originally from St. Paul, Minnesota.