Janette Gerber
"The Mississippi Flyway: Bird Migration Path"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
Birds have been important to me from an early age. As a child, my pet parakeet would land on my finger or shoulder and I learned to hold it gently to place it back in the cage. In kindergarten, my teacher put photographs of birds around the room and asked us to draw them. We made booklets of our drawings and I still have mine.
This past spring, I picked up my camera and joined a bird walk in Gillson Park. The park was a symphony of bird songs and our guide would listen, locate, and point out the birds to us. He talked about the Mississippi Flyway and showed us migration patterns on his smartphone. When my friend exclaimed, “OH, OH, get that Red-Headed Woodpecker; they are nearly extinct,” I wondered why the bird was threatened. And then, I read an article entitled, Bird Emergency: Two-thirds at Risk, quoting Brooke Bateman of the National Audubon Society saying, “Birds are important indicator species because if an ecosystem is broken for birds, it is or soon will be for people, too.”
The Mississippi Flyway is a bird migration route that passes through the Chicago area, offering opportunity to see species rarely found here. This project weaves together my lifelong interests: birds, photography, and fiber art; at two of my favorite locations: The Chicago Botanic Garden and Wilmette Gillson Park. How could I communicate the importance of such a small species as indicators of our earthly well-being?
I printed my bird photos on cloth and attached them to drawn and hand-stitched cloth maps of the Chicago Botanic Garden and The Mississippi Flyway route for migrating birds.