Season's Tweetings...

...from the creepy Victorian Christmas bike-owls.

The '19 Christmas Bird Count

American Goldfinch Spinus tristis

American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos

  I was issued the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery for the Christmas Bird Count yesterday. The neighbouring Mount-Royal Cemetery gets all the birding glamour, but I think NDN has its decent spots too, and I do like a scruffy underdog. Wasn’t too birdy overall (nine species), but the mood of it all made up for any avian shortcomings.
  A thick, creepy-ass fog settled heavy over the cemetery all morning. Haven’t seen a fog that persistent in Montreal – it was more of a Seogwipo harbour morning fog, minus the ocean musk. There were a few moments where I was walking through wide, silent fields, surrounded completely by wet greyness. Felt like walking through limbo, or into 2020 or whatever.
  Gangs of noisy American Crows had me loping through the mist a few times, visions of owls dancing in my head, but I think they were just being bored jerks, having cawing contests. Cawntests.
  Also, I love a good mystery/conspiracy, so I’m convinced I’ve been seeing fresh Black-backed Woodpecker bark damage near where George found them a few months ago – I suspect they’re still somewhere on the mountain, happy and anonymous in some quiet corner. Or I'd like to imagine they are.

  The BPQ count-up hang-out in Mo-West after was a good time, well done, BPQ.

  Speaking of Christmas Bird Counts, my wacky book is now available in paperback format, see the post below.

Buy my book! The Christmas Bird Diary

February 2024 note: Currently unavailable, but it will be back, better than ever, before long...

  Howdy, fellow bird-loving internet lurkers. A short book I wrote was just published, hooray! The Christmas Bird Diary is a cozy “Christmas birding” mystery set in Montreal in 1960. It’s a quick read (10,000 words/50ish pages), and cheap (less than $3 for ebook, less than $8 for paperback), so buy yours today! If you enjoy it (or if you don’t), please review it on Amazon, as it helps boost the 'algorithm' thingies. Cheers, et merci!

☞ Canadians can get it in Kindle or paperback format here:
https://www.amazon.ca/Christmas-Bird-Diary-Matt-Poll/dp/1674923287/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=%22The+christmas+bird+diary%22&qid=1576880454&sr=8-1

☞ Americans (and others) can also get it in Kindle or paperback format here:
https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Bird-Diary-Matt-Poll/dp/1674923287/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1576871403&sr=8-1

☞ Eight other ebook stores and formats are here:

https://books2read.com/u/3Lp1A0

Here’s the blurb:

  It’s Christmas, 1960, and Montreal is snowed under. Twenty-year-old Mairin Lang plans on furthering her new hobby of birdwatching while home for a break from university. This plan for a relaxing holiday with her mother takes a sharp turn when she discovers her late grandfather Murray’s Christmas birding diary, written 50 years earlier. Within its pages are the seeds to three mysteries, all connected to a bird sighting Murray made in 1906 — an all-white ‘Snowbird’ that appears to be a species unknown to modern science. In Mairin’s quest to puzzle through these enigmas, she will be challenged with secrets from her family’s past, skeptical academics, and the deadly elements of an abnormally cold December.

(To read my other published birding tales, click on this handy clickety-click and scroll down:
http://snowyowllost.blogspot.ca/search/label/Writing%20stuff-published%20stories)