When Birds are Near edited by Susan Fox Rogers

When Birds Are Near is a collection of 26 essays focusing not on birds and their habitat or behaviour, but on their watchers. This is a book about the appeal of birds, and the effects birds have on the emotions and lives of birdwatchers.

American house cats kill around 100 million birds a year.

In her introduction, anthology editor Susan Fox Rogers explains her goal was to collate field reports which also reflected on “love, family, life, and death.” Birds are the occasion, not the subject.

So what’s in here? Topics include the shame of misidentifying birds in front of beautiful women, teaching a nighthawk to fly, leading tours in Alaska, taxidermy, birdwatching in the city, John James Audubon, playing god in the garden, being a wildlife steward, and failing to find the bird sought.

For me, the highlight was Jenn Dean’s ‘The Keepers of the Ghost Bird’: an account of the rediscovery of the Bermuda petrel and the naturalists on Nonsuch Island who painstakingly toil to preserve the petrel’s fragile population. Three other standout essays are Sara Crosby’s ‘The Black and White’, David Gessner’s ‘The Snowy Winter’, and Alison Világ’s ‘Extralimital’.

Novelist and bird enthusiast Jonathan Franzen wraps up the collection with humour. I particularly liked the comedy over the masked duck.

Ready for a staggering number from Sara Crosby’s essay? More than a billion birds die after flying into buildings each year in the USA. If that’s too colossal to comprehend, try 300 birds a minute. And if you can stomach more: American house cats kill around 100 million birds a year.

There are many such sobering moments:

“One of the greatest tragedies of climate change, one we can never explain to animals, is that we are shaping a world that will no longer provide for them.” - Christine Byl, ‘Crane, Water, Change’ (943).

Birds spotted in this book include California Condors, Sandhill Cranes, Spotted Owls, Snowy Owls, Painted Buntings, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and Greater Prairie-chickens.

Among the golden eggs, however, are a couple of turkeys: a dream sequence, gushing over a son’s accomplishments, peppy exclamation marks, and an over-dramatic military encounter in the jungle. There are many excellent essays in When Birds Are Near, but it’s not an even read.

Many thanks to Susan Fox Rogers, Comstock Publishing Associates, and NetGalley for my advanced reading copy.

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