While browsing the Rutland Free Library’s new books shelf, I nearly passed up Julie Zickefoose’s latest book Saving Jemima with the cute fledgling blue jay on the cover. Several years ago, I very closely read and reviewed her The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Birds with its beautiful watercolors, illustrating the intricacies and trials of hand-raising birds from birth to release. Did I really need to read about this again, just with another species? How wrong I was.
Julie, indeed, now focuses on a single bird of one species, but this time she more subtly perceives how Jemima (the baby blue jay) adapts to its environment and relates to Julie, her two children and her husband.
A notable second difference of this book is that Julie quite emphatically states in the penultimate chapter, that as much as she saved Jemima, Jemima saved her. During that spring and summer, her husband was declining rapidly after a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. And her daughter was wallowing in the throes of a break-up, after four years, with her partner. Amidst attending to the intensified needs of her family, Julie finds an inner strength in her deep powers of astute observation to extend her perception, care and concern to an infant bird, knowing that what she learns in the process she will be able to share with others involved in similar studies.
Thirdly, being nearly a decade since her last book, the format of this one reflects the immense change in the publishing and media world in that short amount of time. There still are, once again, many of her exquisite watercolor renderings. But there are even more photos. She has her iPhone at her side constantly and has taken 1000s of photos of Jemima. In an instant, for example, she quickly captures Jemima exhibiting a new intuitive cache attempt. Many others she posts on line.
Julie not only photographs Jemima, but all of the other blue jays that live on or migrate through her property. She does this so fanatically that by reviewing back through these numerous photos, she is able to discern minute markings uniquely identifying individual birds.
And one could almost say the internet helped to save Jemima. When she had a set-back with what Julie thought were signs and symptoms of a deadly fungal infection, Julie was able, via email, to contact her ornithological colleagues to search for and find the latest research on possible treatments.
What becomes of Jemima? There is no grand release party. And (spoiler alert!) thee is no fatal event. It’s not the ending I expected. But it is the most satisfying, and Julie is certain that Jemima is content.
Note from RCAS: This is the time of year we find baby birds. Click here if you find a baby bird and what you should do.