Chickadees can live to be 12 years old. At 540 heartbeats per minute, they will log almost 3.3 billion beats in that lifetime. If your heart beats at 70 per minute and you live to be 70, your total will be almost 700 million fewer.
Bird word Owling: Excursions to hear owls. Winter is a good time for owling. After dark, drive to a wooded area, park the car, get out and just listen. (You may want to cup your ears with your hands to improve your hearing.) If you don't hear anything, get back in your car, drive a half-mile and repeat.
Book in brief "The Little Big Book of Birds," edited by Natasha Tabori Fried and Lena Tabori (Welcome Books, $24.95), is a compilation of all things birdish. It contains poems, quotes, factoids, short humor and short fiction pieces, excerpts, tips and brief bios of famous birders. And it's illustrated with snippets of artwork with equally broad credentials.
The book is a bit like feeding birds itself: It's a scattering of various seeds, some more nourishing than others.
JIM WILLIAMS
