Just released! “Merced National Wildlife Refuge” - New E-book!

I am thrilled to announce the release of my latest e-book, titled “Merced National Wildlife Refuge”. It is my seventh e-book and I think it’s my best yet. You can download it for free here or view it online.

Merced National Wildlife Refuge contains my thoughts and images from 15 years of visiting and studying this key bird habitat in California’s Central Valley. Home to many tens of thousands of migrating birds in the winter, Merced NWR is an important part of the Pacific Flyway.

Wildlife Refuges are not natural or wild; they are carefully created spaces intended to simulate and replace the kind of bird habitat that existed prior to humans draining, farming and developing so much of the landscape.

The ponds are artificial, the meadows mown and given to pasture by cows and sheep to keep them open, and the water is imported, which is a growing problem as the droughts faced by California deepen. Those droughts have impacted places like Merced heavily already, killing many of the ancient oaks and limiting the facilities' ability to create water spaces for the wintering birds that require them.

And yet every winter the birds come in the thousands, with millions flying south to the various refuges along the Pacific Flyway, and find safe havens to rest and feed until it is time for them to return north to breed.

I made my first trip to Merced National Wildlife Refuge in the spring of 2007 as part of a group from Santa Clara Valley Audubon. I fell in love with the place, full of birds and activity,

I spent many hours at the refuge, studying and photographing the birds and the place itself, an oasis of safety for birds and other creatures in an increasingly urbanized and artificial world.

I spent 15 years visiting it and other California Central Valley refuges in winter when the visiting migrants were there, only stopping when I myself migrated to Washington.

Through this book I am happy to be able to share a bit of this place with you.

About the E-book

The e-book is free, and available as a PDF download. Based on lack of demand on previous ebooks I’m no longer producing the Kindle/device special formats, but I am now producing these works here on the site for online viewing as well. I’m really curious what you think of this form and whether you like it.

The book is absolutely free and one click away from reading.

Please download it and take a look, and if you like it, please share it with others you think will enjoy it also. And let me know what you think.