My first book, Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird, was released by Ruka Press in November of 2011.

The cerulean warbler, a small blue bird whose core breeding area stretches from southwest Pennsylvania to eastern Tennessee, is the fastest-declining Neotropical migrant songbird in the United States. Cerulean Blues recounts my personal search for this imperiled creature, from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia to the Andes Mountains of Colombia.

The bird in the picture below has just been banded and is ready to be released at the Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area near Jacksonburg, West Virginia.

In October of 2008 I visited La Reserva Natural de las Aves Reinita Cielo Azul -- the Cerulean Warbler Reserve -- near the town of San Vicente de Chucuri in northeastern Colombia. (The best mandarin oranges I've ever tasted grow on the tree in the upper right of the picture below!)