Learning the Birds
A Midlife Adventure
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- US$19.99
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"The thrill of quiet adventure. The constant hope of discovery. The reminder that the world is filled with wonder. When I bird, life is bigger, more vibrant." That is why Susan Fox Rogers is a birder. Learning the Birds is the story of how encounters with birds recharged her adventurous spirit.
When the birds first called, Rogers was in a slack season of her life. The woods and rivers that enthralled her younger self had lost some of their luster. It was the song of a thrush that reawakened Rogers, sparking a long-held desire to know the birds that accompanied her as she rock climbed and paddled, to know the world around her with greater depth. Energized by her curiosity, she followed the birds as they drew her deeper into her authentic self, and ultimately into love.
In Learning the Birds, we join Rogers as she becomes a birder and joins the community of passionate and quirky bird people. We meet her birding companions close to home in New York State's Hudson Valley as well as in the desert of Arizona and awash in the midnight sunlight of Alaska. Along on the journey are birders and estimable ornithologists of past generations—people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Florence Merriam Bailey—whose writings inspire Rogers's adventures and discoveries. A ready, knowledgeable, and humble friend and explorer, Rogers is eager to share what she sees and learns.
Learning the Birds will remind you of our passionate need for wonder and our connection to the wild creatures with whom we share the land.
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"When I bird, life is bigger, more vibrant," asserts Rogers (My Reach), an editor and teacher at Bard College, in these quietly arresting essays. Her story begins in 2009 when, at age 49, a "hollow and holy" birdcall "converted" her "to the tribe of binocular-toting people in hats and practical pants." From here, she recounts the next three years she spent birding, transporting readers with lush prose from her home in New York to Florida, Alaska, and a snowy Paris. In "Don't Move," she admires the "red underpants" of a great spotted woodpecker in the Bois de Vincennes, while "Good Bird" captures her joy at hearing the "cascading song" of a ruby-crowned kinglet in the Arizona desert. Meanwhile, a search for flamingos in the Everglades prompts her to consider how the proliferation of plume hunters diminished Florida's once thriving "perfect cloud of birds." Deepening these sparkling meditations on life, nature, and "the spirit of exploration" are Rogers's musings on the writings of naturalists John Burroughs, Roger Tory Peterson, and pioneering ornithologist Florence Merriam Bailey, whose "life flowed with birds and with an intimacy with the natural world." With its whimsy and discerning intellect, this radiates beauty.
