Porter Square Books Presents: Rosemary Mosco with Joan Walsh, A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching

Join Porter Square Books for a virtual event with Rosemary Mosco, author of A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird: part field guide, part history, part ornithology primer, and altogether fun. Rosemary will be joined in conversation by Joan Walsh of Mass Audubon! This event is free and open to all, hosted on Crowdcast.

Fact: Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We’ve kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize our crops–and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Now, with The Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, readers can rediscover the wonder. Equal parts illustrated field guide and quirky history, it covers behavior: Why they coo; how they flock; how they preen, kiss, and mate (monogamously); and how they raise their young (on chunky pigeon milk). Anatomy and identification, from Birmingham Roller to the American Giant Runt to the Scandaroon. Birder issues, like what to do if you find a baby pigeon stranded in the park. And our lively shared story together, including all the things we’ve taught them–Ping-Pong, for example. “Rats with wings?” Think again.

Pigeons coo, peck and nest all over the world, yet most of us treat them with indifference or disdain. So Rosemary Mosco, a bird-lover, science communicator, writer, and cartoonist (and co-author of The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid) is here to give the pigeon’s image a makeover, and to help every town- and city-dweller get closer to nature by discovering the joys of birding through pigeon-watching.

Rosemary Mosco is a science communicator, acclaimed cartoonist, and speaker on all things bird. She’s the creator of the webcomic Bird and Moon and has authored many science books for young people, including co-authoring the bestselling Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid. She lives in Massachusetts.

Joan Walsh has been an ornithologist and ecologist since 1979, and is the Bertrand Chair of Ornithology and Natural History for Mass Audubon. She has worked with Common and Roseate Terns in New York, Wood Storks in east-central Georgia, and  seabirds and Elephant Seals on the Farallon Islands off California. Her interests involve large-scale and long-term monitoring of threatened populations, and innovative recovery programs for wildlife. Currently she is working on projects involving offshore wind in New England, Roseate Tern wintering grounds in Brazil, and a long-term forestry project in Belize. Joan loves to travel, and while she hasn’t been everywhere, it is on her list.