This Is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature

Essays that celebrate urban nature with keen observation and earthy humor

Nature isn't only in a park or wilderness. It's right outside our door. Sometimes it's on the door or comes inside to find us. It's the jumping spider on the screen, the assassin bug in the shower, and the cluster of ladybugs at the lamp. It's the moss on brick where gutters spill, a sycamore sprout in the storm drain, and the trash can lid turned into a bird bath.

Joanna Brichetto is a neurodiverse, late-blooming naturalist with a sharp eye. Despite having chronic illnesses, she spends much of her time exploring nature and has an infectious, almost zealous love for the flora and fauna near and in her Nashville home. In This Is How a Robin Drinks, Brichetto weaves observation, reflection, and commentary with unsentimental wit and an earthy humor into an urban almanac of fifty-two short lyrical essays.

Each piece offers a sketch of everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss. Nature is the dead sparrow in the pickup line at the elementary school, a full moon over the electric substation, and the cicada chorus that doesn't make a days-long migraine any better (but doesn't make it any worse either). Nature is under our feet, over our heads, and beside us—the very places we need to know first. Arranged by season, the pieces collected here celebrate nature just as it is, on the sidewalk and in the backyard, the park, and the parking lot.

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