Richard Merrill

My father taught his five children how to make kites, from tissue paper box kites to experimental kites like the 6-foot box kite he made from dowels and oilcloth. It flew briefly in a strong wind blowing across the hills of Eastern Oregon's high desert, but the subsequent R&D never materialized, and it stayed grounded. We also flew paper airplanes, of course, and watched the birds by the river that flowed down the hill from our house, and Golden Eagles that soared on the thermals above the escarpments capped with sage brush.

Fast forward through aerospace engineering design, puppets, home design/build, manufacturing miniature bird kites that flew on a thread, and finally computer graphics, and my love of birds flew high with the concept for my first book. I wanted the birds to be realistic enough to use for identification. I wanted them to fly well -- not just fly, but fly well. I spend a long time perfecting the design, and created 24 birds in their native habitats, which are easy to fold and fly.

I have children of my own, grown now, who learned to fly kites and paper airplanes in their day. I am working on concepts and art for several new books.

One will be a story from my great-grandmother's early childhood in the Grand River Reserve at Ohsweken, Ontario, Canada. She was Mohawk, and heard many stories that are an integral part of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, culture and way of life.

I hope you enjoy my offerings. Visit my website, http://3hawk.com for musings on birds and other subjects, as well as another video of the bird book.