Birding Babylon

There's a saying, "wherever you go, there you are."  More to the point, wherever you go, you'll find nature.  I'm always amazed at the tenacity of nature, a weed growing up through the cracked pavement of an industrial landscape, the bee that pollinates the weed flower, the spider hiding in the weed that captures the bee, the wasp that stings the spider and takes it back to its nest to lay an egg to feed its hatching larva.  There you are.  And so it is, in present-day Iraq, that nature perseveres among the explosions and death.  Amid that chaos, Sergeant Jonathan Trouern-Trend kept online journal of his birding and nature observations.  The highlights of these blog posts are assembled in this small book.  Hope springs eternal like the weed that grows up through the crack.