Julie Zickefoose has boldly gone where no one has gone before — into 17 different wild bird nests, 16 of which are located on the 80-acre wildlife sanctuary where she lives in Appalachian Ohio — to observe and record the inhabitants daily development from birth to maturity.

The artist, writer, and wildlife rehabilitator's 13-year study of hatchlings (2002-2015) has resulted in the newly published "Baby Birds: An Artist Looks into the Nest," featuring more than 400 stunning watercolor paintings, daily handwritten notes, and comprehensive accompanying text about bird breeding, biology, growth and cognition.

Zickefoose is also the author of "Letters from Eden" and "The Bluebird Effect," and she is a contributing editor to Bird Watch Digest.

After living locally — in Old Lyme, Hadlyme, and Salem — from 1981 to 1991, Zickefoose is happy to be returning to the area to give a talk and booksigning at the Westerly Land Trust on Tuesday.

She discussed her book and her passion for her feathered friends (she has identified 194 species so far on her property) in this Day interview.

Q. Which came first for you — being an artist, writer or bird rehabilitator?

A. I've pretty much been fixated on birds since I was very young. I lived next door to a woman in Richmond, Virginia, with 17 cats that ran wild and damaged birds all the time, and I was always picking up birds on ground, out of nests. So it was no (surprise) when I became a bird illustrator, artist, and writer.

Q. Are you trained as an artist?

A. I took a drawing course at Harvard, where I was a biology major and then switched into biological anthropology, and did independent studies in bird behavior. But I'm pretty much self-taught in watercolor.

Q. How has drawing baby birds helped you understand how they grow/mature?

A. Rapid development of baby birds is one of the unsung miracles of nature. How a morning dove goes from a little hatchling the size of your thumb to a flying bird in 10 days is one of the things I can only witness — I can't really explain the miracle of how they do this. Drawing things from life in order to understand them is something I've been doing for a really long time.

Q. Do you always use watercolor and pencil in your artwork? Why did you do handwritten notes, like a diary, with the images?

A. They all start out as pencil drawings and I paint watercolor over them. It's the only medium I've ever used. The transparency of watercolor allows you to see the structure of the drawing under the painting. I also want it to look like something that just came out of a journal. No matter what I've drawn, I've always written notes next to it. To me, the writing is an integral part of the art.

Q. Can you explain how you drew these birds over time and how much time you spent on each one?

A. Basically, I'm wedded to the bird for as long as it takes to develop. It's about being there every day and bringing it into the studio and painting it. It surprised me this has never been done. Some painters have done odd paintings of baby birds here and there, but it was an open niche in many ways. It takes a unique set of skills to care for and feed the birds, as well as access the nests and draw from life. Because I'm a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, I know what I'm doing. I have a very close relationship with most of the birds I'm doing this with. Take (for example) the Carolina wrens, nesting by my front door. The mother would be sitting on the bale that the hanging basket hangs on while I was taking her baby out. She was not concerned. There are birds that come in and out of my house. The birds that nest in my boxes are used to my presence, like I'm their benign landlord.

Q. This is clearly a highly specialized skill. Can you talk about how you've broken both new artistic and scientific ground doing this work?

A. Just the fact that it's a special skill set and there's not a lot of work being done directly from life right now in natural history. I think the immediacy of having that baby bird right in front of you really shows in the work, and it also represents a deep and intimate connection with the subject that is captivating. It changes day to day, so it's like this fresh surprise every time I opened the box, even though I know it's the same birds I worked from yesterday. There are measurable changes in size, length, feather growth, all happening at the same time. It's almost like a metamorphosis.

Q. You did this book over 13 years — from the Carolina Wren in 2002 to the Yellow-billed Cuckoo in 2015. Had the publisher commissioned you to do this book or did you look for a publisher when it was finished?

Q. I was maybe five paintings into this when I thought I might have the makings of a book. I had created this body of work because I was compelled to do it. When I thought I was done, I showed it to a group of fellow artists, and they flipped out, they thought it was so cool. Albert Earl Gilbert (one of the world's premiere wildlife artists) told me nobody had ever done this before and I said, 'They must have,' but they hadn't, and that's when the seed was planted. I brought it into New York City and showed it to my agent and Harcourt Mifflin (published it). I'm really grateful in this day and age to have this beautiful production, hard cover book.

Q. It says on the book jacket that you're fascinated by the interface between birds and people. Can you elaborate?

A. "The Bluebird Effect," my second book, really gets at that whole thing. How we affect birds, how they affect us. Building bonds with wild birds, mostly by feeding them, bringing them in, getting to know them individually, is what I do. What I'd like the reader to do is come away from reading my work with a new respect for the mental and emotional capacities of birds.

It's kind of waking people up to fact that there are these amazing beings out there that we should be paying closer attention to. It's easy for people to feel that way about their pets — we know there's all this personality going on there — but also giving birds this credit.

If you go

Who: Julie Zickefoose, author of "Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into The Nest"

What: She will talk about her book and show videos about bird behavior and photographs of birds she's worked with and raised.

Where: The Westerly Land Trust, 10 High St., Westerly

When: 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Tickets: $10 and can be purchased online at banksquarebooks.com

Presented by: Savoy Bookshop and Café and Westerly Land Trust; a portion of each ticket sale will be donated to the Westerly Land Trust

The book: It will be for sale at the event and signed by the author. "Baby Birds" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is $28, hardcover.