My Inspiration

Sometimes I like to squat down in a reedy marsh and stay very still pointing my enormous camera lens at birds. I’m always looking for that moment that they turn their beaks just so in the light for me to make a little bit of art with their feathers and expressions. Taking pictures of birds here in Victoria, BC has taught me their names and I think turned me into a birder, so it was inevitable that I would design a bird-related knitting pattern.

So what is a Checklist of Birds?

A Checklist of Birds is a very pleasing catalog of the birds that are present in a particular region. What’s particularly useful about these checklists is that they include information on what time of year each bird is likely to be present. Because birds are incredible travellers, some of them are common in summer, but unheard of in winter and vice versa. Knowing or being able to quickly look up their patterns helps birders to identify birds. For example, if you thought you saw a Rufous humminbird in January, it’s very likely that the light was playing tricks on you and it was in fact an Anna’s humminbird because the Rufous variety just aren’t aren’t around in the cold. The checklist tells you that!

We’re very fortunate here that the Victoria Natural History Society has created a checklist for the Victoria region. I use it all the time to keep track of what I see from my office window and to find out if what I thought I saw is likely this time of year. VNHS kindly gave their permission for me to use a few screen shots of their checklist.

Kiya is lounging on a bench amid lots of green foliage. She’s wearing colourful striped socks and reading a book about bird identification.

A new pattern is coming soon!

Catherine at Gauge Dye Works and I are putting the finishing touches on our second 2022 collaboration and we think this one is so fun and clever! The last project, A Garden Wedding, was designed to be truly epic, but this one is much more relaxed knitting with a nerdy science twist!

Why We Developed This Project

When I got together with Catherine earlier this year to discuss how we might collaborate on bird-themed socks, I thought of the checklist. As soon as I brought it up on my computer screen, I knew it was the exact right kind of thing to do with Catherine. That’s because she has this wonderful inclination to represent data in yarn. She does this with codes, like a letter equals a colour so that a striped sock is actually a secret message like in her Love is Love yarn. She has also created a Solar System yarn that represents the planets and sun and the distances between them. So a chart that describes which birds are present during each month of the year? Perfect. Check out her blog for more of her thoughts on developing this project.

Three panels showing the cover of the VNHS Checklist of Birds on the left, the Explanation of Symbols in the centre, and a sample of the checklist itself on the right. The background is a cheery photo of some yellow flowers in front of a blue sky. Images used with permission of the Victoria Natural History Society.

Let’s look more closely at the checklist itself

On the left are names of birds arranged by family. I don’t use the grey boxes much because they’re about trends that don’t have much impact on my bird watching, but the thick and thin lines on the right are where the treasured information is. Those lines show how common each bird is in the Victoria region each month of the year. The, “J, F, M, A…” letters at the top are all the first letters of the months.

So for example, we can see Barred owls all year round here and Downy Woodpeckers are even more common. Boreal Owls are extremely rare. If a line is thick in the centre and thin on the edges like the Red-breasted Sapsucker, that says that it’s present much more in June and July than the rest of the year.

A sample page of the VNHS Checklist of Birds. Names of birds are on the left and information about the birds is charted on the right using lines and dots of various thickness to indicate how common the birds are at a given time of year.

About the Sock Pattern

We both decided that after such an intense first project, we wanted to do something whimsical but straightforward that would be relaxing and engaging to knit. So we went literal and converted the checklist lines into stitches on a sock panel. Once you’ve knitted these socks, you’ll be able to look down at your own feet and know that if you saw a hummingbird in Victoria, it was probably an Anna’s, though if it was summertime and that bird looked brown-ish red, it totally could have been a Rufous.

This project is for you if:

You love stripes!
You love sock knitting!
You want a project that’s good for TV knitting with the occasional simple chart to work.
Loving birds isn’t a prerequisite, but we bet you know a birder who would just find this delightful!

We both really fell for the wildly-coloured Multi-Birds version of the yarn which represents eight different birds and has coordinated but not identical left and right socks. But so many folks expressed enthusiasm for a particular bird that Catherine decided to also offer a single-bird versions for all the birds, so if your mum adores Anna’s Hummingbirds you’ll be able to make a special pair just for her.

Thank you to the Victoria Natural History Society!

VNHS is a great organization that created this wonderful checklist. You can download the checklist free on their website. They also offer lectures and field trips for naturalists, science enthusiasts, and nature-lovers, and, since the pandemic, lectures have been available via Zoom, so you don’t even have to live in Victoria to attend! Have a look at their website to get more involved with nature of the Victoria region. We are really appreciative that they gave us permission to use a few images from their checklist and were enthusiastic about our idea.

If you’re not living in Victoria, try looking up your own local natural history society. They probably offer similar stuff and might help you find a local bird checklist for your area. Birding is such a joyful and rewarding activity to do and get you out into nature.

Kiya’s legs and feet stretched out on a dark green blanket. She’s wearing brightly coloured textured socks.

Soft Launch at Knit City!

Are you planning to attend Knit City? We have good news for you! As an early bird special, you’ll be able to visit the Gauge booth and pick up some Checklist of Birds sock yarn before it’s available to order on their website! And yes, you’ll be able to get online and buy the pattern PDF download during the event too.

We’ll be having a bigger celebration of the yarn and pattern publication starting on Wednesday, September 28, so subscribe to my email newsletter to get notified.

Curious about which birds we celebrated with this pattern? Have a look at this blog post all about how Catherine’s Instagram followers helped us narrow it down and dial in the colours. It was so fun to get knitters’ input on our process.

Below is a bird that I photographed just this year. I’d been on the lookout for it and was thrilled that they posed so beautifully for me in a Tofino parking lot, even if the sun was far too bright.

Do you know this bird? Take a guess in the comments and tell me if you’ve used a bird checklist before!