Well, I was called perky and witty in the New York Times Last year, and now the Wall Street Journal confirms my status as falling short of geeky. So, if you come by my blog for the first time via WSJ, welcome! Here's the mention (and as luck would have it, I was getting a good whiff of red-tail this weekend and have a photo to go along with it) and I've linked to the entries the article mentions:

This blog by Sharon Stiteler, based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, aims to "show the world that you can be a birder without being a geek," according to its masthead. Her recent video of a Peregrine falcon tearing a piece of meat to shreds certainly falls short of geeky.

Ms. Stiteler talks about birding on a couple of radio shows in the Minnesota area, and her blog is packed with information about birds on the prairie and in more urban habitats. In one recent post, she explains how to tell the difference between a juvenile male cardinal and a female cardinal -- neither of which has the bright plumage associated with adult males -- by the color of their bills. A separate post describes a particular insight that comes from being close to wild birds: "I love the good, warm, feathery smell of a bird. Not all birds have this, eagles for example smell like an empty 35mm film canister. Great-horned owls frequently smell of skunk or at the very least three-day-old road kill. . . . Red-tailed hawks have a wild alive smell."

Congrats to Birds Etcetera, Bill of the Birds, 10,000 Birds, and I and the Bird for getting a mention too.

And to take advantage of the all the extra traffic and continue my usual shameless self promotion, I do have a book coming out October 16, 2007 titled Disapproving Rabbits, based on the website and my pet rabbit Cinnamon. We also talk about beekeeping and a favorite reader post appears to be my recent bee sting, so if you need a laugh, you might want to take a look at that.