Yes, I know it’s only February.

But, still, it’s starting. This weekend, I saw dozens of marsh wrens perched at the tips of reeds, belting out their mechanical, buzzy trills. I heard unseen black rails singing the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth (der-der-der-DUR) from  within the marsh, one just 20 feet away from the trail. I saw a pair of northern harriers gathering nesting material. I saw a palm warbler that overwintered in Oakland showing the brown cap and yellow face that they’ll continue sporting through the breeding season. Many of the trees are still bare, and the weather is still erratic (which, in the Bay Area, means there is some rain; sorry east-coasters), but spring is undoubtedly springing. And not a moment too soon.

Every part of the birding calendar has its own wonderful character. Spring is energy, vibrancy, electricity. The air fills with songs that haven’t been sung for many months. Some, like the unfathomably complex tune of the Pacific wren, can stop me in my tracks, as if I’d bumped into an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a year. Others make me realize how many of my neighbors I regularly overlook; while walking through a familiar hotspot, I was shocked to hear just how many savannah sparrows were hidden in the grass. Visual delights accompany the auditory ones, as many birds start shifting into brighter, gaudier breeding colors, while others perform stunning displays in open view.

Between nest-building, courtship, and mating, everything just seems busier. There’s a palpable intensity in the world, which will only intensify in the months to come. More and more visitors who’ve been absent for the winter will drop by during their migration, adding their colors and melodies to the growing sensory smorgasbord, and turning the simmering energy of February into the riotous boil of April.

This year has gotten off to a rough start. But as the many fights against fascism, state-sponsored murder, and the destruction of public institutions continue, I continue to find comfort and strength by grounding myself in the natural world, and in the knowable, tangible, joyful parade of events that play out beyond the horrors of the news cycle. Spring is rejuvenation, boldness, vitality. I hope we all find those in the months to come.

Book News: A New Title

Titles are hard! My first book, I Contain Multitudes, was easy: It took its title from a Walt Whitman poem, and did so from the moment of conception. For my second book, I again turned to poetry for inspiration and, in the work of William Blake, I found An Immense World. The third book proved trickier. I settled on The Infinite Extent, which comes from a passage in Walden by Thoreau, where he describes how the disorienting feeling of being lost in the woods can reveal the full scope of the natural world. I love the sentiment. But my publisher and I came to feel that the title wasn’t quite working, for reasons that are hard to articulate. Even with a clarifying subtitle, it felt too abstract? Not evocative enough? A bit of a mouthful? The vibes were off? Whatever the case, we looked for alternatives—a quest that included way too much time on Thesaurus.com and that may have involved me threatening to call it An Immenser World if no further progress was made. Fortunately, progress was made, and we have a new title.

LIFE BEYOND MEASURE:

A Celebration of Nature’s Wonders at Every Scale

The title was my editor Hilary Redmon’s suggestion and it perfectly captures the concept and the tone of the book—this sense of something grand and glorious that lies outside our normal capacities. I love it, and I can’t wait to see it on a cover. (If you liked The Infinite Extent, it has been rescued from oblivion and is now the title of the first chapter.)

The book won’t be out until April 2027 because, well, it takes a lot of time to make a book! I’ve spent the last few months dealing with edits, adding references, and fact-checking. That last bit is especially onerous for a book of this scope, and I’ve been doing it myself. But it’s working, and we’re slowly moving towards some of the more exciting milestones, like cover design and galley copies.

A few more plugs

I had the pleasure of talking about birding on two separate podcasts—The American Birding Podcast with Nate Swick, and Okay, But… Birds with Scott Taylor. There’s a little overlap but I think they’re pretty distinct conversations, and I hope they’ll be interesting to people who are thinking about diving into that birding life.

After a much-needed hiatus at the end of last year, Liz has restarted her amazing newsletter Meeting the Moment, about the ongoing assaults on science and higher-ed. It continues to be an indispensable resource that I’ve described to people as partly an act of sense-making journalism and partly a pep talk from your wisest, kindest friend. Liz also continues to co-lead Unbreaking, a much broader site about the ways the administration is breaking the government, what that means for us all, and how people are fighting back. I find the weekly Unbreaking newsletter to be invaluable for staying informed but unflooded; here’s an edition about immigration from a few weeks ago as a taster. I strongly recommend subscribing to both, and I couldn’t be prouder of Liz’s amazing work.

More bird photos

That’s it for this month!

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Stay safe.