Winging Home: A Palette of BirdsIn British Columbia's remote and exotic Cariboo Plateau, "Everything is slow. Everything is happening at the same speed, which is no speed at all." Harold Rhenisch has spent eleven years watching birds every day from his house on the shore of 108 Lake--at this speed, but you wouldn't know it from reading Winging Home. Known as "one of Canada's master prose stylists," Rhenisch dissects avian behaviour with the ear of a poet and the mouth of a stand-up comedian. His blackbirds are a jug band in full flight, his robins drunken bachelors on a jag, and his eagles decrepit, stumblebum scavengers.With lively illustrations by noted bird artist Tom Godin, Winging Home: A Palette of Birds is more than just writing about the natural world. It is a lyrical, evocative memoir of life in the Cariboo that crackles with humorous, often startling observations of birds and men set amidst the wild beauty of British Columbia. |
Contents
The Robins Come Home | 11 |
The Blackbird Jug Band | 33 |
The War Over the Muskrat House | 61 |
The Eagles of Sepa Lake | 95 |
Colonel Watsons Swallows | 127 |
Jokers | 167 |
Travellers | 185 |
Woody and Winston | 217 |
About the Author and Illustrator | 242 |
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Common terms and phrases
100 Mile House afternoon apples aspens barn birds black terns blackbirds blue branches breath bushes Cariboo clouds cold colour coots crows dark deck Diane dive eagle earth edge eyes fall feathers feet fish floated front geese glows going goldeneye goose grass green grey grouse HAROLD RHENISCH head hour Keremeos kids kilometres kilometres per hour Kokanee land laugh Leandra light live look loons Mahood Lake metres morning move muskrat house nest night Okanagan Okanagan Lake orchard otters pine Plateau pretty pulled rain ravens red-winged blackbirds reeds robins Secwepemc Sepa Lake shadows shore Similkameen slipped slowly smell snow splashed spring staring starlings storm summer swallows swoop terns thin thing trees walked watching waves week whole Williams Lake wind window wings Winston winter yard yellow yellow-headed blackbirds