"CERULEAN BLUES: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird" with Katie Fallon
Channel: Western Cuyahoga Audubon
Date: 2021-04-23

Western Cuyahoga Audubon Society Book Author Series

Event: April 2021 Book Club Programs
Book Author Speaker with Q&A: Katie Fallon, Author, "CERULEAN BLUES: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird"
Host: Drina Nemes, Host, WCAS Book Club 
Recorded: Sunday, April 18, 2021 from 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. (EST)

At Ruka Press:

Finalist for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Reed Writing Award.
“A must for birding enthusiasts, environmentalists, and those with a reverence for life’s small wonders, who ask with Fallon, ‘If we start losing pieces of things, where will we stop?'” --Booklist

Cerulean Blues describes the plight of the cerulean warbler, a tiny migratory songbird, and its struggle to survive in ever-shrinking bands of suitable habitat. This elusive creature, a favorite among bird watchers and the fastest-declining warbler species in the United States, has lost 3% of its total population each year since 1966. This precipitous decline means that today there are 80% fewer ceruleans than 40 years ago, and their numbers continue to drop due to threats including deforestation, global warming, and an ecologically devastating practice—mountaintop removal coal mining—that affects not only the cerulean warbler but all residents of the Appalachian mountains, including humans.

With both scientific rigor and a sense of wonder, Fallon leads readers on a journey of more than two thousand miles—from the top of the forest canopy in the ancient mountains of Appalachia to a coffee plantation near troubled Bogotá, Colombia—and shows how the fate of a creature weighing less than an ounce is vitally linked to our own. Cerulean Blues will appeal to nature lovers, bird watchers, actual and armchair adventurers, and anyone interested in the health and future of our planet.

Katie Fallon is the author of the literary nonfiction books VULTURE (UPNE, 2017) and CERULEAN BLUES (Ruka Press, 2011), which was a finalist for the Southern Environmental Law Center's Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. She is also co-author of two books for children, LOOK, SEE THE BIRD! (2017) and LOOK, SEE THE FARM! (2018), both from Hatherleigh Press. Katie's essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and magazines, and she's been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. Katie has taught creative writing at Virginia Tech and West Virginia University, and currently teaches nonfiction in the low-residency MFA programs at Chatham University and West Virginia Wesleyan College. She is a founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia (www.accawv.org) and serves as President of the Mountaineer Chapter of the National Audubon Society. Her first word was "bird."

You may also be interested in supporting, Bird and Wildlife Rehabilitation at The Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, Inc. (ACCA) Founded by Katie Fallon at http://www.accawv.org/

Western Cuyahoga Audubon is a chapter of the National Audubon Society based in Cuyahoga County in Northern Ohio, USA. WCAS seeks to connect and educate the public and conserve natural habitats for the sustainability of all bird species.