This is a writing project code-named The Nuthatch. It’s not about birds, but could be.
My name is Doug Bennet and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I have retired from full-time employment after 14 years in public service and 25 years in the magazine industry, with a book-publishing side-hustle.
Nuthatches are small songbirds and two species, red-breasted and white-breasted, are common hereabouts, often seen at feeders but also heard in the wilderness in places like Algonquin Park. The red-breasted nuthatch, Sitta canadensis, uses a tool — bark — to apply resin to the entrance and insides of its nests in tree cavities. The resin is thought to keep out predators and competitors. Nuthatches have a fun nasally laugh-like call, distinctively descend trees facing downwards, and one of their eating habits is “jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to ‘hatch’ out the seed from the inside,” per All About Birds. I love them.
My Nuthatch will whack out the occasional short essay on things I care about; the personal and the political. Earnest and nerdy like me, but, one hopes, readable.
Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.
-Maxwell Perkins
Red-breasted Nuthatch icon photo by Wolfgang Wander, used under Creative Commons licence. Photo is slightly cropped and rounded corners were added.
