Making Research Invisible, Or At Least Not Intrusive

By Helen Collins Sitler

Two summers ago chimney swifts nested in my chimney. I didn’t know a thing about swifts, except that they were there, and that I was intrigued enough to write about them.

As I sat surrounded by field guides to birds, I didn’t know what I needed to know so I took a lot of notes. Gradually, I noticed that field guides all use similar categories: description, voice, habitat, migration ….  Those categories provided ideas for organizing and for section headings when...