MILLBROOK — The hills are alive with the sound of male songbirds. For most of us, this persistent chirp, cackle, whistle and tweet is little more than background chatter, inconsequential and, in any case, indecipherable. But between birds, science has learned, it is richly communicative.Early in May at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies’ auditorium in Millbrook, a standing-room-only crowd of bird lovers turned up to see and hear one of the world’s foremost ornithologists explain a bit about where bird songs originate and why birds sing the way they do. Professor Donald Kroodsma has spent his professional life listening and recording bird song by himself and with teams in a great variety of Western Hemisphere locations, from Saskatchewan to the Falkland Islands, and not a few places in the Tri-corner area. One welcome result is his volume, “The Singing Life of Birds,” which chronicles his life as an ornithologist.Kroodsma grew up in western lower Michigan. He was drawn to science but didn’t settle on ornithology until his last college semester, when he chose to study bird migration through the avian visitors to a local marsh. This led him to the marsh wren and what turned out to a lifelong fascination with this small, vocal bird — and a source of several important ornithological discoveries. Birders have a reputation for being rather quiet, studious, solemn folk. Kroodsma in prose and person is anything but. His book’s tone echoes that of his Cary lecture: eagerly inquisitive, self-aware (as scientists must be), single-minded and cheerfully persistent. The richest period of the day for capturing bird song is the hour from the first faint glimmer of light to dawn, often called the dawn chorus. Reading his fascinating book, it is easy to imagine arising well before this time to rendezvous with him on the edge of an Oregon meadow or the cattail marsh south of Tivoli before beginning several hours of painstaking recording and analysis.His pursuit of the marsh wren started, as all pioneering science tends to, with a fundamental question that no one had adequately answered: Why do birds sing? This soon led to other fundamental questions: How do birds become songsters? Why are bird songs different? What connects a bird’s song with its life experience? In more than 35 years of field and laboratory work to date, Kroodsma’s hard-won discoveries have deepened understanding of the natural world close around us and led to him being recognized by the American Ornithologists’ Union as “the reigning authority on the biology of avian vocal behavior.”Kroodsma’s methods have been simple, if laborious. In the field, he identifies a species he wants to study, locates several members, then records them until he is sure he has captured the full range of their repertoire — from fewer than a dozen songs for the common blue jay to, in an extreme case, more than 2,000 for the brown thrasher. His gear (as of 2007): A Sound Devices 722 recorder, a parabolic-dish microphone, headphones, a poncho, flashlights, binoculars and a Crazy Creek camping chair. An appendix obligingly discusses equipment with much advice for the beginner and amateur on a limited budget, and begins with a good-natured warning: Recording bird song “can become additive … don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”Kroodsma’s discoveries have often involved differences indistinguishable to the untrained ear. Fascinated at one point by the eastern bluebird’s absence in the literature of avian song, he sets out to learn why. Since the first bird emerged 150 million years ago, avian species have multiplied until there are some 10,000 on the planet now. While new species occasionally emerge due to further genetic specialization, far more are lost because of habitat destruction, pollution, pesticides and global warming.“The Singing Life of Birds” is the impassioned report of a first-rate scientist determined to get to the bottom a fundamental question few others have asked. In a world — or certainly a country — where science is often misconstrued as a political agenda, Kroodsma’s life work is both a stirring reminder of the true value of science and an infectious summons to the pleasures and rewards of ornithology.Tom Parrett is a writer who lives in Millerton and Greenwich Village.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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