Meet illustrator and poet Duckie and the Grackle

The TINY BIRD SONG Illustrator - 

CHERIE NOWLIN MCBRIDE (AKA Duckie) grew up in a small town on the industrial Texas Gulf Coast. Her mother would have preferred that she become a teacher, but she managed to "get away to art school." 

Art school paid off and soon! She went on to help produce the original Houston Astrodome scoreboard animations and then became a filmmaker in Alaska. Later, she returned to her hometown to join the family business. 

Life refocused to intensive art when Cherie and Glenn McBride married in 1985. Both feeling cloistered with business careers, they plunged into night school pottery classes. The open-ended creative feeling of molding fresh clay and firing pots changed their lives forever.  

In 2000, Cherie began painting and showing nature art at festivals. By 2004, the "creative couple" had decided to develop a series of "tiny bird songs" - illustrated nature poetry for posters, calendars, books and planners. The purpose would be to heighten awareness and feelings for art, wild birds and nature around the globe. 

The TINY BIRD SONG Poet - 

GLENN NELSON MCBRIDE (AKA the GRACKLE) grew up as the only son of a blacksmith in the small town of Bluegrove, Texas. Not caring for "basketball high school," he joined the USMC at age 17. While overseas, he became intrigued by stories about the determination and success of Pablo Picasso and vowed to enter college one day to learn more of art and literature. Then after 4 years service, this U.S. Marine (still in the reserves) found himself sitting in class at Midwestern University and suffering serious nosebleeds while listening to the overwhelming lines of Keats, Shelly, Dickinson and other great poets.  

At age 39, Glenn finally received a degree at the University of Houston/ CLC, continuing on to complete graduate studies in behavioral sciences. In his fifties, he became a founding member of the Brazosport, Texas Poets Society. Now in his sixties and realizing the mindless destruction of our natural environment, "the Grackle," along with his wife "Duckie," has focused on "awesome nature" and the outdoors - through their Tiny Bird Songs.