A Spectacular Autumn Drone's-Eye View Of the Mohonk Preserve...

The explosion of Fall colors on New York's Shawangunk Ridge are second to none. I've spent many a weekend hiking around up there trying the capture the spectacular vista with my Zone VI 4x5 camera, but this video gives you a view of what it must be like for a raptor riding the thermals around those cliffs.

You're also provided with several unique views of the Mohonk Mountain House and of SkyTop Tower, a landmark that features prominently in my novel, Little Birdies!  Enjoy your trip...

Hike Until You Drop (But Don't)...

Towards the end of Little Birdies!, Willie Nolan, an environmental program specialist with the Bureau of Wildlife division of New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation, is at the Mohonk Mountain House and needs to get to Sky Top Tower to see how closely the birds are being monitored by the authorities. He's forced to climb the Labyrinth at night, to avoid the State Trooper parked at the base of Sky Top Road.

When he returns, two hours later, he describes the trail to Dan Grant: "It was blazed by sadists for crazy people," an observation that anyone who has attempted the near-vertical scramble knows to be true. Here's a great up-close and personal look at the entire trail, from the bottom up to the Tower:

And, yes, I've done it. My advice? Carry water and little else, wear sturdy, supportive footwear and don't fall...

The Carriage Road to SkyTop Tower...

Here's a great look at the carriage road leading from the Mohonk Mountain House to SkyTop Tower. Towards the end of Little Birdies!, Mandy and her friends track the birds to the tower, where they've taken up residence and enjoy riding the thermals during the day. Enjoy your walk...

An interview with Jurassic Park paleontologist Jack Horner

Mostly out of necessity (extreme dyslexia), Prof. Jack Horner has been a lifelong, bona fide rule breaker; a guy who doesn't know the meaning of thinking inside the box. Grab a cup of coffee and find ten minutes to watch this fascinating interview:



Paradigm shifting breakthroughs don't happen by following the rules...

Marc Morrone talks Birds 101...

Television personality Marc Morrone is here doing what he does best, educating the public about pet keeping. This is a great, concise primer on the pros and cons of keeping exotic birds as companion animals:



Marc had some very kind words for my third novel, Little Birdies! :

"One of my favorite books of all time was Watership Down, by Richard Adams. The author's descriptions of the pastoral English countryside were vivid and organic, and transported the reader into an imaginary world in ways that only a great novel can do.

It's that ability to carry readers away and immerse them in a fictional world that I most like about Little Birdies! by Anthony F. Lewis. The fact that the setting for much of the book was New York's densely forested Hudson Valley and the spectacular Mohonk Mountain House only upped the measure of personal satisfaction for me. Lewis captures the region's look and feel in a manner that effortlessly sweeps the reader away to the woodland steams and primordial highlands that inhabit the story.

Another mark of a world-class novelist--the late Michael Crichton comes to mind here--is attention to detail; especially scientific detail. There are few things more upsetting for me than when an author ruins a perfectly good story by getting the facts wrong. Such is not the case here. Like Crichton, Lewis has exhaustively researched his subject matter, providing the reader with a convincing and realistic platform from which to launch the story.

There are many good stories around. What sets books like Little Birdies! apart from the rest is the author's attention to detail and the ease with which he draws the reader into the story. Do yourself a favor ... curl up with a copy of Little Birdies! and be prepared to be transported."

 Read the opening chapters of Little Birdies! here, the reviews here. And, of course, the book is available at Amazon, in both softcover and Kindle editions,

A Seasonal Selection of Christmas Parrots...

Who better to enjoy Christmas than a perpetual five-year-old?


















It's still not too late to get the parrot lover on your gift list a copy of Little Birdies! (softcover or Kindle). Sample chapters are right here, but that would sort of give away the surprise, wouldn't it?

The World's Largest Indoor Rainforest...

This is one helluva bird cage:

"Located inside of a giant, 22,000 square foot dome, the indoor tropical resort is about the size of eight football fields and wins the title of the world's largest indoor rainforest, as well as the biggest tropical sauna and spa complex in Europe. The complex is also home to more than 29,000 plants while cockatiels, parrots, and budgerigars provide animal life for the space."

I guess this means that Dan Grant's geodesic dome aviary featured in Little Birdies! is no longer as impressive as it once seemed, though for a backyard aviary a 100-foot diameter, 50-foot tall dome is still nothing to sneeze at.

Read the entire article here: Visit the world's largest indoor rainforest resort. 
More on the Tropical Islands resort at their website.

"Reading is Overrated."

Famed Jurassic Park paleontologist Prof. Jack Horner discusses his dyslexia and how reliance on his imagination fueled his rise in the scientific community: 

"We will make a Dino-Chicken. Absolutely..."

I can't wait until these guys hit the pet stores. But what do you feed a chicken with teeth?

From the article:

"Hints of long-extinct creatures, echoes of evolution past, occasionally emerge in real life—they’re called atavisms, rare cases of individuals born with characteristic features of their evolutionary antecedents. Whales are sometimes born with appendages reminiscent of hind limbs. Human babies sometimes enter the world with fur, extra nipples, or, very rarely, a true tail. Horner’s plan, in essence, is to start off by creating experimental atavisms in the lab. Activate enough ancestral characteristics in a single chicken, he reasons, and you’ll end up with something close enough to the ancestor to be a “saurus.” At least, that’s what he pitched at this year’s TED conference, the annual technology, entertainment, and design gathering held in Long Beach, California. “When I was growing up in Montana, I had two dreams,” he told the crowd. “I wanted to be a paleontologist, a dinosaur paleontologist—and I wanted to have a pet dinosaur.”"

Read the entire article here: How to Hatch a Dinosaur.  Hmmm... perhaps someone should write a book...

Banding Peregrine Falcon Chicks on the Throgs Neck Bridge...

 Three-week-old Peregrine Falcon chicks get free jewelry! It's good to see the species rebounding so strongly...



They tried banding one of the dinobirds in Little Birdies!, but without much luck...

Paleontologist Jack Horner on Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken...

Recorded at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design, March 2011), famed paleontologist Jack Horner touches on subjects ranging from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, to recovering soft tissue from fossilized dinosaur bones, to his own efforts to retro-engineer a dinosaur from a chicken embryo. "If you want dinosaur DNA, go to the dinosaur." Fascinating stuff...



For my take on the subject, be sure to check out Little Birdies!  As always, you can read the opening chapters here.

Prehistoric Park: Capturing Dinobirds....

Here's a fun clip from the Animal Planet series Prehistoric Park.



Of course, in my book Little Birdies!,  Mandy and Willie have to cook up their own ad hoc plan for capturing escaped dinobirds:

“So what do you think?” Mandy asked Willie, as they finally stood together watching the birds munch and crunch their treats. “Man-eating, killer birds or homesick pets?”

He knew the rational answer was probably “both” but decided to hold his professional opinion in reserve. “They seem to like you just fine,” he said.

“I don’t think they’re ever going to be as friendly as parrots,” Mandy observed, with an innocence that belied the obviousness of her statement. “It doesn’t seem to be in their nature. They never took to Uncle Dan or my brother much, now that I think about it.” She suddenly turned to face Willie, looking him right in the eye. “How are you going to capture them and bring them home?” Her tone implied that she wouldn’t be put off this time.

“Your Uncle didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me.”

What the hell… “The best we could come up with is that I’m going to try to dart them, two or three at a time if I can, one at a time if I have to. Then we’ll just throw ‘em in the truck, bring them home, and come back for more.”

“How are you going to get past all the cameras and tourists and state troopers down there? And won’t the rest of the birds be scared away when they hear the gun go off? And if you shoot them when they’re on top of the tower won’t they fall off and hit the ground?”

“The gun’s not that loud—it’s an air gun; it has more of a dull pop than a sharp crack or bang like a regular rifle. As for the rest of it, I have no idea. This was a more play-it-by-ear sort of plan. We’ll have to figure it out as we go along.”

Mandy’s face darkened with disappointment. “That’s really not a very good plan," she said.

You can read the opening chapters here: Little Birdies! Excerpts.

Dinosaurs are not extinct...

...they're flying above your head.



For more adventures with dinobirds in your backyard, check out Little Birdies! Excerpts here: Read the first two chapters.

They don't teach you this in school...

I've always been fascinated by people who somehow manage to detour off of life's tried and true career path buffet and stumble into something that they are uniquely qualified for. Tyler Keillor is one such person:

Tyler Keillor has been preparing fossils, creating skeletal reconstructions, and sculpting flesh models of prehistoric life at the University of Chicago since 2001. He also worked at the Field Museum of Natural History in exhibits, and learned many artistic skills in a former career: creating special effects and makeup for film, TV, and theatre.

Here's a few short clips of Mr. Keillor at work, from his web site: 

Be sure to stop by Tyler's website; there are plenty of interesting photos, more videos and some informative articles as well. And here's a recent article with a bit more of his background: Paleoartist's skill brings dinosaurs to life.

An Avian Time Machine...

By now you know how obsessed I am with dino-birds, even if you still refuse to read my book (we'll get to that later). Fossil remains of Sandhill Cranes have been dated back to 2.5 million years, and fossils of closely related, possibly even directly related specimens have been dated back to the Miocene Epoch (some 10 million years ago). This extends the species' family tree back further than any living bird. Still about 50-some million years short of a true dino-bird, but old enough to have earned a measure of our respect and admiration.

Listen to this critter and tell me you don't hear the faint echo of a Velociraptor calling to you from somewhere back on its family tree:

You can learn more about this ancient species over at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Now I know you haven't read my book, Little Birdies!, because I've seen the sales figures. If you have a Kindle, the e-version of the book will set you back all of $2.99. That's the fruit of a full year of my life for less than the cost of a Starbucks "grande." Seriously, that's incredibly depressing. Are you afraid it's not going to be worth the money? Afraid you're not going to enjoy the story? Look, if you're here listening to the call of a Sandhill Crane, believe me, you'll enjoy this book. I wrote it for you, I really did. You can read the opening chapters here, skim some of the reviews here. And you can purchase the book here. Please, if not for me, do it for the birds; they're smarter (and far more tenacious) then you might think... 

Dino-Birds cause chaos on Staten Island!

Well, at least to the degree that all birds are dino-birds. But these guys do look the part more than most. And of course, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservations (DEC) needs to get involved in this escalating crisis:

"“There are a lot of people that are concerned about the turkeys. There are also people who like the turkeys,” said Suzanne Mattei of the Department of Environmental Conservation. 

Mattei said rather than continue talkin’ turkeys on Staten Island, the state wants to stick its neck out and do something. So it is sending questionnaires to all the affected residents, asking whether they can peacefully coexist. Should the birds be relocated somewhere safe, or, as a last resort, euthanize them, in a so-called Thanksgiving harvest? Or perhaps testing them for disease and then donating them to charity." 

 More on this here: Wild Turkeys Invade, Take Over Part Of Staten Island
Apparently, the flock, now numbering about 100 birds,  formed about ten years ago when a women released a few birds. Here's another look at the situation, including "turkeys playing chicken:"

If you're at all curious as to what might happen should the disruptive flock instead be populated by carnivorous, pack-hunting, transgenic psittacines, please check out Little Birdies! (read the opening chapters here). I promise you a more substantive story...

A Quick Peek at New Paltz...

This short clip opens with a great shot of the Shawangunk Ridge, including a nice, clear look at Sky Top Tower.  The town of New Paltz sits about five or six miles below the ridge. The area is the setting for much of the action in the second half of my novel, Little Birdies!.



Read the opening chapters to Little Birdies! here.

"Birds are technically dinosaurs."

In a far-ranging, almost hour long discussion, famed paleontologist Jack Horner talks about all things dinosaurs. The dino-chicken discussion start around 15:00. About a half-hour in, he talks about what a very tiny window on the past we actually have, that fossilization is extremely rare, and how it is limited by location and continental geologic activity spanning millions of years. The Jurassic Park/Michael Crichton discussion starts at about 48:00. If you're interested in dinosaurs/paleontology, put on a pot of coffee; this one is well worth your time.


"Dinosaurs were the dominant land animal for 140 million years, and those are the extinct ones; they're still a dominant animal as birds. So how and why a few big, clunky ones went extinct is, to me, not interesting at all."  Fascinating stuff...

And if that's not enough for you, please be sure to check out Little Birdies!  "...you'll never look at birds the same again! "

Paleontologist Jack Horner on resurrecting extinct life-forms...

Some interesting thoughts from Jack Horner on the future of paleontology:

Right now if you asked the National Science Foundation how much they thought they were going to be funding in paleontology over the next 30 years, they’d probably say zero, because they’re not very much into historical science. Historical science is being left in the dust. But paleontology isn’t a purely historical science, or at least it won’t be for much longer, because soon we may have the capability of resurrecting extinct life-forms. If we want to see an animal like a velociraptor [a small carnivorous dinosaur], we will be able to create one by genetic engineering. It won’t be a genuine one from the past, but it could be a reasonable simulation. It might even be possible to make something that looks like a T. rex, once we understand what all the genes do and how to turn them on and how to turn them off.


Read the entire interview here: Dinosaurs Might Soon Walk out of the Museum and Into the Lab. Of course, I've got my own reasons for cheering on the development of test-tube dinosaurs...

When Dino-Birds Ruled the World...

Now that's what I'm talkin' about! Gastornis geiselensis lived about 41-56 million years ago, and picked up right where its dinosaur cousins left off. The video also ties in rather nicely with my recent post about avian biting power. Hat tip to The Dinosaur Fossil Blog.



If you find this even remotely interesting, you're sure to enjoy Little Birdies!. Trust me on this...