Well Read: This is How a Robin Drinks

You might know author Joanna Brichetto from her Instagram and blog, “Sidewalk Nature: Everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss,” where the self-proclaimed late-blooming naturalist chronicles the marvelous resilience of plants and animals making a home in urban Nashville. 

A certified Tennessee naturalist with a keen eye for often-overlooked details of flora and fauna, Joanna tracks the appearance of native Nashville mustard blooms across the fields of city parks, asking Metro to delay mowing as necessary to promote a “news-worthy, jaw-dropping, tear-in-the-eye superbloom” of the late February yellow flowers. She offers instruction on how to create a heavenly pollinator patch in the hellstrip—the neglected sliver of grass between the sidewalk and the street curb—and how to combat mosquitos with cunningly simple Buckets of Doom that lure insects to lay eggs in water laced with larvicide. Joanna reported on the 2024 cicada emergence with the rapt focus of a sports journalist covering the Olympics.

Now Joanna has written her first book, This is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature. With 52 essays arranged by season, the collection provides a year’s worth of observation, reflection and commentary on the disappearance of habitat in the urban landscape. 

In summer, Joanna rescues a dragonfly from a Goodwill store. In fall she gleans stinking ginkgo fruit from the sidewalk. In winter, she intersects with a misguided flock of seagulls at a Tennessee Kmart. By spring, Joanna is supplying nesting materials to a robin. 

The collection is thoughtful, funny and, to quote her kindred backyard naturalist Margaret Renkl, “profoundly beautiful, desperately necessary.” The author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss and The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year will join Joanna in conversation at Parnassus Books on Sept. 23, in advance of the Sept. 24 publication date. Preorder This is How a Robin Drinks at parnassusbooks.net or any online bookseller.