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Book Review: Conversations with Birds

Editor's Note: This review was originally published in San Francisco Book Review. 


Priyanka Kumar

Through Conversations with Birds, essayist, screenwriter, and filmmaker Priyanka Kumar adds another title: a naturalist. Kumar shares how her early years in Northern India have instilled a lifelong connection to nature. In a series of essays that span phases of her life and career in California, New York, and the Southwest, Kumar details observations, reflections, and epiphanies about connecting with the natural world, all the ways that various encounters with birds and other wildlife have left a lasting imprint. Kumar documents conversations with locals, wildlife biologists, conservationists, and others who offer insights into how climate change has impacted avian habitats and changed migration patterns.

Kumar’s adoration for birding and hiking is uplifting and contagious. She writes about observing burrowing owls, black-chinned hummingbirds, and sandhill cranes with great appreciation. Her spiritual connection with nature manifests in encounters with and sightings of wildlife at critical moments in her life: deciding to buy a home and the birth of her firstborn. Kumar’s illustrative writing style has the power to bring readers along on the journey through arroyos and Georgia O’Keefe’s mountains. The dwindling number of eagles wintering in the wetlands of New Mexico evokes a certain sadness. Kumar emboldens readers to act upon concern for all sentient beings amid widespread ecological demise.

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