I think what I'm better at is saying, 'Look at this. 'I'm quite a contrary person and I respond badly to being told what I should feel or do. You don't want to fight to save things if you don't love them and you don't love them until you know them.' So I try very hard to communicate to readers the beauty and complexity of what is being lost.

'My writing is different from I do as a person in the world. If 'H Is for Hawk' was about grief, 'Vesper Flights,' says Macdonald, is about love. That place, which she describes as 'very chocolate boxy-y, like 'Midsomer Murders,' without the murders,' was fixed up with proceeds from her international blockbuster, 'H Is for Hawk,' which describes her coping with her father's death by caring for a goshawk. I quite like sharing this place with other creatures.' We don't like when they cross into our spaces. With essays about birds who know no national boundaries, refugees denied safety because of artificial borders and creatures pushed from their homes by human selfishness, Macdonald finds myriad ways to make the case that, unlike humans, animals do not feel a need to 'own' their spaces: 'We are so careful in the modern world to police the boundaries between our lives and other animals. That's a nifty metaphor for her 'Vesper Flights,' which makes connections between humans and other creatures, guided by a belief that it's not them who should be figuring out how to adapt to us, but us who need to fit into the natural world. I'm not the world's greatest housekeeper, so I can look into the corner and see their webs.' 'I have these birds who use it as their nesting place. 'I live on my own but the thought that the house doesn't just belong to me as a habitation is really pleasing,' said Macdonald by phone from her home in Suffolk, England. By most accounts, the writer who will lead a Talking Volumes online event Wednesday lives alone. When Helen Macdonald refers to 'our house' in her new essay collection, she doesn't mean her boyfriend or a member of her family.

Helen macdonald hawk