Renewed contact with relatives in Stuttgart in recent years has been enriching not only on a personal level, but has enabled me to combine family visits with those of natural enclaves. A few sites in particular have stolen my heart. Like a siren, they beckon me to return and like Odysseus, I am unable to … Continue reading Stuttgart’s Green Sides-Part 1
For as long as I can remember, I have seldom needed an alarm clock. I typically awake on my own, without having my dreams disrupted by bothersome beeping. While human sleep and wake cycles result from nature and nurture, in birds these patterns are inborn. I vaguely recollect learning about a ”bird clock” many years … Continue reading Robinsong
Hardly a day goes by without me birding, either by watching avian visitors at our feeders in the yard, or by setting out with binoculars and camera in tow. Non-birders can’t imagine why anybody might spend hours looking for and rejoicing over feathered beings. I sometimes wonder, too, why I don’t get bored spending vast … Continue reading The Joys of Birding
After stilling my historic hunger with difficult-to-digest fare, Berlin’s greener and more appetizing morsels beckoned. Filled with harrowing thoughts about the infamous Wannsee Conference, I was grateful for the opportunity to push the reset button while walking on wooded paths paralleling the Havel River which shimmered in the late morning sun, until I reached my … Continue reading Peacock Island
Birders regularly recall the trigger bird that stopped them in their tracks and awakened their curiosity about the avifauna. While I can’t name one particular trigger species, I owe my fascination for feathered friends to the manifold ducks that migrate to Alaska during the summer. When my husband and I called this northernmost state home … Continue reading Gone to the Ducks
tanja britton 