Margaret Atwood shows her new bird centre to fans. Don’t judge her video-making skills

Margaret Atwood is the Founding Honorary Chair and co-founder of PIBO, a conservation charity she started with her late partner, writer and conservationist Graeme Gibson.

Margaret Atwood in Ontario | In the Writing Burrow, Substack

New Delhi: Canadian writer Margaret Atwood thanked her paid subscribers on Substack as she announced the opening of a new Bird Centre at the Pelee Island Bird Observatory (PIBO). The new facility will also have accommodation for bird banders who work at PIBO from 1 July. 

“They deserve a good night’s sleep, since they get up at 4.30 am every day to slog through mud to keep track of birds — decreases in numbers, sometimes increases, condition of the birds, changes in behaviour,” Atwood wrote on her page In the Writing Burrow. “Especially now, we know and see that we are not separate from nature. We literally cannot live without it.”

Atwood is the Founding Honorary Chair and co-founder of PIBO, an organisation she established with her late partner, writer and conservationist Graeme Gibson. PIBO is a conservation charity on Pelee Island in Ontario, Canada. 

A lifelong love affair with birds 

The writer’s love for birds is not a secret. Along with having her own conservatory, she is the Honorary Co-President of BirdLife International’s Rare Bird Club. As a lifelong birdwatcher, Atwood has time and again spoken up about endangered birds such as the Swift Parrot. While Gibson was alive, the couple used to go for birdwatching trips together. In many of her interviews, Atwood has talked about how she and her partner shared the love for the birds. “We spent an hour watching a thing in a field, that either was a snowy owl — or it was a gallon white plastic milk bottle.” 

“Thanks to my forest entomologist father, who was an experienced field worker and dedicated conservationist, I grew up with birds, as well as a knowledge of what a species needs to survive. We are not apart from nature, we are a part of it. If the biosphere fails, so do we,” she wrote in 2024. 

The new Bird Centre in Ontario will have space for public presentations, and educational events, bedrooms, office and a kitchen. Atwood also shared a video of the facility, which is still a work in progress, and warned her subscribers about her not-so-great camera skills.

 “Production values are poor, and it’s a bit like those terror films in which an unseen monster is shown tracking someone along a hallway — shot of hallway, ominous music — but maybe my video-making skills will improve in time,” she wrote.