BOTW 12/20 - 12/24
a Christmas bird
Hi everyone!
I was really pleasantly surprised by the response to my potential spin-off newsletter survey (if you haven’t filled it out, you still can here → click me). Out of the ~25% of subscribers that filled it out, an overwhelming number said they were interested, and over a third of those said they would definitely pay for that newsletter. 😍 🤯 😍
That’s amazing! So thank you to everyone to responded, and thank you to everyone for subscribing. Really, it warms my heart!
At this point, I am on the brink of potentially committing to eventually starting to plan to start the preparation process for the spin-off newsletter, but it would be a strong motivator if I had more subscribers to the BOTW newsletter that might eventually “convert” to subscribing to this new newsletter.
So please share BOTW with your friends and family during this holiday season! You can forward them this email, and they can subscribe from there, or they can go to btonelli.substack.com to sign up. Please also feel free to share on social media, etc. I don’t do any marketing for this (it’s not really my “vibe”) so when I get new subscribers, its because of you!
On to the birds!
This week’s bird is the: Chimney Swift
Just kidding, that’s not a real bird! But that’s what you get when you google “Santa Bird.” You can also buy it at Target…
The real bird look’s like this:
1) Turns out there aren’t a lot of Christmas birds - ok fine there are like 6 birds in that one song: partridges, turtle doves, “calling birds” (whatever that means), blah blah blah. But an ornithologist clearly didn’t write that song and didn’t identify to species so I refuse to acknowledge its existence.
2) When searching Google to learn more about turtle doves, I found out that there is a Hallmark movie called “Two Turtle Doves” about a doctor returning home to her small town, searching for a family heirloom, and “realiz(ing) that Christmas miracles do happen.” This is the sort of fun stuff I learn while writing this newsletter.
3) Right, the Chimney Swift. This bird loves to gently lift Santa down chimneys. Do you get why it’s a Christmas bird now?!
4) Back in the BC/BS(anta) times, Chimney Swifts used to live in caves or hollow trees. But then these chimney lover people started building really nice cave/tree look-alikes, and these birds realized these were nice places to live during the summer months when people weren’t lighting fires.
5) Chimney Swifts, like most swifts, spend the majority of their time in flight eating aerial insects. They fly at a whopping speed of ~30mph. A crazy speed to fly at when you practically spend your whole life flying.
Have an excellent week!