Spring is a time to open the back door, open a window, let the fresh, clean air blow through the house, to sit out in the sun for warmth, to rake away the winter debris from the garden, and enact the big plans you dreamed of for planting. In the midst of this activity, you will start to notice increased activity in the natural world— active squirrels and chipmunks, more varied birdsong and flights across the yard, maybe the first rabbits beginning to creep out to nibble on the new grass. I decided to pick up a book by an author on my TBR list from a few years back, to further immerse myself in natural observation. Helen Macdonald hit the scene with the great success of her memoir, H Is for Hawk. I wanted to read a variety of observations, so I picked up the compilation of her essays, Vesper Flights.

While many of her essays relate to birds of great variety, and applying what she learns there to personal observations about herself and people in general, there is a generous sprinkling of essays describing other orders of animals, including wild pigs, flying ants, hares, deer, and a funny short tale of her father and a goat. She also discusses animal-adjacent topics, such as weather, seasons, a solar eclipse, field guides, hidden observation buildings (known as hides), loss of trees to foreign parasites, and other topics. The landscapes of past and present are considered, leading to considerations of children and nature, versus adults, memory, human development of natural spaces, nature preserves, and climate change. She talks through how we change when we spend time in wild spaces, how the spaces and animals respond, how and if we notice our impacts large and small.

Macdonald is most at home in her descriptions of birds. Swifts, cuckoos, swans, ostrich, nightjars, gulls, warblers, and others. She discusses related phenomenon, such as nests, migration, false identification, tagging, rescue of injured birds, and bird feeding. Whether she scolds herself for mistakes made, or gently criticizes the mistakes of others, she can be humorous unintentionally. She seems to be a timid, tense person, who finds more ease and calm in nature. Macdonald uncovers truths about herself, and by extension us, in the way she sensitively observes animals, and how people choose to interact with them. She is working to increase our understanding of our needs, and the needs of animals who share our spaces, our Earth. I missed this when it was published in 2020. I’m glad I made time for it now.