"How grateful I am for the chance to join this generous author’s lyrical, intimate, and revelatory conversations with birds!” —Sy Montgomery, author of  The Soul of an Octopus “Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into myself.” So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape—and in the cosmos—by way of watching birds. Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life. Kumar’s perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. Rather, from the mango-colored western tanager that rescues her from a bout of altitude sickness in Sequoia National Park to ancient sandhill cranes in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and from the snowy plovers building shallow nests with bits of shell and grass to the white-breasted nuthatch that regularly visits the apricot tree behind her family’s casita in Santa Fe, for Kumar, birds “become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.” At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar’s reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that “seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.” Praise for  Conversations with Birds   “In this collection of elegant and evocative essays, a novelist reflects on the beauty and significance of   birds, those animals that ‘become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.’ ”— New York Times “A bird the color of mangoes, a beachcomber with a crescent-moon bill, the owl who controls the dark side of nature: in unforgettable encounters with feathered neighbors like these, Priyanka Kumar charts the life-changing surprise and splendor that birds can bring. They open the heart. They widen the soul. For Kumar, a peripatetic filmmaker and often a stranger in a strange land, birds have revealed connection and created wholeness. How grateful I am for the chance to join this generous author’s lyrical, intimate, and revelatory conversations with birds!” —Sy Montgomery, author of  The Soul of an Octopus “In 20 vignettes and essays, Priyanka Kumar lovingly narrates how encounters with birds have molded her outlook on life, family, and nature, bridging the mountains of her childhood in India to her adult wanderings in California and New Mexico. A spark was Kumar’s chance ‘mango-colored bird’ sighting—a Western Tanager—that stirs her to ‘aliveness’ during a near-death experience; her powerful musings take off from there. Her writing is full of beauty but also tells of destruction of the interconnected ecosystems that sustain birds and people. ‘Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us,’ she writes.”— Audubon “In her moving collection of elegant essays,  Conversations with Birds , she recounts her close encounters with cranes and curlews, owls and tanagers, generously sharing their wisdom and her own."— Michelle Nijhuis, author of  Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction "Priyanka Kumar’s graceful and unusual work reminds us, again, of everything we lose with each insult to the natural world.  Conversations with Birds  is a wonderful read!”—Andrea Barrett, author of  Ship Fever “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.”—Maileen Hamto , San Francisco Book Review “For anyone feeling lost in our increasingly complicated human world,  Conversations With Birds  is just the compass you need.”—Apple,   “Best Books of the Month” “Priyanka Kumar’s outstanding and profoundly moving book  Conversations with Birds  ... could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls.... [A] landmark, most timely book.” —Marc Beckoff, author of  The Emotional Lives of Animals "Kumar wows in this sparkling exploration of her relationship with the birds that serve as her 'almanac' and help her tune 'in to the seasons' and to herself. [. . .] These outstanding reflections will inspire and enlighten, and are perfect for readers of Diane Ackerman."— Publishers Weekly , starred review   “An eloquent depiction of how birding engend