Avid birder and National Audubon Society member since the age of eight, Roberta “Bobolink” Beyer has recently launched a beautiful online shop call The Fat Finch. As I understand it, Roberta created her web store as a companion to her brick and mortar store Bobolink (a type of bird and her nickname since childhood) to reach a wider audience of birding enthusiasts. But quite honestly you don’t need to be a ‘wake up before dawn and sit in a thicket with your binoculars’ type to enjoy the offerings of The Fat Finch.

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Wrapping paper resembling vintage paint-by-number birds. $2.95 per sheet.

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Birding lends itself to all variety of involvement, the simplest of which may be simply setting up a birdhouse, bird feeder or bird bath with your kids. I’m awful partial to the Barnhouse Birdhouse below, and it’s functioning doors allow you to either leave them open with birdseed inside or keep them closed during nesting and then open them for easy cleaning in the off season. $64.95

Tangent that leads somewhere, I promise: When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, I decided I absolutely and irrationally needed a multi-tiered, pagoda-like bamboo birdhouse that I found in a shop or catalogue. Immediately began the Christmas campaigning, and apparently my pleading worked as I later found out my poor father was up till all hours Christmas eve assembling the crazy, complicated thing. It sounds horrible when I say it, but in retrospect the idea of having a pet bird was really secondary to owning that cage. I did select a green parakeet and named him Pistachio who was a poor housekeeper and continually generated a two foot circle of feathers and seed shells around his cage. And I confess to completely panicking when he was let out of his pagoda and flitted insanely around my room. Admittedly not the most successful pairing of pet and kid. All of this to say that the adorable motion-sensor chirping birdies might be a good test run if you’re thinking about a caged bird of your own. $14.95 each.

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There is also a small but fine selection of avian themed books, from classics like Owl Moon to more contemporary stories. Various prices.

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