Well, hello!

by Kimberly & Michael
 
We're so glad you've come over to read our blog. This is a new endeavor for both of us and we hope it will be a lot of fun.

Before we get started, a bit about what this blog will be:

First, there are two of us here, Kimberly and Michael, and we'll each be posting individually as we find the time and might occasionally post something jointly written.  That's the plan anyway. Since we haven't done this before, we'll have to see how it goes. As of now, there isn't any kind of schedule for the posts, but I hope they will be more frequent than not. I love a blog that posts every day, but I doubt we'll be able to do that. We both have lots of other things going on.

Second, this blog will be the repository for a number of things.

One of those things is birds. Wait! Don't leave! We admit it, we're dorks this way, but we suspect, and actually know, that some of you are too. Both of us are bird nerds (birders, or even twiggers for you Brits out there. Silly Brits), and have decided to make a concerted effort to see as many birds as we can this year. We are each keeping a record of the birds that we see (two separate lists because Michael doesn't like to share), and Michael is entering his on e-bird, a website sponsored by the Cornell Bird Lab. It's pretty damn cool for those of you who are into that kind of thing. So, this blog will be a space for us to keep you informed (since some of you care) of the birds we are seeing. This is the "Bird" part of our title.We hope to do more than just report lists of birds, so we'll try to provide some commentary on our bird watching excursions and the things we see along the way.

This will also be a space for general accounts of what we're up to. This is the "Bower" part of the title. Since we are nerds in more ways than one, I'll give you part of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) discussion of the word bower:

"A dwelling, habitation, abode. In early use lit. A cottage; in later use a poetical word for ‘abode’."

Since we are both literary types (by the end of the summer we'll both have PhD's in English) we especially like that bower is a "poetical word." Awesome. It is also likely related to the German word "Bauer" which means gardener. Gardening is another thing we do around here, and Michael is of German descent so double points for that.

Much of the inspiration for the title came from my absolute fascination with bower birds. Do you know these birds? They're amazing. They make houses and decorate them with collections of different colored objects they find in the forest and they spend their lives keeping their space tidy and beautiful in hopes of enchanting a female bower bird. Here's a picture of a bower. Isn't it cool???

 (image from here: http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds/)

 Check out this youtube video with David Attenborough:  

  The BBC series Planet Earth has some great segments on bower birds, but I couldn't find a video. 

In our next post we'll give you the details on the birds we've seen so far.

Later gators!