Alberta naturalist hopes to inspire awe with new wildlife book

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From soaring owls to jumping snowshoe hares, the fleeting beauty of nature is captured by central Alberta naturalist Myrna Pearman in her second volume of photo essays.

Since retiring as executive director of the Ellis Bird Farm, Pearman has spent many leisure hours crouching in wait for that perfect photographic moment, capturing wildlife in their natural habitat.

“Now that I am in this new phase of my life, I am free to truly enjoy our family cabin and to fully live my passions of exploring, rambling, kayaking, taking photographs and writing,” Pearman explains in the introduction to her book, Beauty Everywhere, Volume II.

Many photos in this volume first ran in community newspaper the Red Deer Advocate, along with Pearman’s popular columns.

Her latest book starts with the easily overlooked — those little brown birds that lack the size and colour to impress onlookers, but who have remarkable talents and habits all the same. For instance, readers will discover the dull, grey rock wren produces a melodious song and often builds a walkway of small flat stones leading to its nest in a rocky crevice.

More outwardly magnificent creatures are also shown, doing what comes naturally. In the case of mountain goats, this means climbing rocky peaks along the Snake River in Wyoming, where Pearman travelled for this photographic purpose in 2016.

Readers will learn goat-antelopes are equipped with specialized features, including powerful forelimbs and cloven hooves that can find purchase on near vertical slopes and spread to brake their downward descent from sheer cliff faces. “Remarkably, goats can jump nearly 3.5 metres in a single leap,” Pearman writes.

A few critters she has photographed are obvious crowd-pleasers, like the fluffy fox kits that close the book. But Pearman never overlooks the small and slight, devoting equal space to the southern red-back voles that feasted on sunflower seeds dropped from a bird feeder at the Ellis Bird Farm in 2020.

Voles play a crucial role in the eco-system, providing sustenance for foxes, owls, hawks, coyotes and other predators, she writes, so “if you find yourself sharing outdoor space with these wild neighbours, I hope you take the time to enjoy and appreciate them.”

In her introduction to the Volume II, Pearman reveals her hope that her images will prompt more people to get outdoors, “to paddle our wetlands and rivers, explore the many protected areas that grace our region, and to spend more time rambling the back roads io this, our beautiful part of the world.”

As always, she wants to inspire “a sense of marvel” for the natural environment.

For more information about Beauty Everywhere, Volume II, please visit myrnapearman.com.

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