New! First Friday

The bird blogosphere includes some really good writers--birders who can craft words as well as, if not better than, they can attract birds and identify them in the field. It'd be a pleasure to see those writers turn their skills to birding fiction for adults.

Birding fiction doesn't seem to be a well-mined genre. I'm not aware of any tales beyond Christine Goff's mysteries. If there are others, please clue me in!

I'd like to suggest First Friday, a monthly writing contest with a 500-word limit. Why 500? Because it's just 5 percent of the total number of bird species. (Isn't that a mind-boggling concept?)

Let's agree that a story contains four ingredients: a setting, a character or characters, a conflict and a resolution. I'd like to add a rule for our purposes: The birds will not be anthropomorphized. The judges will include wordsmiths in and out of the birding world.

So what's in it for you if you choose to bend your head to this challenge? You could win a recently released book from among the selection in my office. A fair number of publishers send review copies to WildBird, but only three books appear in each issue. That leaves a lot of books on my bookshelves and office floor. I'll gladly send a list of the available titles to the winning writer. Maybe you'd like to receive An Egg is Quiet or National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of Arizona & New Mexico in your mailbox?

What do you think? Is it possible to craft fiction that touches on birds, birders and/or birding within 500 words?

Please send your short story via e-mail on Wednesday, July 5. I'll post the winning piece on Friday the 7th.