Joseph C. Neal

The Birdside Baptist Joseph C. Neal

In "The Birdside Baptist", Joe Neal sees the world through a birder's binoculars, but also through the eyes of an Arkansan who was brought up wearing shiny black shoes to five church services every week. These collected essays, originally written for fellow subscribers of a birders' listserve, are reports from the field spanning eight years, from 2002 to 2010. Illustrated with Neal's crisp photographs, these dispatches are not just an enumeration of Henslow's Sparrows and Greater Prairie-Chickens. Neal paints a rich landscape of plants, animals, and human history, including the struggle of a community to balance booming development and environmental stewardship. Through insightful writing and richly detailed photographs, The Birdside Baptist presents a birder's-eye view of northwest Arkansas as an interconnected economic, social, and natural community. Joseph Neal is co-author of "Arkansas Birds" and "History of Washington County Arkansas". He has worked as a biologist for three decades, including 17 years in the USDA Forest Service as a wildlife biologist working to restore the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker in the Ouachita Mountains. Now retired from the Forest Service, he continues his Arkansas bird studies from his home in Fayetteville. He writes and records commentaries for "Ozarks at Large," a feature on KUAF, a local National Public Radio affiliate. He is a Visiting Scholar in the University of Arkansas's Department of Biological Sciences and writes a local bird column for the Washington County Observer.