2021 Updates

 Updates for 2021

 Butterfly leaving its chrysalis, a new beginning and a reminder of hope.

Hello readers, and happy New Year. Since I started the Carolina Bird Gardens and More blog in April 2020, I have written about the birds, insects, plants, and ecosystems in the Carolinas from a perspective of a casual observer and gardener. Despite the ongoing health crisis and other issues facing the world over the past year, I have used my downtime to share the stories of nature with my readers and to highlight birding spots in the Cape Fear Region. As time went on, I expanded the blog to include full accounts of birds, insects, reptiles, and mammals, explain ecological processes, animal behavior, and how to provide habitat for wildlife. This provided an escape from the realties of politics, current issues, and stress related to the pandemic, and encouraged people to enjoy nature in their gardens, or socially distanced at parks and natural areas. I also stayed away from controversial issues impacting the ecosystems in our area and tried to explain things in an educational and encyclopaedic manner. This new hobby along with my regular visits to Greenfield Lake Park for bird studies, and spending time in the dooryard at my townhome or in my mother's garden, kept me calm and provided structure during these uncertain times. Additionally my blog writing, and research coincided with a scientific writing class I took at the local university this past autumn, and my various nature journals, creative writing, and aviation-related works I have done on my own. In 2021 I hope to continue providing regular articles, photographs, and garden ideas to people across the Carolinas and beyond. Regardless of the current situation in our world, we can always escape into nature and doing things like putting up a bird table or feeder, starting a garden, or walking at a park or in your neighborhood can help combat fatigue, stress, and 24-7 news cycles. 

Future of the Blog 

As you may know, I enjoy writing and educating others about nature and this was the first time I shared my field notes, garden secrets, and experiences with an audience outside of my circle. I will continue doing that in 2021 and have some articles in the works. These include more bird and wildlife profiles, gardening guides, nesting boxes for breeding birds, locations, and possibly a series about natural ecosystems in the Carolinas. I am also playing around with creating pages to provide additional content such as a localized bird and wildlife list, links to my documents, and a photo gallery. 

These projects require time, planning, and oftentimes extensive research to accomplish. It usually takes several hours to research, draft, write, and edit a weekly article (often across several days) and I want to provide a comprehensive, coherent, and accurate product. This involves rewriting, cutting/rewording of content, grammatical fixes, and formatting adjustments to make something that is informative but not overly technical (and less like a journal). Lastly I have to find photos relevant to the topic, which involves combing through my personal photo library, going into the field to take photos, or searching for public domain or creative common examples and studying licensing and fair use terms. At the end of the day, a major blog topic like Winter Birds, Old Field Succession, or many of my plant articles can take most of a morning/afternoon, or up to six days if I break it up into 1-3hr blocks. In 2020, Google has made many changes to the Blogger website, and made changes to the terms and conditions during an autumn update. While these changes had a number of benefits, and do not effect this blog series, I am concerned about the future of this platform and a number of policy changes that the tech companies have made. One of these changes are updates to the account storage policy. Photos, documents, and other media will now count towards the 15G storage limit on on an account (I am not sure about uploading photos to the Blogger site). I was going to use Google Photos to upload my bird, and nature photos, although with this change, I will no longer do that. Advertising and privacy  policies are another concern. 

I still have a lot of free time to work on these projects and I will work with the platform's new policies as best as I can. This long period of uncertainty has put a lot of strain and stress on myself and my family members, and social circle. While I continue to remain positive and adapt to the changes like any plant or animal in the natural world, these last few months have been stressful and even my escapes of nature, writing, and creating fictional universes can only get me so far. We have a lot of things to catch up that were made difficult by the current situation and balancing school, side projects, daily routines, and family responsibilities. I will be returning to university in late January (virtual) in late January and taking a few classes that require more time than my autumn semester. On top of  this taking care of a few projects, that will require a significant amount of time over the next few months.  Lastly I have been working on a number of creative writing projects, enjoying other hobbies, and trying to spend more time with my family on virtual platforms, to get me through this rough patch until the next growing season arrives (bringing back insects, birds, and wildflowers). 

Schedule Changes for Winter 2021 

Going forward, I will step back a little from the blog to take care of personal needs, finish some of my side projects, and get settled into the new semester. I will take a bit of a holiday from Carolina Birds and Gardens in January 2021 and work towards creating an article about birdhouses/nest boxes for February. After that, I will post regular articles on a lower frequency (every other week, instead of weekly on a day to be determined), and will experiment with other content such as short articles, list articles, or journal type articles. This will allow me to put time into research, planning, and  brainstorming concepts without spending an entire morning or multiple mornings working to get an article by week's end. At a later time, I will get back into providing weekly articles with spring and nesting season just around the corner. I am also looking at making some other changes to the blog site including more pages about specific areas, better navigation features, and inter-article links to past stories. 

I hope everyone is safe and finds a moment in nature during these unprecedented times and I hope we can all return to life very soon. The return of local nature walks, travelling to natural preserves, and going on trips out of the city would be a refreshing change when it is appropriate to do so. Thank you for your patronage and I hope to continue telling the story of birds and wildlife in the Carolinas. 

By Curtis Downey, Author of Carolina Bird Gardens and More

January 7th, 2020