This book is largely a collage: I searched out the brightest bits from other people’s hordes of knowledge, pilfered them, and pasted them here. I’m indebted to those who provided material for the pilfering. Steve Barley indulged me by engaging in an earnest correspondence about videos of squirrels running obstacle courses. Philip Stark took me foraging, and has become a wise counselor on topics ranging beyond weeds. Charlie Walcott and Daniel Haag-Wackernagle directed my search on pigeons, and Haag-Wackernagle even sent me a copy of his beautifully illustrated book, all the way from Switzerland, complete with a translation from the German. Michael Steele and Mikel Delgado gave me with more charming squirrel facts than I could use. Nathan Talbot provided the mystery that gave me a reason to listen to birds, and Mike Nelson was there to offer pragmatic guidance when birdsong became overwhelming. I am lucky to live in the same place as the world authority on turkey vultures, John Long, a busy man who doesn’t care much for e-mail or telephone interviews, but who may be lured into conversation with good beer. John Marzluff helped me understand the dynamics of birds around cities, and Kaeli Swift spend several hours patiently debunking my assumptions about crow behavior, and nudging me toward much more interesting facts. Josh Klein was wonderfully insightful, and tremendous fun to boot. I owe special thanks to Eleanor Spicer Rice, who probably spent more time than any other expert in helping me understand my environment. To all the people who shared their stories with me, I offer my sincere thanks, especially those who reviewed the chapters and corrected mistakes. Any errors that remain are mine alone.
I’m also grateful to all the authors and scientists who wrote the books I drew from. They are noted in the text and in the bibliography. I hope readers seek them out. To casual readers, I especially recommend Superdove and The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. So good!
My agent Nicole Tourtelot nurtured this book from conception to completion. My editor Alex Postman launched the project, and when she moved on to other things, Mollie Thomas gracefully stepped in to bring it home. There are several more people at Rodale whose names I don’t know, who understood the book deeply and found exactly the right way to express its tenor in design, and transform it into a physical object. I appreciate all the magic that this team has worked.
Many thanks to Jennifer Kahn for spending all those Tuesdays in the teahouse with me, writing and talking about writing. To Daniel Herman, a tip of the hat for introducing me to Vast Aire.
My colleagues at Grist were an unstinting source of good humor and good company. Special thanks to the editorial team: Brentin Mock, Greg Hanscom, Ben Adler, Eve Andrews, Darby Smith, Ted Alvarez, Scott Rosenberg, Amelia Urry, Daniel Penner, Lisa Hymas, Andrew Simon, Katie Herzog, Amelia Bates, Mignon Khargie, and Heather Smith.
My family deserves special credit for this book. Josephine inspired the whole thing of course, and kept me honest by being a mostly uncooperative collaborator. That is, she was like herself rather than the character who would have fit more easily, but also more tritely, into these pages. I don’t know if I can make the case that her little sister, Jules, assisted in this project as there are several hundred hours of lost sleep weighing the scales in the other direction. But I suppose a good lawyer would point out that she could have woken up more in the middle of the night, and that, all things considered, she did everything that could be reasonably asked of a baby. I’m grateful for that, and for her enthusiastic embrace of the world’s minutiae. My greatest partner was my wife, Beth, who made this all possible in a thousand tiny, and several large, ways.