 Hi, I'm Monica Graven. I'm on the board of York County Audubon and I am presenting this concert in honor of Pat Moynihan, who was on our board for a very long time. Now there are lots of people who knew her better than I and longer than I did, but there's a very particular reason why I'm doing this for her. Let me just mention, by the way, that I'm on the deck of my house. You might hear some road noise coming from over there. You might hear birds in the background. Always a good thing. There might be wind blowing. Things will be a little... they're not perfect, but they're good. The reason I'm doing this concert is because Pat started a ball rolling that was pretty cool in my mind anyway. Many years ago, actually, she asked me would I be willing to help her with a project in conjunction with Maine Audubon to teach kids about piping plovers and about the importance of protecting them on our beaches. And in specifically, we were working with a group of kids in the summer program of the YMCA in Bitterford, Maine. So this is quite a while ago. Eric Hines was the educational director, Laura Zitzke, who is still working with piping plovers, was part of the program. And first, we got together with the kids and we made little piping plover pictures and we played games as though we were little piping plovers on the sand. And by the way, I say plover, you say plover. It doesn't matter. Anyway, it was a very cool program. And then we took the kids in a number of vehicles and we went over to Goose Rock Beach and we actually went to where we knew there were plovers already nesting. And Pat brought her scope and she set it up. And when you set up a scope for kids, it's got to be about three feet tall. It's not that easy to look through for an adult. Anyway, she set up the scope and we're looking at the thing and this little boy stepped up to the scope. And as he was looking in the scope, an egg hatched. And that little boy was so mind blown to see this little tiny piping plover chick come out of its egg. He got so excited. But I think that Pat Moynihan was more excited than he was. It was a moment. Well, after we did that program, we did it a few times. But the first time, she said, you know, Monica, you should write a song about piping plovers. And I said, Pat, I don't write songs. I sing songs, but I don't write them. But I don't know. She planted a seed. And a few days later, this song that my family and I went to Hawaii a number of years ago, we got kind of obsessed with Don Ho. And all of a sudden, the song Tiny Bubbles came into my mind. Only instead of tiny bubbles, what came out was piping plovers. So this is really a kid's song. And it's called in response to I mean, I sing piping plovers and you sing it back. And in my in a perfect world, we would be doing this outdoors with a live audience and we'd hear you all singing and it would be so cool. But life is still a little complicated. So we're doing this the way we're doing it. So anyway, I sing, you sing, I sing, you sing. And then the chorus is people have to help them or we won't have piping plovers at all. So here we go. The piping plover song dedicated to Pat Moynihan. Lovers at all. Lovers nesting. Every cat should be in that idea in my head. And that piping plover song. Little did I know that that was going to actually start a whole a whole ball rolling. And sometimes I'm not exactly sure when I started writing more parodies of songs. And this next one, what I'd love to have time to do is sing you the original song and then sing you the pair the parody because I try to stick pretty closely to what the original lyrics are when I'm rewriting it. I don't have time to do that. So I'm just going to sing you the song. And this was the first parody I wrote after the piping plover song. And it's called the cuckoo. Now there is a traditional song called the cuckoo. And I don't know. Well, I'll sing the first verse from the original song. And don't necessarily believe anything that the original song says in that first verse. I have no idea if the cuckoo never hollers cuckoo till the fourth day of July. I don't know, maybe. Anyway, this song was written in about 2013, 2014. So some of the stuff that I'm singing about was a little more cutting edge back then. But, you know, that's the song. And there's one other thing I have to mention. There is a fellow in Maine who often, an excellent bird, who often posts to our Maine listserv. His name is Noah Gibb. And his sign off is always bird had with two A's. So at one point in this song I will say bird had. And that's a little shout out to Noah Gibb. This next song is about a specific through summer. And I can hear them calling when I put out the feeders in the morning or in the evening. And it's the Blackthroated Green Warbler. It's not what's calling right now. And it has two songs. The first is trees, trees, murmuring trees. And of course it doesn't really say those words, but that's how we remember it. And zee, zee, zoo, zee. And I want to dedicate this one to Cindy Angerhofer, who is my good friend. And we often go birding together many times in North Carolina, which is really cool. And I do not think I've ever heard the call of Blackthroated Green without Cindy saying the thing, saying the song afterwards. So this is kind of dedicated to her. And it's called zee, zee, zee, zee. This next one is also about a particular warbler. And it's also dedicated to a particular friend. The person is Seth Davis, who by the way wrote, if you got the Harlequin, and if you haven't read it, you really should, that has a two page spread about Pat Moynihan. Seth wrote, I think my favorite piece in that. It's not long, but it's incredible, perfect. Anyway, Seth has, he doesn't just have a favorite warbler. He's got like a mania for this warbler. He totally loves the Magnolia warbler, which is this gorgeous bird, another neotropical migrant. So you only really see them passing through in spring and fall. And so this one came to me. I wrote the song to the tune of what I thought was a song, there's a traditional song called Little Maggie. And so I wrote this song as a parody of Little Maggie. And then I realized, wait a minute, that wasn't Little Maggie, that was Darling Corey, which is a whole different song. And so, but that's actually the parody is of Darling Corey. For instance, it says, first time I seen Darling Corey, she was standing on the banks of the sea. She had a 44 strapped across her bosom and a banjo on her knee. So, so anyway, I used that song as my base. However, they're the last verse of Little Maggie I did use as well, where it says, pretty flowers were made for blooming, pretty stars were made to shine, pretty girls were made for a boy to love, pretty Maggie was made for mine. So Seth, this is for you. And I mashed the two titles together. It's called Darling Little Maggie Corey. It's called when you hear them of traditional folk songs, and they all seem to be about cuckoos. I really don't understand that. They're probably talking about European cuckoos. Not ours, but I don't know. And this one has, it says, when you hear the cuckoos hollering, it's a sign of rain. Okay, maybe it is. I don't know. Nothing I ever heard. Anyway, but like most traditional songs, it starts out about a cuckoo. This one actually has two verses about birds, and then it just goes totally in other directions. It starts singing about unrequited love or whatever it might be. So I added a bunch of verses that aren't about more different kinds of birds. So here you go. When you hear them, cuckoos hollering. Keep the intro. I'm going to make this a little faster. So here you go. When you hear them, cuckoos hollering. First yellow war. As you watch this, some of my songs are really sillier than others. This I would say is one of the more out there ones. But I happen to think that Pat would have loved this. So I live in Maine and are visited by so many goldfinches. It's, they're uncountable. And I understand that actually it's not the same birds all the time. They move around. They move through. So you might have a group of twenty one day, a group of ten another day, and they're not the same birds. Anyway, they eat a lot of seed. One thing you need to know about goldfinches is that when they have a certain call, they have a very complex vocalization range repertoire. But when they fly, they often say and the mnemonic for that that we use is potato chip. So I mentioned that in the song and if you wonder why is she talking about potato chips, that's why. So I decided to do a take off on goldfinger and it's called goldfinches. Now I just want to say that Shirley Bassey is one of, she's an amazing singer and this is not meant to to equate myself or my performance in any way with the the brilliance of hers. Okay, just want to get that out there. I'm no Shirley Bassey. However, instead of a brass section, we have my broken down old kazoo. So here we go. Let's give it a try. It has to start with this. Hold your ears if you have to. Goldfinches. That's the finch. The finch you'll most likely see. It's not in York County. It's in Lincoln County but it's called Monhegan Island. It's beautiful all year. Don't get me wrong. But for the people who are in love with birds for spring and fall, it is a migration trap. You know, the birds are coming up or down and they're out at sea and all of a sudden they say, oh my god, it's morning. I've got to get out. I got to get out of the sky and they see that green below them and down they come. It's like it's like Central Park in New York. And it is very small. You know, you just keep going to the same places over and over and over again. And you see the same people over and over again every year. And many, many times I have been on Monhegan Island with Pat Moynihan. In fact, she has shown me places I did not know about, which is way cool, but like the little area behind the Trailing Youth. That's a pretty good spot. So I've seen Pat there many times. Another person who I really need to mention is a man named Bruce Barker. The only way I knew Bruce Barker was through running into him on Monhegan every year. My husband and I would run into him on Monhegan every year. And we got to be friends just through birding. I, after he died, I found out the man was just an amazing guy. But he was quite ill the last time I saw him on Monhegan. And it just so happened that like within a week of going that year, I had written this little song about Monhegan Island. And it's based on Good Night Irene. And again, if you, if you know I, Good Night Irene, you will hear that I am using a lot of the same phraseology, the same structure as the song itself. But not always. And I had the most amazing experience. I usually stay at the Shining Sales shout-out. And I, we were arriving at the Shining Sales. And Bruce and his wife were leaving. That was the last time Bruce was ever on Monhegan. And I sang him the song I had just written about Monhegan Island. And it is a very precious memory to me. So this goes to not just Bruce and Pat, but you know Peter Vickery and all the people that we have known and loved and have loved the same areas and the same places that we have. Uh, the chorus goes like this. Know that I am a total Bob Dylan freak. Especially early Dylan. I mean, I'm just, I know them all. I were doing a series of concerts. Never repeated a song. Three all Dylan concerts. And the very first one I discovered that Pat Moynihan is also a Bob Dylan fan. Because there she was at my concert. And she said, of course I'm at your concert. I, you know, it's Bob Dylan for Heavens 6. So that was something new I did not know about Pat. There are so many things I don't know about Pat. She was so multifaceted. It's, it's, um, it's a bottomless pit to tell you the truth. Anyway, so this is a take on a Bob Dylan song. Uh, it's also one of the weirdest songs I'm going to sing in this concert. Uh, because, well for a number of reasons. Number one, it's based on a Bob Dylan song that I've never understood. It's called I pity the port immigrant. I really never understood what he was talking about in that song. And I'm pretty good with Bob Dylan songs. That one's always been sort of over my head. So it's based on that. And it's also based on an experience we had three years running. I don't know if it was the same bird, but I was pretty sure it was. There was a pine warbler that would show up and he would see his reflection in our protected windows and attack himself. Okay. He didn't attack one window. He would go to every window in the house, the entire house. You'd hear him smashing against the window. And he's not the only bird that does this. I've heard lots of cardinals do this. It's, it's a thing, you know, in the spring they're just so psyched up and, you know, I'm ready for action. So one day, somehow, I put, I pity the poor immigrant and that pine warbler together. Don't ask me. It's a mystery. And I came up with this song, which I'm calling Smashing Windows. And again, if you know the song, you will see that there's quite a lot in here that's very close to the original song, but not everything. And I'm going to take a moment to drink some water. Okie dokie. So here's this song about birds who are just a little too worked up. Smashing Windows. Wish I could have control. Much better do to forget. Knew that one of her real passions, among many, was shorebirds. And in fact, we recently, we give a donation, your county Audubon gives a donation every year to Stratton Island, where they study shorebirds. It's run by National Audubon. It's a wonderful program and we've been doing this for many years. And it was Pat who got that whole thing started. Now it is the Pat Moynihan donation to the Stratton Island project. At any rate, I have this sort of silly song, one of my silly songs, called Little Brown Jobs, which was a term I was not familiar with until only, I don't know, like eight years ago, I don't know. The Little Brown Job just being an unidentifiable bird, you know. Oh yeah, it was a Little Brown Job. And I wrote this song, and only after I wrote it did I realize that I had written it to the tune of Little Brown Jug, which is an old silly song, and never even occurred to me that I had done that. And it was all about normal, you know, just birding in the woods. But because this is for Pat, I realized there's got to be a shorebird verse in here. And so I added a little verse at the end. But I will say that honestly, I can't remember a time that I have been on the beach trying to ID shorebirds. When I have not thought to myself, God, I wish Pat were here. Where else only I'd thought to call her and see if maybe she was available. And yeah, I miss her. We all miss her. Little Brown Jobs. Miss Diddy. Everybody's gonna have a Miss Diddy. Miss Diddy. Miss Diddy. Them Little Brown Jobs are mystery. But is that iron stronger week? Does he have a wingbar? I can't tell. Oh, don't go back there. Trees are rough. Shorebird ID's really tough. Okay, starting again. Trees are tough. Shore are rough. Shorebird ID's pretty tough. You'll look at hundreds on the sand and wish you were with Pat Moyne. It's just the song. I'd need them little brown jobs or a missy lift. I started just singing. Trees are rough. Shorebird ID's really tough. You'll stare at hundreds on the sand. It's one that isn't meant to be funny. It's based on a traditional song called Little Birdie. And like, as I said, like most traditional songs, it starts out being about birds and then it kind of goes off in other directions. But this one is about, my rewrite is about that joy and peaceful feeling you get. So you hear a bird calling and you've got your binoculars with you and you're looking and you're looking and finally you find it. And I don't know about you, but for me when that happens, there's like this feeling of just peace that flows through me, which is extremely precious to me. And I think lots of people feel that way. And so that's what the song is basically about. However, in Pat's honor and in honor of all the wonderful, wonderful people who have gone before us and who we miss and we love. But we think of them every time we go to the places that we were with with them. Like for instance, every time I see a song sparrow, I think of Pat Moynihan. Because it was Pat Moynihan and it's great because it's like the most common bird. But Pat is the one who said, now always look for that red tail that long red tail and you'll know even if you didn't get a good look, you'll know that that's a red-ish tail and you'll know that that's a song sparrow. So this is for all those people and for all of us. And it's called Little Birdie 2014, which is when I wrote it.