Taking Flight presentation through Reedsburg Public Library
In 2014, Reedsburg earned a Bird City designation from the Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative, having achieved a number of conservation measures necessary for the distinction. On Wednesday, May 19, at 7 p.m. the City, in partnership with Reedsburg Public Library, will celebrate the seventh year of Bird City status with guest speaker Michael Edmonds’s presentation Taking Flight: A History of Birds and People in the Heart of America. Sign up for the Zoom presentation on the library’s webpage at reedsburglibrary.org.
From 1982 to 2018, Edmonds served in a number of positions with the Wisconsin Historical Society, most recently director of programs and outreach, in addition to teaching at UW-Madison. His expertise runs the gamut from the history of the Wisconsin Capitol to Paul Bunyan to the Civil Rights movement. In his latest book, “Taking Flight,” avocation and vocation meet as Edmonds limns his own experiences in birding, and the history of how people and cultures have viewed birds in the Midwest from prehistoric times to the present.
Edmonds explains how, over thirty years ago, an encounter with a great blue heron became the impetus for purchasing a pair of binoculars and a copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s “Field Guide to the Birds.” The field guide, informing him of genus and species, also suggested that our own cultural beliefs impose meaning on natural phenomena. As a reference librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Edmonds had access to the historical documentation that would tell the story of how people’s relationships and views of birds differ across cultures and change over time.
Edmonds illustrated presentation as well as the successive chapters of his book trace indigenous peoples’ relationship to birds as interpreted from ancient petroglyphs and effigy mounds, the first European impressions of native birds as found in historical records, as well as nineteenth century settlers’ folk knowledge and observations of their avian neighbors. Edmonds covers the regrettable extermination of the passenger pigeon, and the near extinction of other species due to market gunners, habitat loss and avarice. Finally, Edmonds ends on a hopeful note as he observes that the choices our ancestors made may be rectified by “replacing our narcissism, fear and greed with empathy, humility and respect.”
Copies of “Taking Flight” may be checked out from the Reedsburg Public Library. For questions about the presentation call the library at 768-READ (7323) or email info@reedsburglibrary.org.
