I tend to alternate between fiction and nonfiction books, and most of the nonfiction books I gravitate towards are nature writing. I usually go for a memoir or a personal essay collection, which may be obvious from this list. Here are some of the nature books I’ve read this year that I’ve enjoyed, and if you have any recommendations, I’d love to hear about them!

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

It took me a while to get through this, but ultimately I was very glad I did. Dillard follows the seasons of the year at Tinker Creek in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains with rich and vivid descriptions of both the beauty and horrors of nature – in a perfect world, I would read a book like this in congruence with the actual seasons of the year, but it was a library book. She describes what would normally be common interactions with living things as miraculous, and underlines the importance of presence in noticing (p. 10):

I love nature writing, but I had been thinking lately that much of it is doing it a disservice by putting it on a pedestal, because instead of a multi-faceted place inseparable from the places we live in, it becomes an optional retreat: almost spa-like. And if we’re going to protect it, I think it’s a much more compelling argument to protect our home than to protect our spa. Luckily, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not that kind of book. In addition to acknowledging some of the horrors of nature, Dillard grapples with what it means for morality:

Consider the former: the world is a monster. Any three-year-old can see how unsatisfactory and clumsy this whole business of reproducing and dying by the billions. We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who ticks a beetle over on its feet. There is not a people in the world who behaves as badly as praying mantises. But wait, you say, there is no right and wrong in nature; right and wrong is a human concept. Precisely: we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die–does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our skins. (p. 179)

I’d recommend purchasing a copy of this book and reading it through the seasons of the year, particularly if you live in a place where they are as pronounced as they are in New York. The writing benefits from being savored because the descriptions are the point, and it is not a book that you’re reading for the plot.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

The premise of this book is my perfect amalgamation of all of the things I look for: meditations on grief, memoir, AND nature writing. Helen Macdonald writes about losing her father and the way she reckons with her grief through the taming of a goshawk named Mabel. I think it’s useful to note that she is an experienced falconer at the time, but had never tamed a goshawk, which are notoriously difficult falconry birds. I think I had the impression going into it that she would be learning falconry itself at the start of the book. As someone not in the falconry world, I maybe didn’t fully appreciate the task she was undertaking in choosing to tame a goshawk.

While I enjoyed it, I felt like Macdonald relied too heavily on The Goshawk by T.H. White to articulate the particular difficulties of training a goshawk (there is so much in there about this book, and I could not bring myself to care about it). White was ultimately, it seemed, a poor falconer, and because of this I struggled to read about the cruelties inflicted on the goshawk he attempted to train with the same sort of empathy that Macdonald seemed to have for him. By the end of the book, I felt left wanting to know far less about White and much more about Macdonald: I wanted to know more about the grief of her father’s passing, more about her experiences birdwatching with him, more about the specific and intricate ways that Mabel helped her get out of her own head. I still think it was worth the read, though, and ultimately I did learn a lot about falconry (considering I knew very little before!).

I should note that this book has recently been made into a film starring Claire Foy that I have yet to watch, but it’s been on my list since it was released last year.

Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper

I loved this book by Christian Cooper, and I thought he does a great job balancing memoir with birding – it made me want to go birding MORE, if it’s possible. You may recognize him from the viral Central Park video from 2020, where he asks a woman to leash her dog in the Ramble (a common and frustrating occurrence for a birdwatcher) and she calls 911 and falsely reports that “an African American man is threatening her life”. He writes about the incident in the book with more context, but it is a small part of a rich account of his life and the importance that birdwatching has played in it since he was a queer kid growing up on Long Island and ultimately living in Manhattan. As a queer person who also grew up on Long Island, moved to the city, and became a birder, there was a lot I loved reading about from his perspective. I was also so excited to learn that he was the co-chair of GLAAD in the late 1980s. He writes wonderfully about what he has gained from birding but also with real perspective on his live beyond birding, which I think can be a tough line to walk in these types of memoirs interspersed with nature writing.

The Science of Last Things by Ellen Wayland-Smith

This is a wonderful collection of essays that I am going to have trouble describing succinctly. The best way I know how to articulate the ways this is about nature is that the author’s experiences with mental illness and cancer (and thus Western medicine) prompt her to question the ways that Western insistence of individuality produces deep fear of death while being at odds with nature. I am not a religious person, but this book describes what I frequently have trouble articulating about some of the ways that connection with the natural world can meet a spiritual need in those of us lacking (Preface XIII):

To accept death is to accept a certain kinship with not just the earth and the natural world, but the entire universe; it is to understand your role as a renter of matter no different from the birds in the sky or the worms beneath your feet. Our existence is a mere blink in the eons of time before our bodies are put to use by the creatures after us, on and on and on until the universe has ended and it will not have mattered that we (or the earth) had ever existed. I don’t think of this understanding as nihilistic; almost the opposite, where because of the futility of attempting to leave a permanent mark on history in its grandest scale, there is a deep sense of meaning in the everyday, a deep sense of miraculousness that I get to exist at the same time as my friends and Monarch butterflies and yellow-rumped warblers. In the end, all we really have is right now, which is maybe the thing I love most about birding.

Perhaps none of us, from this evolutionary perspective, are anything more than highly complex seed pods; the fruit matters only as host such that, once its disseminating mission is complete, it may crumple up and rot. (p. 63)

With summer coming to an end, this feels like a perfect book to pick up at the start of fall. Wayland-Smith has a way of writing about endings that reminds me of the way that autumn feels, which is a slow dying of the green world of summer but not before putting on a brilliant show.

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

I latched onto this book when I attended art school for my undergraduate degree, where I studied environmental design. Bachelard unravels the way our homes, especially the smaller more intimate spaces like chests, drawers, cellars and attics, shape our thoughts, dreams, and memories. Though it is primarily focused on human-made architecture, there are many references/comparisons to architecture in nature, including entire chapters on nests and shells where he discusses how these images conjure up feelings of intimacy and protection. I don’t know that I recognized it at the time but I think that it resonated so deeply with me then partly because of all the nature references:

“The well-being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out-of-doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable, must all feel the same contentment that I feel.” Thus, well-being takes us back to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically, the creature endowed with a sense of refuge, huddles up to itself takes to cover, hides away, lies snug, concealed. (p. 91)

This is not the kind of book you read in one sitting, and I have picked it up regularly through the years to read different chapters. In this case, I picked it up when I was writing my posts on why we love nests, and I wanted to reread what he had to say about them.

Our house, apprehended in its dream potentiality, becomes a nest in the world, and we shall live there in complete confidence if, in our dreams, we really participate in the sense of security of our first home. (p. 103)

The more I read this book, the more I am convinced it was written by a man who simply loved being cozy so much that he needed to turn it into an existential philosophy, but this has not lessened my appreciation for his work. One of my professors told me that he left this book on his night stand for dipping into before bed, and I think this might be a good way to approach getting started.

If you enjoyed this post and want to know more about how I write and take notes from what I read, I’ve been thinking about doing a post about my digital note-taking workflow with Obsidian (though I will not be advocating for using AI agents over your notes or making it your “second brain” like some other Obsidian content typically does…). This might be closer to the “Notebook” side of The Observer’s Notebook than my audience typically enjoys, and also less analog than the notes I usually showcase, so feel free to let me know if you would be interested in this kind of thing.

Last month, I visited Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge with my sister, equipped with OFF! Deep Woods and a dream; still, I managed to collect at least 50 mosquito bites (they can bite through bike shorts, as it turns out). I love summer for lounging on a picnic blanket or swimming at the beach, though admittedly it is not my favorite time for birdwatching in the city. It’s a great time to see shorebirds, but all manner of insects (and arachnids) are out in full force, which can be both amazing and horrifying. I’ll take the butterflies, moths, dragonflies/damselflies, bees, and even spiders (especially jumping spiders) but I’m happy to leave the ticks, gnats, and mosquitos behind. I recently finished reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and this sentence stopped me in both its accuracy and seeming contradiction with her general reverence for nature, but I’m glad she was the one to say it: “Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.” 1

Despite the fact that I could generally take or leave the mosquito, I have to admit that they do play a useful role as pollinators (only the female mosquito bites to get protein for her eggs, but males feed exclusively on plant nectar) and they are also a great food source for birds, bats, dragonflies, and even fish in their water-based larval stage. And in my experience, they are vast and abundant at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, so I know birds like this willow flycatcher eat well.

I can defend the mosquito but I have a harder time with ticks, of which I feel my fear of mounting with every warm season accompanied by a laundry list of the diseases they carry and growing concern about their rapidly increasing populations. They can be found in almost all of New York City’s parks, and while Lyme is usually the prime concern, they also carry several others that require shorter attachment times to transmit than Lyme. Mostly, I’ve been coping by wearing light colored clothing, lots of DEET (permethrin is better, but toxic to pets if not fully dry), and checking every so often both while outside and a full check when I get home. I don’t let it prevent me from going outside, and I’ve been trying to think of ticks as simply another fellow traveler trying to survive.

Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you’re dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there’s always room for one more; you ain’t so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent. 2

Birds eating mosquitos are not the only animal eating well at the refuge; my sister and I watched an eastern chipmunk scamper up this mulberry tree and tuck as many unripe mulberries as it could fit into its cheeks. We had a mulberry tree in our backyard growing up, and the scent of mulberry trees still reminds me of walking around barefoot in the grass in the summertime and ending up with dark purple stains on the bottoms of our feet. We have both invasive (white mulberry) and native (red mulberry) mulberry trees in the city, though they are difficult to distinguish by fruit alone because “white” mulberry can still produce red/purple fruit. Red mulberry has a fuzzier/duller leaf compared to white mulberry’s shinier leaf, which is the best way to tell them apart as far as I can tell.

My last favorites from the trip were all of the hardworking parents, like this yellow warbler working hard to feed his fledgling and this tree swallow taking advantage of the Refuge’s nesting boxes. It’s always nice to catch a swallow pausing for a few moments—generally I find it difficult to get a really good look at them. They’re generally too busy scooping up all of the mosquitos, so I owe them a great deal.

June in the Northeast is an odd time for a naturalist because it’s tinged with the mourning of the end of another spring migration: at odds with the way the academic year has ingrained a sense of returning to life with this time of year. While many bird species have merely stopped by, some of has chosen to stay through part of the summer to make their nests, which can be just as exciting as counting the number of species choosing to take their rest at New York City’s many natural spaces. At Ridgewood Reservoir, I noticed quite a few nesting species this year, including yellow warblers, Eastern warbling vireos, Baltimore orioles, cedar waxwings, and Eastern kingbirds (didn’t end up locating a kingbird nest, but watched parents feeding fledglings). I have loved being able to keep up with each phase, particular for Baltimore orioles, who I watched finding mates, building a nest, and feeding their young (just this past weekend, I saw at least three juvenile Baltimore orioles out on their own).

With less bird activity generally though, I have taken to noticing insects (particularly flying ones..), like this silver-spotted skipper butterfly–one of the largest and most recognizable skippers in North America. They are often mistaken for moths because of their “dull” coloring, though if everyone who said that was tasked with painting one, they might change their minds. While skippers used to be categorized within a separate Hesperioidea superfamily (which included butterflies that share many features with moths), modern taxonomy places them within the “true butterfly” superfamily, Papilionoidea.

I was also lucky enough to happen upon these mating bluet damselfies, forming a neat heart shape with their bodies. The male clasps the female behind her head, while her abdomen curls up to reach his reproductive organs. I watched these two flying around like this together for several minutes.

Lastly, it would be a mistake to exclude the Western honeybee in an insect/pollinator roundup–there is so much to love about them even beyond the fact that our ecosystem depends on them. A single (female) honeybee visits up to 5,000 flowers a day, while all males (known as drones) do essentially nothing except mate with the queen (what a life). I also learned recently that honeybee queens are not born, they are created. All female larvae are initially fed something called royal jelly (a nutrient-rich secretion from worker bees), but the worker bees choose one larva to be the queen and continue to feed her the royal jelly, so that her reproductive organs develop. The rest of the larvae will switch to a pollen and honey diet. I love the social intricacies of bee life, but my absolute favorite fact about them is the “waggle dance”, or the figure-eight choreographed dance that worker bees do to explain the location of rich food sources to the rest of the hive. The length of the dance communicates how far away the food source is, while the “intensity” (how many times the bee repeats it) explains how rich the food source is. There is also a social component to learning how to execute this dance; bees who have the opportunity to watch other bees do the waggle dance later perform better/more accurate dances than those who do not1. The lives of insects are infinitely more complex than we often give them credit for.

The year of analog

I am sure I have referenced “the year of analog” in this newsletter before; many people arrived in the year 2026 at their breaking points in terms of relying on technology for every aspect of our lives. Libraries, film cameras, vinyl, and writing by hand have all entered a sort of renaissance that I am mostly grateful for. Even birding, while usually relegated as a hobby for retirees, has seen a surge amongst young people hoping to spend more time outside and less time on screens.1 More and more people I know are using the Brick to restrict the apps they can use on their phone (I have one and love it - definitely not sponsored). We are recognizing that the internet can be a hollow experience when compared with the full sensory input of the physical world, which was true even before the threat of the “dead internet theory” (that human activity online has mostly been replaced by bots) and the use of AI characterizing so many of our online interactions.2

As we spend more and more time off of our screens, the internet is still mediating many of the ways we choose to partake in analog hobbies. I am writing about this experience on a screen right now, and you likely found my newsletter (that is mostly about birding and journaling by hand) via algorithm. And within algorithms on the internet, the content that is most popular, or that reaches the most people, is usually the content that makes the most money. Even the sort of anti-algorithm bubble of analog hobby lovers is subject to the same kind of commodification that characterizes many online interactions. The subtext behind the “analog bag“ (a bag stuffed with analog activities influencers are purporting to carry around with them, including books, cameras, crochet, stationery, magazines, crossword puzzles, painting kits)3 is that you need to purchase all of these things to fully enmesh yourself in the analog world. I am not sure where many of these analog bag havers are ending up with this much free time that one single book couldn’t fill those brief sort of in-between moments where we reach for our phones, unless they’re boarding an airplane or traveling with a small child. In fact, I think the complexity of the analog bag is actually a symptom of needing to replicate the capabilities of your phone, which is the feeling of having endless entertainment options and that boredom is akin to death. I am wondering if we’re starting to miss the point of “going analog”: that inherently analog activities are supposed to be more limiting, are meant to increase friction, slow us down, and leave us with the capability to feel bored sometimes (which I think we might have forgotten is a distinctly different emotion from feeling numb).

“Owning” your values

I should say that in defense of the analog bag, I am also not pretending to be immune to the allure of these videos, and I think that journaling/stationery ecosystem tours can be an attempt to meet the same need (I even did one of my own). I live in the same capitalist society that you do, and buying things is still exciting to me, because it’s not just the item itself, but the promise of the person you will be when you are in possession of these items. The perfect fountain pen, the ideal notebook, a handmade leather cover–these things communicate not necessarily who I am to other people, but who I am to myself. I am someone who values quality, handmade items, who wants to support other artists and artisans, who wants to live a tactile life imbued with real experiences. The practice of owning these items legitimizes these traits: makes you feel as though you are living out the values you have determined are important to you. And unfortunately, it is too easy for these values to be preyed on and commodified when all of the ways that we discover these items are through an algorithm.

Birding, and spending time in nature, is no different. While typically thought of as sort of the antithesis to spending time online, or one of the more “real” experiences we can have (we tell someone to “touch grass” when we want them to get a better grip on reality), birding especially is mediated by all kinds of technology and commodity. Instagram is full of birders of all ages, but especially younger birders, making videos sharing their birding experiences, recommending equipment, telling you about the guides you need to buy. Ultimately, though, to bird, you need essentially nothing except your eyes and/or ears. I could step out onto my stoop in Queens and bird right now without a single piece of equipment. But like with many other hobbies, it becomes easy to convince yourself you need better binoculars, better camera equipment, a scope, a new Patagonia vest (again, I say as I save for a new camera myself). I do think there is a difference between buying the items to help you become the person who uses them and buying the items after you have already become that person. I think we have to remind ourselves (myself included) that owning certain items doesn’t determine who we actually are, regardless of the ideal that Instagram is selling us. The person who doesn’t own a single pair of binoculars but takes a walk around their block everyday to look at birds is more of a birder than the person who owns the Vortex Viper bins that mostly sit inside their drawer.

Mediated birding

This is all before we begin to address the way our phone has changed the way we bird. eBird lets you know exactly what you can expect to find before you go out into the field, based on what others are reporting. Merlin can help birders easily identify calls. And your local birding Discord group is likely constantly reporting “rare” bird sightings in real time (in addition to the eBird reports). It is important to recognize the agency that we have in choosing which tools we want to utilize, both in terms of physical equipment and online resources, and how to use those tools responsibly. Sensitive species should not be reported on Discord, and you might think about delaying your eBird report if you find something like an owl nest. Merlin is an amazing tool but it helps no one, least of all you as a birder, to add birds to your eBird list identified only via Merlin, because there may be a mockingbird nearby who is trying to ruin your life.

One of my favorite things about birding is the serendipity; you never really know what you’re going to find until you get out there. What you see at 7am could and often will be different from what a different birder sees in the same area at 9am (or 7:05am!). For this reason, I find the rare bird chase to be a somewhat unsatisfying way to bird, and I much prefer to leave it to chance. It’s less about seeing the rarest bird I can find and more about appreciating the amazing, unpredictable, non-algorithmic moments that happen when you take yourself outside. Birding is a bit like the surprise of running into an old friend in the middle of New York City; there is something to the miracle of being in the same place at the same time, to surrendering to the idea that some of the best moments are the ones we didn’t plan for. There is definitely something magical about seeing a rare bird, too, but standing in a conveyer belt of birders all at the same location for the same reason is distinctly less magical than what you happen upon by chance. Please don’t hold me to this in 5-10 years when my capacity to add to my life list with every birding outing is diminishing, though.

On having agency

The analog trend is getting at the lack of fulfillment we are all feeling deep in our psyches from using technology too often, so it is no surprise that tech companies are trying to use it to spend more time online, feeding our algorithms with the things we need to buy online in order to get offline. And as someone who writes an online newsletter about mostly offline activities, the irony of being more online to get more offline has been eating at me. I think that the most potent way to counteract this feeling is to recognize that we have agency to choose the ways we want technology to augment our lives, and the capacity to recognize when technology is guiding those choices for us. We can walk the aisles of our library and choose a book at random instead of relying on recommendations via Instagram, which ultimately results in all of us having read the same 20 books in a year (my book club was just marveling at the fact that given the vast history of human knowledge, many of us have still read the same books). We can use birding apps to help us contribute to citizen science initiatives and make us better able to recognize calls; we can use a platform like Substack to connect with people who share our interests. And we can ultimately decide when we are living out an ideal that was sold to us instead of the values that we have chosen ourselves.

I live about a 45 minute subway ride from Central Park, so I hadn’t been able to attend any of the Tuesday morning Linnaean Society spring migration walks in May without being late for work–I work from home mostly, and the walks start at 7:30am, so the timing wouldn’t have worked out for the trip to be worth it. Luckily, I gave myself an extra day off the weekend of Memorial Day Weekend, and was able to make it to the very last walk of the season. I’m glad I did, because Tuesday offered perfect weather while MDW was otherwise a rainy and miserable weekend. While it was a relatively quiet birding day, there were still plenty of good moments and rich wildlife in New York City’s most popular park.

One of my favorite encounters of the day was seeing these cedar waxwings passing berries back and forth to each other (they often do this as a courtship ritual). They’re one of my favorite birds, not just for their plumage, which is striking (they get their name from the tiny red tips at the ends of their wings, which look like wax) but for their social behaviors like this one. They will also pass a berry down a line of waxwings on a branch, but I love the courtship ritual especially because of how much it mimics human courtship; the passing of the berry back and forth always seems like they’re saying, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly, it’s for you!”. Cedar waxwings are one of the few birds that can survive on fruit only for months at a time, and they even sometimes end up accidentally intoxicated from eating fermented berries that have sat in the sun.

We also saw a female common yellowthroat rooting around near the shallows of the lake for insects, and I was grateful to someone else for the ID because I only got a quick glance before she disappeared into the brush. I love to bird alone but I always learn a lot while birding in a group, especially when it comes to female warblers, which I’m still learning to identify since they often lack the species’ signature look or even sometimes their namesake (I’m looking at you, female red-winged blackbirds, though they do sometimes have reddish shoulder-pads!).

It wouldn’t be a day in Central Park without seeing dozens and dozens of red-eared slider turtles sunning themselves on logs or the large Manhattan Schist rocks (if you’re one for geology puns, the Bronx is gneiss but Manhattan is full of schist..).

I also always love catching a sleepy raccoon while birding, especially peeking out of a tree cavity like this one was. They’re much easier to see in the winter (as a birder, you’re always looking for an out-of-place lump in a tree) but they’re numerous in the park and still often easy to catch dozing during the day even in trees that are fully leafed out. I love their adaptability and the way they always seem to be on a heist, and apparently they’re one of the only mammals that can climb down trees head first.

One of the last encounters of the day with the group (I ended up breaking off to do some birding of my own - particularly to work on a birding assignment due for my course with NYBG) was with this black-crowned night heron, perched carefully on this log preening itself. While typically seen as a common visitor in NYC waterways, the NYC Bird Alliance recently published a paper that local populations of the black-crowned night heron have declined over 50% over the last 22 years, and you should consider signing their petition calling for additional environmental protections for this bird.

While becoming a birder has brought many more joys to my life than sorrows, the hardest part of paying attention has been becoming more aware of the dangers that birds face on a daily basis; human-influenced and otherwise. I have been witness to so many incredible species’ nests this spring, and I have also seen many baby birds that didn’t make it. I think about how incredible it is witness so many species that pass through the most populous city in the United States and also about how many who don’t make it along the way. Last week, the Blackpoll warblers arrived in many of the city’s parks, signaling the end of spring migration, but some of them may not even be halfway to their destination. This warbler is famous for its grueling trip over the Atlantic ocean, as it travels from South America to the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska to breed. It has reminded me that both of us, the Blackpoll warbler and I, are only visitors, on this earth and in this park, and while I worry about the many more perilous miles they have yet to travel I do my best to trust that they know what they’re doing, and try to stay out of their way.

After my last post on birds’ nests, I thought I would spend some time getting to know some of the birds who nest in my local patch at Ridgewood Reservoir. This also came after I recently went on a great birding walk led by Heather Wolf for NYC H2O, a nonprofit providing education on the city’s water ecology, and Heather pointed out many species who use the Reservoir as a nesting site every year. Each of these species seem to reflect their own distinct personalities in their nest/nesting behaviors, and I am not a scientist, so I don’t mind anthropomorphizing. :) Here are some reminders from a few of the nesting birds in my area.

All of the photos in this post were taken at Ridgewood Reservoir. I usually post my bird photography over on Instagram, if you’d like to follow along there.

Gray Catbird

The gray catbird builds its nest low to the ground in dense shrubs, with bulky twigs, straw, bark, mud, and sometimes even trash (if you have ever met a catbird, this makes perfect sense to me). Females usually build the nests, but males will sometimes provide nesting materials, and bring the female food while she incubates the eggs. The eggs are a glossy blue color, and a deeper blue indicates a healthier female (and an antioxidant-rich diet). While their nests can be targets for the brown-headed cowbird (a brood parasite that lays its eggs in other birds nests), they are pretty good at recognizing a foreign egg and will puncture it and/or eject it from the nest.

I love the way that you can pass a singing gray catbird on a trail and it will continue to sing well into what I would consider a comfortable distance for most birds (on my walk with NYC H2O, Heather Wolf let us know that the name for a gray catbird in Spanish—maullador gris—translates to “gray meower”, which I feel is appropriate for a bird that never pipes down). They have a charismatic spunkiness and seemingly endless curiosity; they have reminded me of what it looks like when pursuit of knowledge surpasses even its fear.

Subscribe now

Northern Yellow Warbler

The northern yellow warbler, known for it’s “Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweeter than sweet!” call during migration season, always looks like a miniature stuffed animal to me. Something about its little button eye and rounded head never seems quite real. Their tiny cup shaped nests of grasses, bark strips, and nettles, all held together with spider silk, are built entirely by the female while the male sings its “sweet” song, guarding the territory.

The northern yellow warbler also can recognize brown-headed cowbird eggs, and are remarkably stubborn about getting rid of them: because they are often too small to eject the egg from the nest, they will simply build a new nest floor straight over the top of the clutch with the cowbird egg and start again. They have been found to build up to SIX new floors over their nests if the cowbird continues to return to lay their egg. That such a tiny, adorable creature contains such an iron force of will has reminded me to never underestimate basically anything, but especially parents, nature, and things that are small.

Eastern Warbling Vireo

If you have warbling vireos in your area, you know that they never stop singing. It has made it harder for me to get to know other vireos because I am sometimes too quick to ID as a warbling due to their sheer numbers (at least in the park where I usually bird). In the spring, I take their songs for granted and by the fall when they’re gone I notice how much quieter the canopy has become.

They build intricate hanging nests from plant fibers, grass, leaves, and moss, held together with spider and caterpillar silk, primarily by the female. They share incubation duties, and while many birds remain quiet while incubating the nest to avoid revealing its location, the male warbling vireo simply can’t help himself and often continues singing even while sitting on the nest. As someone who generally dislikes attention in most of its forms, I find the male warbling vireo to be unrelatable, but I deeply respect his commitment to his gig. It’s a good reminder to not worry too much about what the other birds are doing.

Baltimore Oriole

I was lucky enough to see plenty of oriole activity at the reservoir during my last visit, including this pair of orioles, with the female working hard gathering nesting materials to build a home perfectly suited for her young.

The female Baltimore oriole weaves an amazing sock-like hanging nest using plant fibers, animal hair, strips of bark, and even synthetic string, which takes about 1-2 weeks. She will usually select a spot towards the end of the a branch to discourage heavier climbing mammals (like squirrels) from trying to get to the eggs, and builds her nest with generally no help from the male. As someone who used to work in a field tangentially related to architecture, which is typically male-dominated, I appreciate the female Baltimore oriole’s commitment to her craft as a clear standout in the world of bird architects.

Share The Observer's Notebook

There’s something about birds’ nests that captivates even those without much of a true interest in birds; it feels like they activate something primal in us, like something returning us to childhood. Peering over branches to the sight of chirping babies or a fluffed up mother bird atop a cupped dwelling of her own design feels like being let in on a secret, becoming privy to something that is normally hidden and unfamiliar to us, which makes us want to know more.

For those of us who were lucky enough to be able to spend time (particularly unsupervised) outdoors as children, the image of nests conjures up memories of broken blue eggs or abandoned nests in the fall, which were usually the only evidence I managed to locate that a nest existed in my yard at all. Very occasionally would we find one still active, and being let in on the secret of the nest brought me face to face with a scene that activated a fundamental comfort: to simultaneously be entirely vulnerable and entirely cared for.1

This wonder is lasting, and today when we discover a nest it takes us back to our childhood or, rather, to a childhood; to the childhoods we should have had. For not many of us have been endowed by life with the full measure of its cosmic implications.2

I still retain (like I think most people do) a sense of wonder when I stumble upon an active nest. Normally, our relationship with birds is mediated by distance, binoculars and a certain unpredictability, and there is no guarantee a bird we spot one day will be in the same place the next. Nests tie birds down and make the unknown knowable to us. We might be able to see the bird at closer range, and we can reliably predict that they will continue to be there until their babies have fledged. If we are particularly lucky, we may have located the nest because we spotted the birds building it in the first place.

To make a plan is inherently optimistic, so to build a nest an act of optimism. The eggs will hatch, the young will survive, they will fledge to begin their own lives. I resonate equally with the premise a bird knows what the nest will look like at the outset or whether it simply knows it needs to start with one twig and trust that it will figure out what to do with the next one as it comes. I too have done both: began with a fully-realized plan that came to fruition, and decided I needed to start somewhere and would figure out the rest one thing at a time. The latter scenario has definitely become more likely as I grow older and realize the futility of planning, though I still can’t help but make them.

Do birds plan like us, or think like us, or really know how to make knots, or slap beaks full of mud in series, or is this merely instinct? Does the structure they’re making begin with some abstract form, a mental image, to which the bird plans, rather than thinking, step by step, there. That is where that goes?3

I also think about how we are especially captivated when a nest has utilized things that belong to humans, whether it is twine, or wire, or the cliff’s edge of an old building. The male bowerbird builds a bower to entice its mate, and the satin bowerbird in particular adorns its bower with often manmade blue items like bottle caps and plastic straws. In some ways, watching a bird utilizing our trash is depressing, but in other ways it reminds me of the miracle of our coexistence. The earth has existed for billions of years and is just one planet amongst incomprehensible planets within trillions of galaxies, and I get to live at the same time and the same place as a little winged creature who wants to decorate its altar of seduction with tiny blue bottle caps. While many of us are constantly aware of the many organisms we share the earth with and how our actions affect them, the bird’s nest that incorporates our discarded plastic is still a disquieting reminder that we are not considering them enough.

Perhaps...it is also about testing the edges of a space, teasing its limits – bringing a careful attention to our environments, and how we inhabit them, and learning how to demand a world that is safe and hospitable to all.4

The nest, ultimately, dredges up our own secrets: how we felt about our childhoods, whether we are hopeful for the future, if we can see our plans through, and if we care enough about our planet that our birds don’t have to clean up our messes for us.

I work a full-time job, and am always envious of the retired birders I meet who get to spend every morning of migration season out in Central Park catching the changes in arrivals by day, instead of by week, like my schedule allows for. My job has nothing to do with birding (well, mostly. I work in research, and like to think that there’s some overlap in a desire to learn through observation and data gathering, at least). All of this to say that I need to fit in birding wherever I can, particularly during migration season where every morning not spent birding feels like a morning I’m missing out on.

This past week I had an early morning dentist appointment off of the C train, and used the opportunity to go to Central Park’s ramble early to get some birding in before returning to work after my appointment. While I’m there for the birds, I had a number of lovely interactions with fellow birders:

• A man asked if I was looking at the Northern waterthrush (I was) and if there was anything else by the lake he’d missed (only a double-crested cormorant for me so far)

• Another man was planted across from the Azalea pond from me, trained on a palm warbler, and stayed put until I could make my way to his side to see it

• I walked passed a birding father pushing a toddler in a stroller who had a tiny camera of his own. The toddler saw my camera and yelled out to me, “This is MY camera! It takes pictures of BIG birds!”

• I was watching a vireo for a bit and couldn’t quite make out if it was blue-headed or red-eyed, because I was mostly watching from directly below. There was a woman also watching it with a larger lens than mine, so I asked her if she could tell. She was leaning towards red-eyed, but I mentioned that Merlin kept picking up a blue-headed, until she managed to capture a shot of the side of the bird and confirmed blue-headed for the both of us.

• As I was leaving the park, an excitable group of older men with the largest lenses I’ve ever seen were heading to the ramble. They stopped and asked if I had been in there birding, and when I told them yes, they asked what they needed to see. I had just passed a black-and-white warbler (truly striking warblers but fairly common/easy to spot this time of year), so I pointed out where it was, and they acted as if I had told them I’d seen a painted bunting (there’s been one recorded in NYC but it was very far off track). I hope that I remain this excited about black-and-white warblers even after many years of birding, like these men seemed to be.

Subscribe now

I am an introvert by nature, but chatting with birders in the park comes easy to me. To work together with a stranger to identify the differences between a red-eyed and blue-headed vireo is to come to an implicit understanding that we are lucky to occupy this moment on this planet with this particular winged creature, and that this feeling of gratitude holds enough shared value to transcend the fact that we’ve only just met.

One other identification I found myself struggling with was with thrushes (and ovenbirds, which are not thrushes, but do look like them), so I thought that spending some time drawing them might help me internalize some of their differences. I learned they are actually quite different: hermit thrushes have a distinct red bobbing tail, wood thrushes have dots that run all the way down their bellies, and ovenbirds are smaller with dots that converge into stripes:

I have been particularly grateful to birding lately for its ability to wholly capture my attention unlike many other things in the modern world. It is depressing to think that birding feels somewhat radical to me lately, like offering my time and attention (an extremely valuable commodity in current times) to birds seems inherently anti-capitalist and pro-environmental. The birds will not be making money from my attention, and submitting my accurate eBird list like a good citizen scientist can help contribute to conservation research. To spend my time figuring out which thrushes are which is to believe that their differences matter, that these differences should be preserved, that I wish to pay attention to that which I want to know deeply, and that when I am choosing to know the earth better I am also choosing to know my own place in it.

If you have the time this weekend, I hope you get to spend some time outside paying attention. It is always surprising and rewarding, and an incredible reminder of how lucky we are to occupy the same planet as a bird or a stranger or a tree.

Happy Earth Day! It’s also spring migration, so I’ve been getting outside more and more to bird and it’s exciting to notice the differences in arrivals every week. The past couple of weeks I’ve gone to Ridgewood Reservoir, because the elevated walking path allows you to get a bit closer to the tree canopy (which is great for me because my camera lens is just about the shortest you can get away with for birding).

I have moved some documentation of these birding walks to my everyday journal (away from my watercolor sketchbook), partially because I found the size to be a bit overwhelming to fill every week, and my goal is to create a sustainable nature journaling practice more than anything. I will probably still use the watercolor sketchbook for larger, more intentional pieces, but for now I like using Tombow markers in my regular journal. If you’re curious, the notebook itself is the Nanami Seven Seas Crossfield notebook (Tomoe River paper) with a leather cover by SasankaStudio on Etsy.

I find nature journaling to be the easiest way to learn about the local environment, but I think it took me so long to build a regular practice because I approached it in an unsustainable all-or-nothing fashion–I had to document every single plant and animal I saw out on a walk. Once I started full internalizing the idea that I could pick and choose what to draw/learn about, the prospect became much less overwhelming for me. This isn’t a groundbreaking concept, but I think internalizing something and knowing it are two different things, and sometimes the internalizing takes a bit longer. :)

I have also found the practice of drawing what I see to be incredibly valuable in retaining characteristics about birds in particular. I am currently taking a course at the New York Botanical Garden on birding, and our teacher had us do an exercise where we needed to instruct him on how to draw a blue jay (which, in this hypothetical scenario, he had never seen before), and we had to instruct him from our own memories of a blue jay. The exercise underlined the way that while photography is looking, drawing is seeing, and it’s invaluable for really beginning to know the creatures we share our planet with.

Some of my notes from the class:

This Earth Day, I’ve also been reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard to remind of me of the importance of witnessing the Earth, as a way to ground my own understanding of myself as a living animal, and as a way to remind myself that to practice seeing is to practice understanding.

The way that birding, photography, and nature journaling have helped me to feel tethered to the Earth is a gift that I wish for everyone. I have never felt less worried about my place in the world as an individual when it has become so clear how profoundly interconnected every living being on the planet is. This feels like maybe something I understood implicitly as a child, in the backyard running barefoot, picking up garter snakes and lifting up slate to see all of the critters wriggling underneath, but that I potentially lost somewhere along the way as adult responsibilities piled up. It’s a relief to be regaining it.

Subscribe now

If you liked the photographs in this post - feel free to join me on Instagram!

The daffodils are blooming and the woodcocks have made their triumphant return to Bryant Park, which I think makes it officially spring. There have been quite a few changes over the past week; some trees are in full bloom or at least budding, and the weather seems to be on a permanent upward trend. I’ve been getting outside to bird every weekend over the past few weeks and plan to continue that well through spring migration, and I am glad to see that the woodcock has inspired many others to do the same.

You might have seen this New York Time’s article about the woodcock in Bryant Park but they have really been getting some well-deserved attention lately. I am all for anything that sparks public interest in urban nature, as long as the birds don’t seem to mind. There was only a small crowd gathered when I saw one in Bryant Park the other weekend but the numbers have grown significantly since then:

I think the fascination with the woodcock speaks to a generational tiredness with seeing our entire world through screens, and the chance to see a weird and wonderful migrating bird up close became too good to pass up. I do worry about the occasional misbehaving park visitor who might ruin a good thing for everyone (the Times article comments about someone who tried to walk into the ivy bed) but overall I think public fixation on fellow dwellers of the natural world is a good thing, especially for birds like woodcocks which can often be victims of window collisions this time of year. They migrate at night, fly low, and because their eyes are set so far back on their heads, can strike office buildings without bird safety glass or with their lights still on. If an internet obsession with a quirky bird can bring some attention to a cause that affects billions of migrating birds every year, I think it’s a net positive.

Some other seasonal sights from Bryant Park:

The first time I went out birding with a group in New York City’s Central Park, one of my fellow birders told me that starlings had been introduced here in the late 1800s by a Shakespeare fan who wanted to ensure that every bird in his plays graced the North American continent. Upon further research, the Shakespeare connection is dubious, but a man named Eugene Schieffelin did help introduce starlings to Central Park in 1890 (though this was one of the last introductions of starlings to North America).1 Regardless of whether Shakespeare inspired the starlings’ introduction or not, there is a consensus that they were brought here by human activity, and not of their own accord.

Starlings are pretty contentious among the birding community; many birders actively voice their contempt for them and sometimes it feels like an initiation ritual—you’re only a birder once you’ve earned your hatred of the starling. They are cavity nesters, which means their available nesting spaces are limited, and they often compete with native birds for these spaces. During that same birding trip where I was informed about their Shakespearian origins, we stood rapt for 20 minutes watching a red-bellied woodpecker and starling fight it out for a nesting space in a tree hole. We left when it seemed the woodpecker had won, deeming this a happy ending to the story and not wanting to know if the starling ever came back. This is, at least according to birders, ecologists, and conservationists, a common occurrence: starlings have earned their reputation as aggressive birds who frequently evict (even kill in the process) their native peers.

Once I learned the history of the starling, their reputation began to trouble me. We brought them here against their will but then marked them as “invaders” when they began show remarkable resilience in their new environments. What would be seen as an incredible ability to adapt in native species is painted as inherently evil behavior in “invasive” species:

We have rigged the game against alien species. Why do we treat their normal, healthy contributions to ecosystems as evidence of misbehaviour, even though we celebrate the same behaviour in native species? And in cases where an alien species really is harmful, why do we sentence them to eradication, when similar cases of harm caused by native species call for damage to be mitigated in less violent ways?2

We also label species as introduced versus invasive based on their environmental effects, regardless of how they got here. To me, this is a confusing way to characterize so-called “invasive” species because the word implies onus, and that the plants or animals themselves are the ones who chose to invade rather than simply survive where they were brought (by humans, in the large majority of cases). Calling a species invasive once they prove to be harmful (versus calling them introduced) seems like an incredible tactic for humans to avoid responsibility for any ecological destruction. We will take the credit for positive or neutral environmental effects: to be introduced, someone had to do the introducing. To invade puts responsibility on the species itself.

There is also research to suggest that the environmental effects of starlings are overstated. According to a study by Walter D. Koenig on the effects starlings have on native cavity-nesting birds, out of 27 cavity-nesting species, only one species (sapsuckers) showed negative effects that could be attributed to starlings that were not affected by other data. While some other species showed negative effects in areas with starlings, often there were other explanations that could be attributed to their decline:

Native hole-nesting birds have thus far apparently held their own against the starling invasion, despite the latter’s abundance and aggressive usurpation of often limited cavities.3

Some of the starlings’ success can be attributed to rapid local adaptation rather than displacing native birds at large scales. Additionally, like native birds, they are in deep decline in both North America and Europe: the current population in North America is half the size it was 50 years ago. The story of a species enacting deep ecological destruction is not generally told by a species that is in such a decline.4

It would be irresponsible to write a defense of starlings without acknowledging the fact that invasive species can pose a large threat to native species, and that many are actively harmful to local environments. However, I also believe that the narratives that we develop about these species are important in understanding how they got here and the harm that they actually cause. Starlings have such a hateable narrative; an invasive species arrives in droves, drives native species out of their house and home, sometimes killing them in the process. But what is missing from their narrative is the fact that we did this to them, and also enough real empirical data to articulate the exact harm they ultimately cause.

I also think about our moral and ecological responsibilities as members of the species introducing “alien” species to our environments, whether intentionally or not. Is there moral defensibility in enacting violence against a species whose actions we are ultimately responsible for? The nest-evicting behavior of starlings has been used to justify their killing in the millions every year.5 In the end, I think our own moral failings surpass that of the starlings’ any day.

We have had just about all of the possible weather outcomes you could imagine over the past two weeks, and as I’m writing this in mid-March I think we have finally turned a corner towards spring. Now it’s almost hard to imagine the person trudging through the snow we got in addition to the blizzard, to think that piles and piles of it used to coat every car and tree on our street. I am feeling very excited for spring migration - I just finished reading Christian Cooper’s Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World, and he writes:

And since, unlike the fall, the spring features males in beautiful breeding plumage—I’m nothing, if not consistent—Central Park’s unparalleled spring songbird migration, the peak lasting about six weeks, had become my holy month of Ramadan. Work, the gym, nightclubbing, eating, sleeping, friends, romance, all become secondary.

I’m planning to get out birding as much as possible. Last spring, I was planning my wedding (which took place right in the heart of spring migration) and wasn’t able to devote too much time to getting outdoors to bird. This year I have already booked up as many Saturdays as possible; I also commute one day a week into the office, and am hoping to get to Central Park early in the morning on those days. I’d been thinking I’d be able to upgrade my camera lens in time for migration, but a series of unexpected expenses have made that less likely, so I’ll have to see what I can manage with my current 70-300mm lens setup. Either way, I’m planning to add plenty to my life list. One of my goals this year is to reach 200 species (I’m currently at 130ish), which I think is a pretty modest endeavor given the wealth of avian visitors to New York’s green spaces every spring.

I’ve also slightly upgraded my watercolors to the Paul Rubens 24 color set, and I’ve really been enjoying them so far. I didn’t realize quite how dried out my previous set had been but I noticed the difference in pigments immediately. The sketchbook I use is the Handbook Journal Co. Watercolor Journal, 300gsm version, but the 300gsm feels a bit overkill for what I use it for (mostly watercolor/markers/colored pencils). I still have a ways to go before I finish it, but if anyone has any recommendations for good mixed media sketchbooks with smooth paper I am definitely open to them.

I am still working out the format of these weekly observation posts, but it has been a nice practice to draw up a few things I saw over the past couple of weeks to share on here. If you’re not subscribed already, and visual journals are your thing, I would love if you followed along!

If I’m being honest, I didn’t get out much over the last two weeks. It has been super cold and I’d been sick, so it didn’t feel like the best idea to get outside too much. I did get a lot of reading and television in: I read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, and finally finished watching Dark on Netflix. I had started Dark back when it came out and loved it, but by the time the second season came out, I didn’t remember enough about what was happening to get back into it. If you aren’t familiar, Dark is a German show involving time travel and lots of complex, interconnected families/characters, so if you aren’t up to speed it can be especially difficult to understand what’s going on. I ended up rewatching the first season and binging the rest, and it was definitely one of my favorite shows I’ve seen in a long time. If you have the stamina, I can’t recommend it enough.

I also really enjoyed Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; I read it as part of the queer book club I’m in, and it sparked some really interesting discussion about how growing up with (or without) religion has had a different impact on all of us. As someone who grew up Catholic and as a closeted queer person, but is no longer religious, I really resonated with Jeanette’s (main character) description of what her religion has offered her and what she missed about God once she left home and was no longer under the influence of her evangelist mother (and could form some opinions of her own):

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don’t even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.1

I think I’ve mentioned this on here before, but this year I’ve been on a mission to curate what I consume a bit more. Particularly with cell phones glued to our hands, it can be so easy to passively consume content that has been served to you instead of purposefully choosing what you want to watch/read/listen to. I’m doing my best to keep lists of what I want to watch and what I have watched, what I have read and what I want to read, to hopefully incorporate some higher quality art into my media diet. I am not saying I’m not going to consume garbage sometimes (this season of Love is Blind..), I’m just going to do it because I chose to do it instead of feeling like I came upon it and someone told me to.

Subscribe now

Impossibly, we also got more snow this week (a blizzard!). The snow from our last big storm had just barely melted and then about 20” was immediately dumped on top of it. I actually don’t mind it, but I work from home four days a week so I’m probably in too privileged of a position to have a relevant opinion on it. The walk to my gym from my apartment is about 20 minutes away so I do get to experience various creative shoveling solutions that way, at least. This storm seems to have had a way more robust response than the last one - we’re practiced now, and most of the sidewalks had been shoveled with a couple of hours of the snow stopping. Last storm, it stopped in the morning, but our sidewalk wasn’t shoveled until almost 5pm. Somehow, we’re supposed to get even more snow this upcoming week- interested to see how that pans out.

I recently came across a video on Instagram of a bald eagle huddling over her eggs during a winter storm, crying out to her mate. The nest was covered in snow, and the comments on the video were somewhat divided between those who insisted she was built for this kind of thing, and those expressing sympathy for her suffering. It led me to think about how the ways that both right, and I started wondering about how much of my own relationship with nature involved an oscillation between “othering” myself from it and also projecting my own humanity onto it.

Another objection that can be considered here is that there is a danger in extrapolating the welfare of wild animals from our own imagination of how we would feel in the situation.1

On the other hand, we should also be wary of underestimating the extent and severity of wild-animal suffering due to our own biases.2

While it is likely that the insulation in her feathers will likely keep her and her eggs warm enough to survive through the snow, she is also probably cold and uncomfortable, at the least. There is so much suffering in nature, on a daily basis, simply as a necessary component of survival. And there is also so much resilience. I find it easy to project my own feelings onto either narrative, but it has made me question what it means to truly appreciate nature.

I have been coming back to the idea that to truly love nature, I have to understand that I myself am a being of nature. When I am “out in nature”, I am not a tourist, but I think it has become easy to imagine myself as one, particularly when I am to “leave no trace” if I am to be thought of as a good environmental steward. I am not suggesting I abandon these important principles that minimize our already outsized effects on natural ecosystems. But I do think it’s important to think about how their messaging can be internalized, and how they tell me that I am different from other natural beings.

This pastoral world of nature is a place to visit, but we can’t live there; the writer must return from either a literal or an imagined retreat into nature.3

It is often assumed that wild animals live in a kind of natural paradise and that it is only the appearance and intervention of human agencies that bring about suffering.4

It communicates that nature is to be looked at, not touched, and if it is touched, it is to be returned to its original state before I touched it. If I have left a trace, some proof of my being here, I have left it for the worse.

As Timothy Morton explained in his book Ecology without Nature “putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration”.5

To idealize nature is to other it, and to other it is to remove yourself from it, and to remove yourself from it creates a fundamental misunderstanding about our own relationship to nature. We are not separate from nature, but born of it, and it’s impossible to understand this truth about the human animal without also understanding violence and suffering.

Bellini shows how, through the Gnostic perspective, both works question a basic ecological tenet: that human and nonhuman life on Earth has intrinsic value. Both authors, Bellini argues, “believe that one has to find a way to lead an authentic life within this world, amidst its darkness.”6

I don’t subscribe to the Gnostic perspective that nature is inherently evil, but to believe that humans are a part of nature and that nature is inherently good is to idealize humanity in a way that diminishes what we are capable of (both good and evil). To understand that nature is not good and not evil, and that at its heart is survival which I believe is morally neutral, is to be able to conceptualize both human and non-human animals in relation with one another in a real, authentic way.

Loving nature for only the parts that pastoral writers describe feels like a shallow appreciation. In the year of analog7, where more and more people are focusing on things in the real world, including nature... to believe that these things are inherently “good” is a misunderstanding that can be short-sighted at best and dangerous at worst. I think we are looking to nature for a cure to modernity that doesn’t necessarily exist, though I am not diminishing the amazing benefits that nature can provide.

I love the idea that to prevent environmental destruction, we need to become more appreciative of the natural world, how we are part of it, and we need to see ourselves in it. I fear that too shallow of a relationship with nature is not enough to save it; if we see nature as simply a beautiful place that we can be tourists of, the inherent tie to our own drive to save it will be weaker. But if we are able to see nature for what it is, and how its essence is also our essence, that we are one and the same instead of separate, it feels like a more powerful correlation between us.

There are many examples of the ways that animal and human behavior appear indistinguishable. Animals play as youngsters to begin to understand which behaviors are accepted and which are not, and animal parents correct/punish these behaviors to encourage their young to align with the social order (exhibited in young lions, bears, wolves, and zebras). Young cats play-practice hunting. I am reminded of the ways that human children play, and how often play replicates what they have seen adults do (playing house, for example). Chimpanzees have been shown to understand justice and fairness, refusing to accept a reward for completing a task if they perceive another chimp to receive something better. And many animals have been shown to exhibit behaviors that can only be described as grief (wolves, dolphins, elephants) when their companions are missing or have died.8

We have done a lot to separate ourselves from nature, particularly in the ways that we have limited potential discomforts. Instead of going out to hunt, we can simply go to the store. We heat our homes in the winter, and cool them in the summer. We use lights to continue our regular routines despite changing amounts of daylight throughout the year. If you’re sick, you can seek the care and treatment of a doctor.

So how do we maintain regular connections with nature when so much of our daily lives is about distancing ourselves from it?

Despite our best efforts, we are still deeply affected by the seasons (at least if you live in a place that has them). In the summer, we are more social, and you find people out and about more often than in the winter, where we hole up in our homes to keep warm. People suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder in the colder, darker months. We plant our flowers in the spring, go apple picking in the fall, and usher in the darkest part of the year by adding decorative lights to our homes, regardless of what holiday you celebrate. We might change our skincare or our diets based on how cold or dry or warm or humid it is outside.

We live within cycles and seasons all the time, whether it is seasons of the earth or seasons of our lives, where darkness brings about light over and over again, ad infinitum, until we die. Sometimes we are the eagle, crying out, covered in snow, hoping we’ll keep our nest warm through the morning, and sometimes we are the eagle soaring through the warm spring sun, with a fish in our talons. Our drive for survival keeps us pushing through the difficult times in pursuit of the light, and sometimes in a bid for survival, we are morally fallible. When we understand this, I don’t know how we could see ourselves as anything but deeply ingrained in nature.

New York has been exceptionally cold the past couple of weeks, but the day before the big snow storm I managed to get out to Central Park to try to see some birds. I had a feeling there would be a flurry of activity of birds preparing for the snow, and in truth I have never seen so many birds around in the winter. I have also never seen a great blue heron (at least not in the last few years, when I’ve been tracking my life list) so I was excited to spot one standing at the edge of The Lake, surrounded by Canada geese and mallards all trying to keep warm. It was tough to see at first because it was so still, and blended right in with the big boulders at the edge of the water. My wife and I agree that it looks like the wizard in charge of the place.

All of the other birds around were pretty much what you would expect to see in Central Park in the winter: plenty of dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers, house sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees. I also managed to see a pair of what I believe to be mated red-tail hawks hunting; they were perched high in trees just across from each other near a big gathering of other birds. My favorite winter birds are always the female cardinals, though- I find them to be so photogenic.

Last week I traveled up to Albany for work, and through a comedy of Amtrak errors, we ended up on an earlier train home that we’d originally planned. I was pretty happy about this, though, because it meant that I got to watch the sunset over the Hudson for the entire ride. I love taking the train and sometimes I honestly think about booking a ticket just so I can sit and look out the window and read - it is better than any coffee shop in my opinion.

Though it has been super cold, I’ve been trying to get myself out of the house during the work day just to make sure I remember that the outside world exists. I live near a cemetery and in New York, you have to take advantage of any green space when you can, so my walks usually take me here. Last week I saw a big red-tail flying overhead, presumably hunting there, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed. I loved these two squirrels flattening themselves against a tree to make themselves invisible. It feels wrong to feel entertained by their mortal terror but I’ve been trying to remind myself that to truly appreciate nature, you have to appreciate all of it, and the truth is that real nature can be terrifying.

I started this year with the half-intention to work more in this sketchbook, thinking that I would use it to record my weekly natural observations on a double page spread, combined with some reflections on what I’d managed to see that week. I figured I would let January be an experimentation period for this and see what came of it, because none of my intentions or resolutions or promises to myself have failed harder than when I start out of the gate with strict rules about them. I took inspiration for this practice (experimenting, letting January be a month to just figure things out) from a few different sources: Make January an In-Between Month, Tiny Experiments (I loved the premise of this book but think I would have gotten the same benefits if it were a long essay), Austin Kleon talking about how January is a hangover month, and finally another tidbit from Anna Brones:

From this experiment, I learned a few things:

1. I am definitely enjoying being back in my sketchbook-

2. But a two-page spread a week in my larger sketchbook is maybe a bit more than I can handle, speaking as someone who prefers to work smaller and more detailed.

3. I also think I want to expand these “observations” beyond just nature (though I imagine those will still be the bulk of what I’m drawing). I might incorporate some collage/photographs/pressings as well.

I’m still planning to work weekly in my sketchbook, sharing the things I’ve observed, but I will probably limit it to one page per week. My plan at the moment is to share a post every two weeks and still show you a double page spread, plus maybe a bit about what I saw/did/consumed (media-wise) that week. Another goal of mine this year is to consume more “high-quality” media and fewer 10-second videos that I immediately forget about, but it’s also not lost on me that what was the brainrot of my childhood (television) is now considered “high-quality” (though never a replacement for books!).

All that to say is that I’m sharing week 1 of 2026 with you now, and then will probably start up at weeks 5 and 6 (how are we already 6 weeks into the year?!) to avoid the stress of “catching up”, which is another thing that always guarantees goal failure for me. Letting myself just miss a few has done more for consistency than catching up ever did.

For now, I’m just sharing a bit of what I saw in Woodstock over New Year’s. Not drawn above is a juvenile bald eagle I saw flying overhead on New Year’s Day: technically my very first bird of 2026 (I was sure it was going to be a red-breasted nuthatch based on the quantity I’d seen in the days before).

New York has been COLD cold these past few weeks (not to mention still caked in frozen snow from the storm last weekend) so it has been harder for me to get myself outside. I did manage to get to Central Park the day before the snow came figuring the birds would be out preparing, so I do have some ideas for the next spread I share with you. If you’re reading from a place in midwinter at the moment, know that February 1st is Imbolc or the Celtic fire festival marking the beginning of spring, so we’re starting to turn the corner even if it’s doesn’t quite feel like it yet!

I, like many other stationery enthusiasts, have had stumbled upon the recent trend of sharing one’s “notebook ecosystem”—a thing I’ve had for ages but never really described it as anything other than “my journals”. Often times when I see these videos, the author is using a traveler’s notebook or Paper Republic leather cover to bind up several small/thin notebooks, each one with a different use. I find these to be beautiful as objects but don’t really resonate with the way I use my journals (I like different sizes and paper types and brands for different uses and they wouldn’t really work together all bound up in a single leather cover). The other reason I have yet to be influenced by these is that I really enjoy a high quality leather cover where I can slip my notebook covers directly into the sleeves and not have to worry about it sliding around (as seems to be the case with the multi-notebook leather covers). Regardless, I enjoy watching videos about them and have really been excited about a general push towards more analog ways of note-taking that we all seem to be having now thanks to a general sense of digital exhaustion.

I’ve called this newsletter my “stationery ecosystem” because I thought I would share some of my other favorite supplies in addition to my stack of notebooks. I am very particular about most of these items and can tell you that anything I’ve listed here comes with the highest recommendation, but I can talk about notebooks/stationery all day and I’d love to discuss any questions or suggestions if you have them.

The Notebooks

There are six notebooks I plan to use regularly in 2026, and I’ll share a bit about each one below. If you’re more interested in the stationery/art supplies I’m using, feel free to skip closer to the bottom.

1. A6 Nanami Paper Seven Seas Cafe Notes

This was the first leather cover I ever bought from Ilona of SasankaStudio, and from then on I was hooked. Unfortunately she is not currently shipping to the US due to current costs, but as of November mentioned she had been looking for a more affordable shipping method. So if you’re elsewhere in the world for now, I can’t recommend her work enough.

This notebook’s use has evolved over the years (this is my 2nd or 3rd Cafe Notes, though the A6 ones I use aren’t in stock right now) - for a while I was using it as a to do list/planner, especially during COVID. Right now I mostly use it as a journal to take with me when I’m not feeling like schlepping my larger one, particularly to take notes during lectures/classes/while out in nature (I’m currently taking courses at the New York Botanical Garden to earn my Urban Naturalist certificate, which you’ll see notes for above). I’ve also been trying to avoid the double screen situation (aka looking at your phone while watching TV) and am thinking I’ll also start using it as a sort of media journal to doodle or sketch in while I watch movies/shows.

2. B6 Sterling Ink Daily Planner

I started keeping a daily planner in a plain notebook during COVID to help me keep track of the days that were passing and seemed all the same. Over the years since, the practice has evolved and this is my 3rd year using a designated planner rather than a plain notebook. The first year, I used the Moleskine A5 softcover daily planner, followed by the Jibune Techo A5 slim Days planner (pictured below). I do most of my task/event organizing and planning digitally, but having a paper daily planner has been a nice way to not get overwhelmed and to focus in on the things I really need to do. I am really liking the Sterling Ink planner so far and think it may be the first daily planner I repurchase. I enjoyed both the Moleskine and the Jibun Techo, but both of those day timelines didn’t quite work for me (Moleskine started at 8am, and I wanted an earlier start, and Jibun Techo was a full 24 hours which compressed my daily schedule into just the hours I actually needed). I also am really enjoying the B6 size - I’ve learned I tend to not like a narrow notebook as much.

I had reached out to Ilona at SasankaStudio for the cover of this notebook originally, but then found out she wasn’t shipping to the US. On my hunt for similar covers to hers I found EternalLeatherGoods and have been loving this beautiful orange-brown cover. This cover is a much softer/”floppier” leather than Ilona’s covers have been (at least in the leathers I have ordered from hers, they are more structural). I personally like both types (EternalLeatherGoods’ feels like a glove on the notebook, while Ilona’s feels more like a real book cover, which I think are both great qualities) but thought the distinction would be useful if you’re looking for something specific in your next cover.

Above, you’ll see my 2025 Jibun Techo planner–a great planner, just a few quirks that didn’t line up with what I was looking for.

3. A5 Nanami Paper Seven Seas Crossfield Notebook

This journal is sort of a catch-all: morning pages, regular journaling, brainstorming, common placing, some drawing and sketching. I absolutely love the cover and the scratchy patina it has developed and try to take it everywhere I can with me. I have found that having separate notebooks for too many separate use cases causes some overwhelm and makes me not use any of them, which is why I have dumped most of them into this “everything” journal. I know this might be funny to non-stationery or notebook people on a post already talking about six notebooks, but on a daily basis it’s mostly just two of them (my planner and this journal). I know that some people separate out morning pages or commonplace books from regular journaling, but to me these things are sort of all connected.

4. B5 Leuchtturm Blank Hardcover Notebook

No interior shot of this one, mostly because I’ve just started using it instead of reaching for my iPad or a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes I need to do some mind-mapping or want to figure something out on larger paper than I have in my A5 journal, so I’ll use this notebook for that.

5. Handbook Journal Co Watercolor Journal

I bought this sketchbook a couple of years ago (note the 2023 date on the last entry), hoping to use it as an art journal, but kind of got overwhelmed by how big it is and stopped using it. I’m trying again this year where I hope to complete a double spread per week composed of smaller illustrations/art journaling based on what I observed during the week. It will be a sort of nature journal but I’m not necessarily limiting myself to that if there’s something else I feel inspired to draw. I am really inspired by the work of Helen C Stark and her weekly visual journals, and am hoping to build a similar practice to the one she has.

6. A5 Leuchtturm Dotted Softcover Notebook

I also use an A5 Leuchtturm Dotted Softcover notebook for work that’s only pictured in the stack at the top. I like these because they’re easy/light enough to take with me between work/home and I like being able to bend back the cover to take notes during a meeting/conference/presentation.

Subscribe now

Stationery/Art Supplies

Here are some of my favorite journaling and art supplies. Most of these things were collected over years, so I’m not sharing these in an effort to influence you to go out and buy them all at once.

• Uniball Vision pens in .5mm and .7mm: I absolutely love these and have used them for years. They are waterproof and write like a dream.

• Lamy Safari Fountain Pen: I use this in my everyday journal because when I use a fountain pen, it feels like writing is an Experience. I have tried many fountain pens within the $50 budget range (brands like Pilot, Kaweco, Hongdian) and to be honest, I have always returned to Lamy. I read somewhere that western fountain pen brand nibs tend to write more broad/thick (like Lamy and Kaweco), which makes sense so far with my experience. I think this is an unpopular opinion in the fountain pen world, but I don’t really love a fine line. The only pen I’ve loved more than Lamy is perhaps my Pilot Lucina, which I believe they don’t make anymore, but I could never find a broad nib sold separately from the pen itself and I had already purchased one with a Medium nib that was a bit too fine for me.

• Prismacolor Pencils: I’ve used these since high school, and really enjoy using them to add some character to marker or watercolor drawings.

• Sakura Koi Watercolors: These have lasted forever, are cheap, and I don’t have any complaints about their pigmenting.

• Windsor Newton Watercolors: I haven’t tried these yet but I’m sure they’ll be amazing - they were a Christmas gift this year.

• Tombow Markers: I love these on all my Tomoe River paper notebooks (3/6 of my notebooks are Tomoe River..) because they don’t bleed and still blend great.

Some other supplies not pictured:

• Canon PIXMA iP8720: Great photo printer for the price

• Bookmark Tabs: I love these because a sheet of them can be used as a bookmark, and then the sticky tabs are great for noting quotes I want to copy down after I’m done reading.

• Caran D’Ache water soluble crayons: I haven’t used these in forever but am hoping to start using them in my watercolor journal this year

• Mod Podge/Yes Paste/Scotch Permanent Glue Stick

• Micron Fineliners for outlining

I’m sure these notebooks and tools will change and evolve over the year, and maybe I’ll make interim posts on how I’m updating my notebooks or how they are naturally changing based on what I’m using them for. Starting a new planner in the new year always reminds me to take stock of what purpose my notebooks and sketchbooks are serving and I am excited to see how they grow with me in 2026.

For the people of the old world, the solstices effectively divide the year in two, a dark half and a light half; six months of waxing sun and six months of waning.1

I have realized that for most of my life I have thought about Christmastime, and the winter solstice, like the entryway into darkness; January and February always feel like the longest, coldest, darkest months of the year. The truth is that the winter solstice marks a turn towards light, and for the next six months we are offered a little more each day, until the summer solstice marks another turn towards darkness. And on and on again on our rock hurtling through space, until one day the sun explodes or humanity has ended itself prematurely and thus is no longer around to witness the fading of the light.

Probably a little much for Christmas day, but like all things generated from some capacity for forced cheer, there seems to be a kind of darkness underpinning it all. I say this as someone who loves Christmas, and has always loved it, though my love of it has changed as I’ve gotten older. As a child, the holiday magic crept in around the edges and seeped its way through before I even noticed it was there—like breathing or blinking—in that I didn’t really have to think very much about it at all. As an adult, feeling like I am truly taking advantage of the holiday season takes focused effort, planning, money, and all of the things that are not really inherently magical. It’s at this point in your life that you understand most of the holiday magic was probably just your parents.

So much magic is axed out of us, by the accumulating hurts of adulthood, our imaginations muffled by fear and loss, by the dull chores and arguments that separate us from the type of light and darkness that lives within us and outside us.2

Nostalgia is inherently embedded in Christmas, and nostalgia is inherently connected to loss. Loss of a time, an age, a person, a childhood. It is so easy to understand why the holidays can be difficult for many, when it can be as if taking a spotlight to the things that were once in your life and are no longer there.

We’re pulled back to childhood and, with the dark and cold, we experience our distance from it, and with that comes the knowing, too, that time is running out. Time gone and time left⁠—winter delivers us this knowledge and with it comes the ache.3

With each winter solstice marking the passing of a year and a new beginning, and it’s easy to use this time to measure how our lives are changing: how they are different from last time around, how there are new people in our lives and maybe some who have left us. It’s also easy to feel a sense of our own mortality as we witness the changing of our own lives through whatever practices we choose to measure our year and plan our next. At the end of each year, I have engaged in some sort of reflection and some sort of planning exercise, and with each year my planning exercise is done with less and less specificity. I give myself too much to do and don’t account for all the ways that life might have other ideas.

In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts makes a case that always convinces me, but which I always seem to forget: that life is, by its very nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalise our comfort and security, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life.4

Recently, I have also been trying to lean into seasonal change to govern some of the ways I live, and to embrace not only the earthly seasons but seasons of life. Gradually, I have been releasing my need to give 100% of my effort to every possible faction of my life. In the winter, I naturally gravitate to focusing on my home, on my creative pursuits, on reading, on resting. In summer, I move towards activity again find myself in the gym more often, taking walks, seeing friends. I don’t follow this so strictly as to not allow myself crossover between the seasons, but instead try to harness what it feels like I need. In the winter, I still need to get outside and look at the birds. In the summer, I still need to reorganize my closet and spend an evening in reading alone.

Nature shows that survival is a practice. Sometimes it flourishes—lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey—and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It doesn’t do this once, resentfully, assuming that one day it will get things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. It attends to this work each and every day. For plants and animals, winter is part of the job. The same is true for humans.5

I hope this winter season brings you the rest you need, and some peace in knowing that it’s okay to slow down in a season where the rest of the earth is doing the same. I will be spending mine getting the house in order, taking up as many analog activities as possible, and leaning into nostalgia.

Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills.1

As a birder in New York City, this image appeals to me, too, but in some ways the antithesis of what birding in an urban landscape has actually taught me.

Before birding, I had always had a sort of tangential interest in all animals and nature. It wasn’t until birding became more of an obsession, though, that I realized how much I had been missing out on. It feels almost like I have awakened to a richness of wildlife I could not have dreamed existed in an urban environment. The other day I was walking down a main street in my neighborhood, just beyond a subway overpass, when I heard downy woodpeckers chirping over a red-tailed hawk passing overhead. A block later, already attuned to birdsong I don’t typically hear, I saw my first hairy woodpecker. Had birding not trained me to listen and to look, I would have entirely missed the wildlife interacting just above my head.

These moments have reminded me of the ways that human beings are interconnected with nature all the time. And maybe the most beautiful sight to me is no longer the birds taking over New York, but New Yorkers stopping to notice the wildlife happening all around them, learning about their local ecosystems, and understanding how they can help.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes an instance in which she asks her 3rd-year environmental students to “rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was ‘none’”.2 She’s shocked by the sort of cynicism present amongst young people who have actively chosen an educational pathway that will presumedly lead them to career paths in which they will have a positive impact on the environment, yet they are unable to describe examples of how this has occurred in the past. I find this type of comment to be similar to the fantasy of the birds taking over New York City- those of us who love the environment can just as easily forget that humans are a part of the environment in which we love, and we need to be able to imagine a future in which our fates are more intertwined, not less.

Nature writing, to me, has been a way for us to reconcile all of this: the ways in which that we are a part of nature despite trying to separate ourselves from it in the modern era. In particular, they are about reigniting an imagination in which positively affecting nature is positively affecting humanity, because they are one and the same.

Nature essays are never only about trees or mountains or rising seas or birds. Essays about nature, that most complex, capacious word, are always in some measure essays about ourselves, our imperfect, blinkered selves, our ability to be held and to hold. Though much has changed over the two-hundred-year course of the modern nature essay, its central focus has remained the near-loss of our greatest human attribute, our “wild holy imaginations,” as Brian Doyle put it, about the way contact with plants and stones and weather and animals and other human beings condenses our concentration, revealing to us that we live in a world that is both more terrible and more wonder-filled than the one we have grown accustomed to.3

Loren Eiseley’s essay, “The Bird and the Machine”4, has resonated with me deeply in a time where we are becoming further from nature and closer to machines, and where our technological discourse has come to a debate over whether we should allow machines to take on tasks that define our humanity: writing, thinking, making art. We have more in common with birds than with ChatGPT, and as much to lose as the birds do if we cannot cultivate more positive human-environment interactions:

The machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird.5

To be connected with nature is simply to pay attention, wherever you are in the world. It doesn’t matter if you are in a bustling urban center or on top of a mountain. You simply need to look up from your machine to the sky.

I have always held a soft spot for New York City's rats and pigeons, which is far from a popular opinion. I consider them to be important characters in the defining New York City landscape, and I also believe (like most things universally hated) that the reasons we dislike pigeons and rats have more to do with our own failings than the qualities of these so-called pests. The conditions for pigeons and rats to thrive in the city have been created by us. The dirt, the trash, and grime is ours alone. I cannot fault them for taking advantage of the wonderful opportunities we have presented them with.

If you live in New York City and and love birds, you are also probably all too familiar with the tragic tale of the humble pigeon - particularly, the way they were once known to us to be breeding, racing, and message-carrying war-time heroes, before we discarded them in the early 20th century when technology allowed for communication in other ways.1 We bred pigeons to depend on our care and abandoned them once we perceived them to be no longer useful to us.

While they have a reputation for being "dirty", pigeon-related diseases are very rare, and pigeons are extremely good at keeping their feathers clean.2 Pigeons are also well-suited to the urban ecosystem in that they are opportunistic feeders and provide sustenance to our native birds of prey (which in turn, keep the pigeon population healthy and relatively free of illness).3

When I see pigeons on subway platforms and perched on the edge of my 15th floor office, I feel grateful to be reminded of the natural world even in places where its existence seems unlikely. For the pigeon in particular, I am reminded of the resilience of life, and the ways that pigeons have learned to thrive even after abandonment. I fear it is their resilience that has earned them their reputation as pests - perhaps it's their sheer numbers combined with their proximity to us. We don't feel the same about sparrows or starlings, which are invasive, destructive, and numerous, but these don't show up in the same quantities in public spaces with the same dependence on our scrap for food.

What would New York's urban parks be without the pigeon? Pigeons display a stunning range of colors and patterns, and I don't believe our sense of the city would be quite the same without flocks of their beautiful plumage decorating our open spaces. Their coos are quiet but unmistakeable, and I find their close social bonds and mate-for-life tendency to be charming.

I feel the same way for rats as I do for pigeons, in the ways that the root of the "problem" is us - the ways that pests remind us of our own faults. Rats are also not dirty creatures, but we perceive them that way because they root around in *our* dirt. The average person living in New York produces 4.5 pounds of trash per day, and we have no alleyways in which to store it, so these many tons of trash simply exist in our front yards.4 The rats serve as reminders of our own filth, our own waste, and our own inabilities to keep ourselves and our environment clean. How can we fault them for taking advantage of the food that we consistently leave out for them? When we see them running through the subways, these our *our* dirty underground tunnels. The rats are not running through filth of their own making, but rather ours.