October 17 - 22, 2023 and WOW Encore December 8-10, 2023
2023 Wings Over Water Keynote Speaker- Julie Zickefoose
Julie was our 2019 Wings Over Water Keynote Speaker and we're thrilled to have her back. She is a writer and artist. Some of her books are, Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect. And she is a Contributing Editor to Bird Watcher’s Digest. Because she believes birds to be the most vibrant vessels for the life force, painting baby birds as they grow has been her favorite project to date. She has also published, Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest (2016) and, Saving Jemima: Life and Love With a Hard-Luck Jay, about a blue jay she raised and released in 2017. It was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in 2019, just before Julie participated in Wings Over Water. Julie loves to encourage people to watch birds more closely and carefully, speaking and leading trips at a number of festivals around the country. She now leads natural history excursions to Latin America and Africa with Holbrook Travel. She lives on an 80-acre wildlife sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio.
Keynote talk
Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest
Why and how do baby songbirds develop so quickly, some launching into flight only 11 days after hatching? In 2002, Julie Zickefoose began to draw and paint wild nestlings day by day, bearing witness to their swift growth. Over the next 13 years, Julie would document the daily changes in 17 bird species from hatching to fledging. Baby Birds is the enchanting result, with more than 500 life studies that hop, crawl and flutter through its pages. In this talk, Julie shares her influences as well as her artistic process, a must-see for the aspiring natural history artist. Art and science blend in every Zickefoose pursuit, as the scientist’s relentless curiosity joins the artist’s quest for beauty. The work, wonder and fun of studying nestlings, including being foster mother to orphaned hummingbirds, chimney swifts and bluebirds, makes for an irresistible and highly inspirational presentation