An elegant shorebird with a rounded body and an improbably elongated bill, the long-billed curlew is a highly intelligent bird that mates for life. There aren鈥檛 many curlews left, but those that remain undertake stunning migrations from summer grasslands to coastal and wetland wintering grounds, returning to find one another again. With their diverse habitat needs, these singular birds highlight the importance of critical but increasingly endangered grassland ecosystems and have become an emblem of the formidable challenges that all birds face today.
Priyanka Kumar has tracked the curlew over many years in New Mexico, the Great Plains, and the Great Basin, growing increasingly concerned about the fate of the grassland bird community. In this uniquely personal book, Kumar brings the curlew鈥檚 poignant story to life in an innovative narrative that weaves the bird鈥檚 on-the-ground perspective with her own. The result is a rich immersion into the ecology of North American grasslands that provides an eye-opening look at how keystone animals such as prairie dogs and bison keep this iconic ecosystem open for ground-nesting birds such as long-billed curlews, mountain plovers, and upland sandpipers.
Blending pioneering fieldwork with vivid storytelling and the latest science, The Grassland Queen uncovers the hidden drama at the heart of an imperiled ecosystem, revealing the fierce love of long-billed curlews for their family and the sustained love of a lifelong naturalist for her 鈥淶en bird.鈥�
“What a joy it is to explore America’s prairies with Priyanka Kumar. The Grassland Queen is a beautiful hybrid: part field guide, part love song, and part call to action. Kumar’s devotion to the long-billed curlew and its habitats sings from every page of this fascinating journey.”—Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League and Clutch
“New Mexico has a habit of bringing out stellar writing on the natural world—Mary Austin, Aldo Leopold, Sharman Apt Russell, and now Priyanka Kumar with this delicious book on an elusive bird. Traveling across her home state and far beyond, Kumar parts the veil between humans and nature, stepping through graciously and smartly. What an intimate pleasure to be by her side.”—Craig Childs, author of The Wild Dark
“Closely observed and vividly evoked on the page, Kumar’s studies of her ‘Zen’ birds illuminate the wonders of American grasslands, alongside the many threats they face. Mind and heart synergize in these reflections, offering depth and nuance.”—David George Haskell, biologist and two-time Pulitzer-finalist author of How Flowers Made Our World
“Priyanka Kumar is the female John McPhee.”—James McGrath Morris, author of The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War and Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power
“In this moving elegy to our vanishing prairies, Priyanka Kumar tells the story of the long-billed curlew. The book is a meditation on the western grasslands told with the patience of someone familiar with Zen writing and the perspective of her Himalayan childhood. This is nature writing at its best, robust biology enriched with history and personal experience. It is a must-read for anyone who cares about wildness, birds, environmental history, or our magnificent grasslands.”—Joan Strassmann, Washington University in St. Louis and author of Slow Birding
“I just love this book! It’s a great story, well told. I grew up with curlews—their voices haunt beautiful, lonely landscapes. And, as this book recounts, grasslands are landscapes on which human actions increasingly impinge.”—Stuart L. Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University, International Cosmos Prize winner, and president of Saving Nature
“Priyanka Kumar offers a paean to the magnificent long-billed curlew, North America’s largest and most handsome shorebird. Her tale is also a lament on the steady disappearance of the great expanses of native grasslands of the West that provide critical breeding habitat for this great shorebird. She richly describes her encounters with the curlews that she studies, along with the many plants and animals that populate her favorite haunts, to bring attention to a unique habitat that merits more appreciation.”—Bruce M. Beehler, author of Flight of the Godwit: Tracking Epic Shorebird Migrations
