When I hear or see a bird, my mood lifts. This is instant, and always. Birds peck at my half-awake imagination. Their bones are hollow, their air prehistoric. Their stares exude suspicion, mistrust, keenness, curiosity. Waders can hold so still an unsuspecting fish or frog might mistake their legs for plant stems. Many songbirds are small enough to fit in a palm. They grip rough bark with superglue toes, then wing off and restitch the sky. They whistle and warble and make holy rackets, telling one another God-knows-what, day and night.

Saturday, May 13, is World Migratory Bird Day. In honour of that, today I signed a Nature Canada petition for the protection of migratory birds. I was immediately sent an email congratulating me on my new status as a “Migratory Birds Defender.” Um, thank you. I very much doubt signing an e-petition qualifies me for such a lofty label, but I will say that, in recent years, in part thanks to places & organizations such as the High Park Nature Centre and Lost River Walks (both of Toronto), the Swan Lake nature sanctuary in Victoria, B.C.—and Brewer Pond, the teeming urban wetland near our home in Ottawa—I have noticed my own appreciation of birds, my hunt for them on my neighbourhood walks, my research about them, and my awareness of their need for healthy and congenial habitats—even in urban environments—rise significantly.

And I have noticed them, more and more, flitting into my work. Birds of all kinds chirp and swoop through the pages of my new poetry collection, While Supplies Last, especially those that rely on wetlands and rivers, the threatened habitats that are the theme for this year’s bird day. Night herons act like bouncers; cormorants open their oily wings; and an elegant Toronto egret shows up a human who’s also fishing for the Humber River’s spoils. Great blue herons tiptoe “like they can’t stand getting their feet/ wet, looking like some grim creature/ come down to us before/ fire or light was invented.”

In While Supplies Last you’ll meet an aloof scarlet tanager, a panicked chickadee, and crazed barn swallows in a post-fire landscape. And you’ll contend with crows, which strut along the lines as if they wrote them. On the coast, they snicker while they beachcomb. In the city they “commandeer laneways” and “organize wakes.” In between, they veer through hydro right-of-ways, cawing.

Crows aren’t migrants; they’re residents. Same for chickadees and sparrows. But many of the bird species that populate my poems come and go along well-documented flyways, some clocking hundreds of kilometres or more each year. Like humans on the road, they need well-stocked rest stops along their routes.

I will launch While Supplies Last at the wonderful Manx Pub in Ottawa on Saturday, May 13: World Migratory Bird Day. A few friends will join and share poems that feature birds. We planned this before I knew the date’s significance: a happy coincidence. Let’s turn our minds, this weekend, to the birds, how they animate and elevate our foot-on-ground existence, how our careless ways disrupt, complicate, and threaten their vibrant, adventurous sky-high lives.