This is Bird Note. Cartoonist and science writer Rosemary Moscow has loved birds since she was, as she puts it, a shy and nerdy kid.

I kind of got easily overwhelmed by loud sounds or lots of people and birds are just so quiet and

nervous and reward patients which I sort of identify with so I was really drawn to them.

She loved birds.

She loved birds and drawing.

And so she wanted to combine art and science in college.

She tried studying anthropology, but things weren't clicking.

I was just sort of struggling and stressed out.

And so I took a year off from college, and I worked for this group called Flap in Toronto, the

Fatal Light Awareness Program that tries to stop birds from hitting windows.

And so that was my first job in the field that I wanted to do and I made a cartoon called Bird and Moon, which

was about a lonely bird that affronts the Moon, who it turns out is also a bird and they

fly around the city and they have adventures.

And it was just sort of this fun thing I did on the side,

but that year of sort of taking a breather

that wound up dictating what I fell in love with

and what I wound up doing.

And then I had to go back and finish anthropology. No shade

to anthropology. It's amazing, but it just wasn't what I wanted to do.

Rosemary still makes informative and hilarious comics for Bird and Moon as well as her new book a

pocket guide to pigeon watching you can find links to those at our website

birdnote.org. I'm Mark Bramhill. The

...