Buried Birds

This chapter begins by illustrating how the author saw a Sooty shearwater while standing on a boat with no land on the horizon. The bird reminds the author of the freedom a child-body has. Other pelagic species also move the author. Working as a naturalist aboard a small boat in the Gulf of California one winter, after hours on deck staring at water, the author spotted a Xantus's murrelet. The author loves sea birds because of their differences from “regular” land-based birds. But preference is for the many species of pelagic birds who hide their lives on land. The ones like prions who bury themselves to lay an egg, whose chicks hunker in the dark until fledging or trundle out to sea before they can even fly. These birds know how dangerous earth can be.