Snapper

"Humor, tragedy and beautiful writing mark this series of stories chronicling events in the first three decades or so of professional bird-watcher Nathan Lochmueller’s life. Here’s a good example of his prose, in which Lochmueller compares the ovenbird with the Kentucky warbler: “The Kentucky warbler is more sadistic [than the ovenbird]. She doesn’t feign injury, but she leads you away from the nest until you are ankle deep in mud or rattlesnakes or both.” The cumulative effect of these stories is the realization that although we don’t always get what we want, we somehow end up wanting the things we’ve gotten. Hey, isn’t there a Rolling Stones song that says much the same thing?"