Birding to Change the World: A Memoir

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment. Trish O'Kane never expected to be a birder. It was a lone red cardinal and a bumptious cast of house sparrows that changed everything for O'Kane after Hurricane Katrina shattered her life in New Orleans. Watching birds thrive throughout the devastated city became her salvation and set her on a new path. Soon O'Kane found herself pursuing an environmental science PhD in Wisconsin, where she became a full-on bird obsessive--logging hours and hours in a stunningly diverse urban park, filling field notebooks with observations of bird doings and dramas, and volunteering in a wildlife rehabilitation center bird nursery. But it wasn't until that park, her bird-watching haven, was threatened with development that O'Kane became an environmental activist. Taking her cues from the birds, she mustered a mighty flock of fellow human park lovers to raise their voices and save the park. Each chapter in Birding to Change the World features at least one species of bird that O'Kane has learned from. She recounts the astonishing science of bird life, including migration and survival strategies, along with many moving and compelling stories about birds and the humans who love them. In this heartfelt memoir, O'Kane shows what birds can teach us--and how that education can be a transformative force for social change. nIn this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment. Trish O'Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrine destroyed her New Orleans home, sending her into an emotional tailspin. Enter a scrappy cast of feathered characters--first a cardinal, urban parrots, and sparrows, then a catbird, owls, a bittern, and a woodcock--that cheered her up and showed her a new path. Inspired, O'Kane moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an environmental studies PhD. There she became a full-on bird obsessive--logging hours in a stunningly biodiverse urban park, filling field notebooks with bird doings and dramas, and teaching ornithology to college students and middle-school kids. When Warner Park--her daily birdwatching haven--was threatened with development, O'Kane and her neighbors mustered a mighty murmuration of natu