Let's write about women in historical fiction

What We Can Learn From—and Through—Historical Fiction an echo essay published in the History News Network (HNN) with a short postscript by Maine Writer.

by Carol K. Kammen, a historian and the longtime author of the "On Doing Local History" column in History News: The Magazine of the American Association for State and Local History. 

Her novel Lamentations: A Novel of Women Walking West was published in 2021.

I have been a local historian for many years, but turned to historical fiction to tell a specific story for which there were no sources. 

There was a sense of going to the “dark side” in doing so, yet at the same time I was able to illuminate things that do not appear in the historic record. I suspect that there could be a lively debate online about what good historical fiction can accomplish—and also the misuse of history by those who write historical fiction.

As a local historian I tried to be true to the sources I found; to be trusted by readers. In the case of the dozen women who crossed the country in 1842, members of the first overland company to set out for the Pacific Northwest, I could find little. With no verifiable facts, but knowledge that women were present, I turned to fiction to put women in the picture and wrote Lamentations: A Novel of Women Walking West (Bison Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska, 2021). 

Lamentations is a novel about the first group of families crossing west to Oregon in 1842, from the perspective of the dozen women on the trip. Although none of these women left a written record of her journey, the company clerk’s daily notations provided documentation of historical events. Based on these records and the author’s own decades of work as a historian, Carol Kammen provides an interpretation of the women’s thoughts and feelings as events played out in and around the wagons heading west.

To someone like Gore Vidal, it made perfect sense; he thought history should not be left to the historians, “most of whom are too narrow, unworldly, and unlettered to grasp the mind and motive,” of historical figures. E. L. Doctorow would agree, but more agreeably, writing that “the historian will tell you what happened,” while the novelist will explain what it felt like. The historian works with the verifiable facts—fiction is a step beyond.

Historical fiction is generally dated to Sir Walter Scott, beginning with Waverly in 1814. It turns out, however, that Scott was not the first historical novelist. Devoney Looser has just published Sister Novelists (Bloomsbury Press, 2022) about Maria (1778-1832) and Jane (1775-1850) Porter, driven by poverty, who wrote popular historical novels beginning in the 1790s. A Wall Street Journal reviewer in 2022, noted that “Maria was a workhorse, Jane a perfectionist. Between them they wrote 26 books and pioneered the historical novel.”

There have been only a few academic treatments of historical fiction. Ernest Leisy issued The American Historical Novel in 1950, and George Dekker wrote American Historical Romance in 1987, both interested in chronological periods, but neither man created, or exhibited, much enthusiasm for it. Yet, in 1911, James Harvey Robinson wrote in an essay titled “The New History,” published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, where he observed that historians need to be engaging, even while “it is hard to complete with fiction writers.” He stated:

History is not infrequently still defined as a record of past events and the public still expects from the historian a story of the past. But the conscientious historian has come to realize that he cannot aspire to be a good story teller for the simple reason that if he tells no more than he has good reasons for believing to be true his story is usually very fragmentary and uncertain. 

Novelist Anna Maria Porter, engraving The Ladies' Pocket Magazine (1824)- courtesy of the New York Public Library

Fiction and drama are perfectly free to conceive and adjust detail so as to meet the demands of art, but the historian should always be conscious of the rigid limitations placed upon him. If he confines himself to an honest and critical statement of a series of events as described in his sources it is usually too deficient in vivid authentic detail to make a presentable story.

The historian Daniel Aaron took the genre of historical fiction seriously in a 1992 American Heritage essay in which he castigates Gore Vidal. Aaron however conceded that “good writers, write the kind of history [that] good historians can’t or don’t write.”

Aaron quotes Henry James, who thought of historians as coal miners working in the dark, on hands and knees, wanting more and more documents, whereas a storyteller needed only to be quickened by a letter or event to see a way to share it with readers or use it to illuminate a point about the historical past. He recognized that genres of reading had changed. In the 19th century we read historical tomes, mostly about the classical world or of British and European war and political alignments, but in the last quarter of the 20th century “so-called scientific historians left a void that biographers and writers of fictional history quickly filled.” Aaron cites inventive novelists who have perverted history for a variety of reasons, using Gore Vidal as his prime example. Vidal thought of historians as squirrels, collecting facts to advance their careers. But Vidal does not get the last word.

Professor Aaron recognized that historical fiction had moved from a limited earlier model focused on well-known individuals to serious re-tellers of history who have “taken pains to check their facts and who possess a historical sensibility and the power to reconstruct and inhabit a space in time past.” What a lovely description of some of the best of our contemporary historical fiction.

But what of putting women into the past where they often do not appear? Addressing this issue, Dame Hilary Mantel noted in her 2013, London Review of Books essay “Royal Bodies” that-

"If you want to write about women in history, you have to distort history to do it, or substitute fantasy for facts; you have to pretend that individual women were more important than they were or that we know more about them than we do.

Despite my great admiration for Dame Hilary, I think we can deal with the issue of women in the past by honoring their lives in such a way that does not turn them into twenty-first century heroines but as women who found themselves in situations they might not have wished, and did what they needed to do, thought about their circumstances, and dealt with what they found they had landed in. They, as we, are each grounded in our own time, deserve credit for surviving, and should be appreciated for our observations of life around us.

We should respect the historians’ knowledge of time and place and the novelists’ intuition that is sometimes spot-on. An example: in trying to explore the moment when the buttoned-down eastern women in 1842, encountered a band of Lakota, then identified as Sioux, I wondered what the women might have thought of those bronzed warriors whose clothing left much of their chests and shoulders bare. What would the women walking west have thought about? When I read the paragraph I had written to an elderly friend, she went to her desk and pulled out a letter from an ancestor who had crossed Nebraska, walked over South Pass, and on into Oregon. And that ancestor, in the 1850s, had said exactly what I had imagined. Sometimes, the imagined past is as we conceive it to be because we have grasped the knowledge of time (Maine Writer- which is the reason why I enjoy stories written about "time travel") and place on which to activate believable players.

My desire in Lamentations was to hear what the women were thinking, and sometimes saying to each other, but within the context of that century when much that was unorthodox could not be said aloud. I wanted to show how a group of people traveling together would get to know each other, rather as students in a class know that one was from Ohio and another played hockey. We do not know others fully, but from the vantages we are given. I wanted to display how the women gained information, and then passed it along; how tragedies were dealt with; how personalities differed, and how, in the end, Jane matured. I wanted to bring women of different generations together, to show discord among sisters, to think about what was important when dismantling a home, how women fit into the daily account of miles and weather and sometimes events kept by the company clerk. I wanted to explore what it was like to answer a longing for new beginnings, for a journey when one is the first to make it. I am interested in names and what they mean, in the landscape what how one travels through. 

I wanted to hear the women speak when the records do not.

Historians need to be conscious of the audience we/they hope to have and perhaps can learn something about style and sense of place from the writers of historical fiction. Academic and local history can be told vividly; good history can also have good narrative but also, that some historical fiction tells a story that a historian cannot. I have written this to praise historical fiction when it respects the line between our times and the past, when it adheres to the known-truth and does not pervert it for excitement—or for book sales. I appreciate Daniel Aaron who thought historical fiction was worth taking seriously, and for all those writers who have brought the past alive in this form.

Fiction is not the only way to explore the past, but historical fiction can attract readers to wonder and speculate and then explore the past in other forms. A friend said that as a child, reading fiction of other times led her to read history and then become a historian. Aaron wrote that historical fiction gives “us something more than the historical argument.” Indeed, historical fiction can bring alive an era, a person, a moment in time so that we meet the past as it was, not as we might want it to have been.

Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel.

Post Script from Maine Writer:  Okay, this is a confession.  Although I have read a few historical fiction novels- writers John Jakes and Leon Uris being favorites, the ones I enjoy most are more like science fiction (Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut)  or paranormal stories, like some of the interesting novels by Heather Graham. Of course, in my humble opinion, the greatest historical fiction novel of all time is Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind"! She created Scarlett O'Hara, who has to be the world's grand dame of iconic historical characters. 

Let's write about bridges and the people who remember them

Remember Maine writer Glenna Johnson Smith

An echo blog published by the Bangor Daily News by Juliana L'Heureux

ECHOES: Rediscovering Community magazine was a publication created to honor Maine Acadians. An ECHOES Acadian keepsake edition honored the World Acadian Congress in 2014, hosted by Maine and Canadian communities on both sides of the border in the St. John Valley, including Aroostook County. This special edition 2014, is a treasure trove full of excellent articles.

“We wanted to celebrate the international event with an issue that represents the presence of Acadian culture on the pages of Echoes since Issue No. 1 in 1988,” said Kathryn Olmstead, editor. “I think this issue achieves that goal, even though it contains only a fraction of the more than 90 Acadian stories that have appeared over the years.”

One of the articles in this ECHOES attracted my attention because it tells the story about the days before there was a Hancock-Sullivan bridge and after it was built, published in a personal essay titled “A Ferry Tale”, by “Old County Woman”, the late Glenna Johnson Smith. I located the loving obituary published about her life and received permission from her granddaughter Jasmine Rae Smith and her father Melbourne Smith to republish in this blog article. “She was a wonderful grandmother, teacher and human,” wrote Jasmine in her response to my request.

Stories about bridges and ferry crossings draw my attention because the symbolism brings people together. “A Bridge and Its History”, is about the swinging bridge across the Androscoggin River in Brunswick (visit blog here). Another story I wrote is about The International Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, connecting the community of Lubec, Maine in the United States with Campobello Island, in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, across the Lubec Narrows (visit blog here). So, now I am pleased to have contributed a trilogy of articles about Maine’s bridges in this blog. I also added Glenna Johnson Smith’s life story told in her obituary, after the essay.

A Ferry Tale by Glenna Johnson Smith included her own photographs.

I remember reading a story about Charon, a ferryman who transported the souls of the dead across the river Styx, and on the on to the underworld. That ferryman had much in common with the one who carried me across the Taunton Stream from Sullivan to Hancock.

Today, a ride from Sullivan to Ellsworth is short and the roads are good, but back in the 1920s, the ferryman made it an unpredictable journey.

Mama, Papa and I would climb up into the Model T and drive over a dusty road to the riverside. Then we would sit there and wait. The ferryman on the other shore would ignore us until he had a car to bring across. Because there was little traffic back then it could be a long wait.

Sometimes I’d tell Mama I had to go and Papa would say, “You should have thought of that while we were driving through the woods.” Filling stations with restrooms were far into the future. Mama carried spare bloomers, in case of an accident.

At last, Papa would drive the Model T onto the moving scow, which wasn’t much wider than the car, and which didn’t have any railings that I can recall. Just below us, the river erupted into falls, not high ones like Niagara, but still they were rock falls. Mama needed a powerful reason for going to Ellsworth since she was sure some day the ferryman would lose control and we’d go over the falls to our deaths. If Papa had errands in Ellsworth, Mama and I sat in the car and watched the people on the street. Yet, that pleasure was tainted by the fear of the return trip on the ferry.

I may have been seven or eight years old when the new bridge was built. How wonderful to go to Ellsworth without driving on a ferry.

The bridge was hinged, however a piece of it would more to the side to allow a tall-masted schooner to go upstream for a load of Sullivan granite on its way to pave the streets. Only once we had to wait for a schooner to pass. Now that “new” bridge, too narrow for present-day traffic, has been replaced by yet another new bridge. The bridge that would “sing” when a car drove over it is now just a memory. There aren’t many of us left who remember the ferryman or the singing bridge. A ride from Sullivan is now quick and comfortable, smooth roads and cars with windows that roll down or have air conditioning and big tires for a smooth ride.

Yet today’s traveler lacks the suspense and the adventure of the ferry ride over our River Styx.

Gloria Johnson Smith lived and wrote from Presque Isle, after her retirement as a Presque Isle High School English teacher, in 1990. She wrote and directed plays, led elder hostels and classes for senior citizen groups, conducted workshops on writing for schools and volunteered at ECHOES magazine. Her essays and stories have been collected into two books, “Old Maine Woman”, published in 2010, by Islandport Press in Yarmouth Maine and “Return of Old Maine Woman”, released in June 2014.

Obituary from the funeral announcement: Family, friends remember Presque Isle teacher, writer famous for ‘old woman’ tales of the County.

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine – Glenna Johnson Smith, passed away on Saturday, August 8, 2020, surrounded by her family. She was born in Lincolnville, Maine and grew up in Ashville, Maine, the daughter of Seth and Kathleen Proctor Johnson. She was predeceased by her parents and by her sister-in-law Pauline Smith Kirkpatrick and Pauline’s husband Kenneth of Easton, Maine, her sister-in-law Natalie Smith Henness of Brandon, Florida and her dear friend Louise Findlen of Fort Fairfield, Maine. She attended Sullivan, Maine schools, graduated from the University of Maine in Orono and did graduate work at the University of California @ San Jose, the University of Minnesota and the University of Maine at Orono and Presque Isle.

Glenna married Donald C Smith of Easton, Maine in 1941 and lived on a potato farm in Presque Isle, Maine. The greatest joy of her life was watching her sons Steven, Byron and Melbourne grow up. She is survived by her three sons, Steven’s wife Sylvia, Melbourne’s daughters Jasmine and her fiancé Brian and Hillary and her husband Rick, Melbourne’s step-daughter Ashley and her husband Mark and Melbourne’s step-son Joshua and his wife Bethany. She is also survived by Jasmine’s daughter Ella, and son Calvin, Hillary’s son Kevin, Ashley’s son Tim and daughter Abby, Joshua’s children Meti, Enoch, Tigist, Justice and Erbeka, the four beloved nieces Shirley, Diane, Linda and Lorraine and lifelong friends Kerry and Kent.

“The time has come” the walrus said, “to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings.” * Sullivan High School had only three teachers: the principal taught math and science, one woman taught English and the other woman taught French and Latin. A teacher, Miss Ruth Belknap, encouraged Glenna to learn a dramatic piece each year to present at local, county and state contests. Glenna’s college years were not satisfying. She had been strongly urged to major in home economics and she hated everything about the course. She was invited to join a sorority but did not have the money to do so. She admired at a distance —runner from her window and her friend Sally Culberson introduced her to him — Don Smith, her future husband. Don and Glenna saw each other briefly every night from 6-7:30, when they walked to Orono to have whoopee pies and milk at Pat’s Pizza. Soon after graduation, Don & Glenna married and moved to Easton, where they lived in a farmhouse that had neither running water nor electricity. Glenna had no idea how to be a farm wife and she didn’t fit in with Don’s family. In fact, they made fun of her at Sunday gatherings. After 30 years, he wanted a divorce and she was devastated. However, she soon learned that she was better-off single; she no longer feared his temper and she could make her own choices. When her sister-in-law Polly asked if she’d like to buy Richard Hoyt’s house, she said yes before she ever saw it. She had recently sold her father’s house in Sullivan, so she could afford it. She was tired of being cooped up in her tiny apartment. Ever after, she loved her small house on a quiet street. She loved her trees and her little flower garden. Mary, across the street, was a good friend and neighbor. Glenna was sad when Mary moved away.

Glenna taught school for nearly 40 years in Easton, Fort Fairfield and for most of that time at Presque Isle High School, where she assisted with the drama program. In later years, she wrote seven plays which were produced in Maine and New Hampshire schools as well as community and summer theaters. Two of her plays represented her state at New England drama festivals. She had poems published in Maine Speaks, an anthology of Maine writers, and in a New England anthology and other journals. Some of her essays appeared in Yankee Magazine. She wrote two books: Old Maine Woman and Return of Old Maine Woman, published by Islandport Press. After retiring from public-school teaching, Glenna worked for Northeast Publishing Co. and she taught courses and Elder Hostel classes at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. She wrote a column for Echoes Magazine for 25 years and she belonged to a writing group of friends.

Although her sons and grandchildren were the center of her life, she was thankful for her dear friends and colleagues, for her teaching, writing and theater experiences and for all her days in the changing landscapes and seasons in Northern Maine.

“Oh, Oysters” said the carpenter, “you’ve had a pleasant run. Shall we be trotting home again?”* Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass.

In her long and successful career as a teacher, Glenna Johnson Smith certainly inspired multi-generations of young and not so young Franco-Americans in Northern Maine and beyond.

Let's write about World War One and the unknown "doughboys"

"You are not forgotten". 

This historic find reminds me about when my husband and I visited this same area in France when we visited his uncle Napoleon's (Nap) World War I remains, in the very same American Veterans Cemetery where this unknown solider will now be buried with honors. This cemetery is really lovely, but in the sea of headstones, there is hardly anyone alive who goes to visit the graves. Published in The Washington Post reported by Michael E. Ruane.

Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France

Unknown WWI soldier, found a century later, will now be buried with honors. The remains of an American ‘doughboy,’ whose identity is unknown, were accidentally unearthed in a French village last year. On Feb. 8, 2022, a local undertaker, Jean-Paul Feval, was digging a grave in the cemetery at Villers-sur-Fère, a small village in the farm country of northeastern France.

The cemetery was beside a large field at the edge of town, on Rue Saint-Denis, just up the street from the old church of St. John the Baptist. Feval had dug about four feet down when he began to unearth human bones, along with artifacts that would later include pieces of a helmet, a stretcher, a trench knife and a corroded, unreadable dog tag. He had found the remains of an unknown American soldier, killed in July 1918, during fighting that had strewn the landscape around Villers-sur-Fère with hundreds of fallen “doughboys” during World War I.

Next month, more than a century later, the American Battle Monuments Commission plans to rebury the anonymous soldier in its nearby Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, about 70 miles northeast of Paris, where 6,000 of his comrades already rest.

The concealed remains of the World War I soldier lie alongside military artifacts found with them and an American flag. (American Battle Monuments Commission)

It will be the first burial of an unknown American from World War I in 35 years, the commission said, and comes two years after the country marked the centennial of the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

It also comes as the Arlington-based monuments commission celebrates its centennial this year.

World War One U.S. Doughboys

The American Battle Monuments Commission, which was started in 1923, to honor U.S. World War I dead overseas, operates 26 cemeteries on foreign soil where 123,000 service members from World Wars I and II are buried, and thousands of others are memorialized. “It’s a very important message for families of people who are still missing,” he said, and for current and future members of the services.

 “You are not forgotten.”

The soldier’s discovery “is an extraordinarily big deal,” said Mike Knapp, the commission’s director of historical services. “Here we are … 105 years after this guy died and … he’s getting a full honors, military funeral just like some veteran would get today at Arlington” cemetery, Knapp said. “I think that says a great deal.”

“I get choked up saying it,” he said. “But I think it’s really, really true.” The soldier’s grave will be marked with a marble cross that reads: “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.”

The Army’s chief of staff, Gen. James C. McConville, is scheduled to speak at the June 7 funeral. The commission said the soldier will be buried with a Purple Heart medal.

The Battle:  In late July 1918, the U.S. Army’s 42d Infantry Division was pushing back German forces around the Ourcq River, less than a mile north of Villers-sur-Fère. 

World War I — 1914-1918 — would end about three months later. with the defeat of Germany and its allies by France, Britain, the United States, Russia and their allies. But the closing weeks of the war saw some of the conflict’s most bitter fighting. “It wasn’t people in trenches looking at each other,” Hubert Caloud, superintendent of the American Cemetery, said in a telephone interview. 

“As the Americans came up north, they had to fight for every little village … every little farmhouse … every piece of woods.”

“How did they do that?” he said. “They had to charge across open fields.”

The 42d was called the Rainbow Division because it contained outfits from across the country. Its chief of staff was future World War II hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who reportedly gave the division its nickname. 

One of its units was the 165th Infantry Regiment — previously called the “Fighting 69th” regiment — that included many Irish Americans from New York.

Francis Duffy was its chaplain. (A bronze statue of him stands in New York’s Times Square.)

The regiment lost 264 men in the Battle of the Ourcq River, according the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center.

Joyce Kilmer was killed by a German sniper’s bullet 100 years ago this summer, on July 30, 1918, during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. The celebrated writer is best known for his 1913 poem “Trees.”

Among the dead was the poet Joyce Kilmer, author of the poem “Trees.” He was shot in the head by a sniper. “God rest his dear and gallant soul,” Father Duffy wrote after the war. Kilmer is buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. The newly found soldier was identified as American because of the fragments of American equipment — bullets, uniform buttons, trench knife — that were with his remains, said Caloud, the cemetery superintendent.
“There was no doubt in our minds,” he said.

In 2006, the almost complete skeletal remains of a World War I American soldier, Pvt. Thomas D. Costello, were found by relic hunters in eastern France.

After experts were able to identify him, he was returned to the United States and buried in Arlington Cemetery in 2010. In this recent case, the unknown’s remains consisted only of some vertebrae, ribs and other bones. “I was disappointed that we didn’t find more,” Caloud said. “He was somebody’s son,” he said. “Maybe somebody’s father. Maybe somebody’s husband. We don’t know.” How he was killed is a mystery.

“This is a combat death,” said Caloud, who served in the Marine Corps for 30 years. “He had an ammunition belt on. … It could have been a traumatic explosion, and that’s all that was left of the guy.” Or part of his body was previously removed by accident, he said.
“This is an American soldier who was violently killed, and I wanted him buried,” Caloud said. “I didn’t want him to be a bunch of bones on an aluminum table that no one would ever pay attention to.”
The discovery of part of a stretcher in the grave is evocative. “During the fighting they tried to get rid of the bodies as soon as they could,” Caloud said. “They would roll them up in ponchos. They’d roll them up in blankets. They could carry them on stretchers.”
“My guess is he was dead, and what was left of him was put on a stretcher,” he said. We believe the people buried along that wall were from the 165th Regiment,” Caloud said, although other units were in the area and this man might have been from one of those, too.
The soldier was probably with the Rainbow Division because the village where he was found was in the area where the division fought, the commission said.

And he could well have been with the 165th, which saw intense action around Villers-sur-Fère. More than 30 Americans, including the unknown, were hastily buried by a stone wall that surrounded the village cemetery.

“The town of Villers-sur-Fère was throughout the action a part of the battlefield,” Father Duffy wrote in his postwar memoir, “Father Duffy’s Story.”

“Nearly one-third of those who lost their lives in this action received their death wounds from shell fire in and around Villers-sur-Fère,” he recounted.

One of those killed was Maj. William B. Hudson, a 40-year-old Washington physician, who was serving in the 165th. Hudson was standing in the doorway of a building in the village when he was struck by a fragment from an enemy gas shell. It “hit him full in the chest, killing him instantly,” Duffy wrote. “We buried him sadly by the cemetery wall where already too many of our men were lying in their last long sleep.”Hudson was later exhumed and reburied in Arlington Cemetery. His name is carved on the D.C. War Memorial on the National Mall.

After the war, most of those buried by the wall were probably moved to larger cemeteries, or sent home, said Knapp, the commission historian. Except for this unknown. “The question remains; ‘Was this guy overlooked entirely? Did they think they had him?’” Knapp said. “We’ll never know.”

After Feval discovered the remains, he called the police. The French national veterans office was also called in.

A noted French World War I archaeologist, Yves Desfossés, was summoned. The grave was expanded, and more material was found.
On June 7, plans are for the unknown soldier to be buried in a silver casket, and borne to his grave amid the sounds of an artillery salute and Chopin’s funeral march.

Let's write about how to become a back yard bird watcher

Want to become a birder? Start in your own yard!

Birdwatching at home is a powerful way to learn about your local ecosystem. Here’s how to attract a variety of species and identify their behaviors. Echo report by  Scott Kirkwood published in The Washington Post.

Birds help humans to better understand our earth's ecosystem.

Every day, bird lovers get to watch tiny wildlife documentaries unfold from their own windows — the search for food, the predator-prey relationship, even the ways that climate change shifts a species’ typical habitat.

Cardinal in the Holly Bush in our Topsham Maine yard (L'Heureux photograph)

“The great thing about birds is they’re everywhere,” says Nicholas Lund, who leads outreach for Maine Audubon and shares his brand of avian humor as The Birdist. “They aren’t found only in national parks or protected areas — they’ll come to you.”

With the right approach, you can make those visits far more likely: “Think about what you have to offer birds,” says Lund. “It could be a place to nest, it could be food and it could be shelter.” Once they start flocking, you can experience the joy of identifying each species and their unique behaviors.

Attract birds with food:  A feeder is the quickest way to create a backyard feast, but it’s not the only one. As Lund points out, “not all birds even eat seeds.” Woodpeckers, for instance, prefer suet, orioles like oranges and grape jelly, and hummingbirds enjoy nectar, or sugar water, which you can make at home.

The best long-term approach to bring birds to your yard is to add native plants.

Many birds love seed-bearing plants, and just about every plant will naturally bring bugs, another key food source. In his books “Bringing Nature Home” and “Nature’s Best Hope,” Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, identifies “powerhouse plants”— such as sunflowers in the Mid-Atlantic and native goldenrod just about everywhere — that attract appealing insects like caterpillars. (Avoid using pesticides, of course, since the “pests” are exactly what draw birds.) The National Audubon Society offers more guidance for creating a bird-friendly yard and suggestions of plants that provide food.

Window bird feeder in our Topsham Maine house attracts mostly Chickadees and Sparrows (L'Heureux photograph).

Once you’ve set up that natural buffet, you can also fill a few feeders with seed. Those supplies are widely available in pet stores, hardware stores and specialty shops such as Wild Birds Unlimited.

Different birds gravitate to different kinds of feeders — some like tube feeders, others prefer platforms or simply to eat seed off the ground. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has plenty of species-specific recommendations. 

Also, you can research which types of seeds particular birds prefer, but just about any seed will bring them to your yard. Some feeders, such as the Bird Buddy, are outfitted with a camera that sends close-up photos and videos to your phone.

Nevertheless, there are some risks to feeding wild birds from a feeder, including the possibility of inadvertently spreading disease. To prevent this, Audubon’s experts recommend scrubbing your feeders with a solution of 10 percent non-chlorinated bleach a few times a year.

Window collisions are another danger. The Cornell Lab suggests placing feeders within three feet of the glass or more than 30 feet away to keep birds safe; if a feeder is too far from a tree or other shelter, it can expose smaller birds to hawks looking for their own lunch. (The Cornell Lab’s Feeder Watch has more details about determining the right feeder placement.)

A bird seed wreath (L'Heureux photograph)

Create a bird-friendly habitat:  Offering birds a comfortable, safe place to hang out is another way to bring them to your yard.

“During spring and summer, when birds start nesting, habitat becomes really important for a bird — and by habitat, I mean living space,” says Purbita Saha, an avid birder and deputy editor at Popular Science. “If you want to attract songbirds like wrens, chickadees and sparrows looking for shelter, you might collect a little pile of brush by gathering downed branches from the last winter storm.” Some species, such as Eastern towhees and common yellowthroats, will make their nests in brush piles.

You can also build or buy a bird box (a.k.a. a birdhouse), which essentially mimics a tree cavity. Birds can be incredibly particular about the height, size and orientation of the opening, so get advice from Cornell’s Nestwatch site, which also has tips for dealing with predators and competitors like bees and wasps. Bird baths are more than decoration, too — they help birds care for their feathers and remove pests when water is scarce; in winter, place a bird bath in the sun or find one that plugs in, to keep it from freezing.

Let the birdwatching begin: Now that your home is a destination for the feathered set, you can learn the ins and outs of observing and identifying them.

Orioles are beautiful birds but we seldom see them in Topsham, Maine.

Although the adjective “squirrel-proof” has been attached to many bird feeders, you’ll typically find squirrels attached to those feeders, too.  Adding a baffle — essentially a dome — above or below a feeder can make it harder for a squirrel to land. Some feeders have weight-activated springs that shut off access when triggered by a squirrel. Lund sprinkles a little seed on the ground, to make feeders less tempting to lazier squirrels. But know that feeding birds probably means feeding squirrels, too.

Tykee James, president of Washington D.C.’s Audubon chapter, tells people to start off with a “Familiar 5,” as a foundation for further learning: “Identify a few birds that you know really well,” he says, “then get to understand their habitat, the markings of a male and a female, and get to know their song. Are they in your backyard because they’re migrating, or are they locals looking for food and shelter?” (James suggested that as a resident of D.C., my Familiar 5 might be rock dove, European starling, house sparrow, American robin and pileated woodpecker.)

Lund and James recommend a guidebook or paper journal for taking notes and sketching. Many birders have a “life list” that includes every species they’ve ever seen. 

But, if you’re not as obsessed with all the counting and labeling, that’s okay. “For some people, that aspect of gamifying birdwatching really drives their passion, but it’s a double-edged sword that drives other people away,” says James. “Birding isn’t a competition. Sometimes it’s just about stopping and sharing one moment with one bird.”

To help spot those birds, get one of the many Sibley field guides, the go-to books for seasoned birders. If you prefer a digital option, try the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell, which offers surprisingly accurate suggestions based on photos or a few moments of birdsong that you submit — “Shazam for birds,” as some have called it.

Saha agrees: “Birding is so much more than counting,” she says. “It’s understanding how birds use the landscape, how they interact with plants, how they eat different insects on your property … all of that helps you understand your own local ecosystem. That’s the power of birding right at home.”

To capture those details better, get a solid pair of binoculars, because even in a small backyard, the magnification lets you see things you can’t spot with your naked eye, such as bird dances and other mating rituals. Lund recommends the Nikon Prostaff series, which includes a few models in the $150 range, all of which should last for generations.

Last year, Lund saw his 700th species in the continental United States, but he has just as much fun keeping track of the birds around his home. “I’ve seen 112 species in my backyard, and the most recent one was a mallard,” he says. “Under any other circumstances, I’m not that excited to see a mallard. But when I see one in my backyard, I’m fist-pumping, jumping up and down. And when migrating birds come through, I may be lucky enough to see a Cape May warbler or blue-headed vireo that’s just stopping for a day or two, refueling … on its way from South America to Canada.”

Scott Kirkwood is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.