On Saturday, May 11, at the 23nd annual Springsong banquet on Pelee Island, Ont., Woodbridge Farm Books and the Pelee Island Bird Observatory (PIBO) launched Birding with Graeme Gibson, a chapbook essay by internationally renowned author Margaret Atwood.
Published only in print, in 500 copies, the essay is being sold as a fundraiser for PIBO’s mission to promote bird conservation.
In Birding with Graeme Gibson, Atwood recounts three birding adventures with fellow author and avid birder Gibson, her late partner of forty-eight years.
From shivering in subzero weather on remote Amherst Island, Ontario, to nearly drowning in the mangrove-lined Caroni River in Trinidad, to sloshing through a crocodile-infested swamp near the Bay of Pigs in Cold War-era Cuba, each passage follows the pastime that she and Graeme shared until his passing in 2019.
Atwood’s essay is the third in a chapbook essay series that Woodbridge Farm Books, a small Kingsville-based press, has published in partnership with PIBO since 2023. Chapbooks are finely crafted literary booklets.
“We are delighted to partner with Woodbridge Farm Books to produce the Birders on Birds series,” says Merilyn Simonds, Chair of the PIBO Board or Directors and editor of the series.
“Not only do these beautiful chapbooks on individual species support the Pelee Island Bird Observatory through sales, but they promote the understanding of birds that is the foundation of conservation efforts to pause and reverse the alarming decline in bird populations.”
Founded in 2005, PIBO is a not-for-profit organization with an ongoing mission to study and record the birds on Pelee Island, and through local, national, and international outreach, to make Pelee Island a unique part of the international effort to protect wild and migratory birds.
Readers can purchase Birding with Graeme Gibson through the Woodbridge Farm website, www.thewoodbridgefarm.com. In support of our local community, Woodbridge Farm is happy to offer free delivery for residents of Kingsville.
Interested Kingsville residents can contact Woodbridge Farm directly at woodbridgefarmbooks@gmail.com.
The books are also being sold at Juniper Bookstore in Windsor and River Bookstore in Amherstburg.
I seem to have become a birder in recent years. I understand retirement can do that to a person. While awaiting my return from the annual Whimbrel Watch at Colonel Sam Smith Park in Toronto, my husband came across and ordered for me ‘Birding with Graeme Gibson’ by national treasure Margaret Atwood, copy #415. I have just received and read it. I am delighted! Best to you and the wonderful ‘Birders on Birds’ project!