BONUS: The joy of being a ‘one-bird birder’ with Maria Mudd Ruth

conversation.

What is so special about them? So many things.

First off, it's a bird that's hidden in plain sight.

And I lived in Puget Sound for 25 years and never saw this bird.

Or maybe I did and didn't know what I was looking at.

Never gave it a thought.

And then once I started watching them, I realized...

They are fascinating, entertaining, playful, social, communicative, right near the shore, easy to see, easy to identify.

And I knew nothing about them.

And I thought, how have I missed this bird my whole time here? And how is no one talking about this bird? Because people are talking about other birds.

And this was just a bird that was kind of ignored.

And I thought, this is time to sort of bring it into some limelight.

And now you have a

couple of theories in the book about why we're not noticing this lovely bird.

Why is it that you and so many people in the area have missed the pigeon guillemot?

I think people are focused on more rare and offshore birds.

Generally speaking, I think they're almost rare.

Kind of like pigeons, common, and you overlook them.

They're abundant, or they're just far enough offshore that you're not really watching them.

There is another bird in this family of seabirds that people are very familiar with, the iconic puffin.

And I think people are focused on that charming, wonderful, imperiled bird.

And that takes the limelight away from all these other common birds.

So that was also part of my motivation for focusing on this bird was just to share some of that love with other people and birders.

Yeah.

I remember the point early in the book when you mentioned that they're in the same family as the puffin and I wrote in my notes, well, that's just unfair to be in the family with the puffin.