Naturalist Kenn Kaufman was fluent in the language of birds. He’d been differentiating starlings and grackles in his backyard since he was a child. He’d hitchhiked around the country logging as many species as he possibly could as a teenager. He’d essentially shaped a career around birds, writing field guides and leading tours and field-editing for the National Audubon Society.

When he moved to Ohio in 2005, though, he found he’d need to learn a new language.

“By coming to the epicenter of spring migration I was really throwing myself back to square one,” he wrote, “and I was going to have to start learning the basics all over again.”

The reflection is in Kaufman’s A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration, his latest book released in May, 2019. He’s set to present it in the Toledo Lucas County's Public Library's Authors! series, presented by The Blade and Buckeye Broadband, at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Main Library, 325 N. Michigan St.

There is no cost to attend, but an RSVP is requested. Go to toledolibrary.org/authors.

A Season on the Wind brings a wondrous tone to the phenomenon of bird migration, with particular attention to the migratory patterns that bring globe-trotting warblers, killdeer and the like to the woodlots and marshes that stretch beyond the Toledo along State Route 2.

Kaufman moved to the area from Arizona in 2005, in part to be near his now-wife, Kimberly Kaufman, who is executive director of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory. In part, he said, he also moved to be near the migration for which this region is known; its lofty status is underscored by the up to 90,000 birders who flock here for the Biggest Week in American Birding in May.

Kaufman had long been interested in bird migration, he said, and he describes in the first chapters of his book some of the domestic and international trips he’s taken to observe the phenomenon: Beidaihe, China; Veracruz, Mexico, among others.

But it wasn’t a part of his experience in Arizona, despite the state’s often more elevated reputation among bird-watchers. (“Why would you move to Ohio?” he recalls answering a thousand times.)

“I could go out and pretty much recognize all the plants and all the butterflies and lizards, in addition to the birds, and I knew exactly when to expect things,” Mr. Kaufman said of Arizona. “But moving here, moving to a new place halfway across the continent, everything was different. … having to re-learn everything was really great sort of a mental adventure.”

He’d long had a vague idea about writing a book on migration, he said. He’s a writer with editor and contributor bylines in magazines, as well as his own line of field guides and a popular memoir, Kingbird Highway, released in 1997. Kingbird Highway recounts his teenage hitchhiking days in the 1970s.

But it wasn’t until a spring day about 10 years ago — it’s still clear in his mind — that he decided to begin putting his ideas on migration to paper.

“The trees still hadn’t leafed out along the lake,” he recalled of the day in early May, “but suddenly there were all these little birds, these warblers and orioles and tanagers. They were migrating north from the tropics, and they were just all over.

“I was thinking, ‘This is really an amazing phenomenon. I should try to express this somehow to encourage people to get out and see it for themselves.’

“Even if I can’t succeed in really describing it as the magical thing that it is,” he continued, “maybe I can get close enough that it will inspire some curiosity and people will go outside and see it for themselves.”

A Season on the Wind covers a variety of topics related to migration, including an exploration of the counter-intuitive way that duck hunters helped to preserve the coastal marshland along State Route 2. Another chapter covers a bird’s eye view argument against wind turbines.

Kaufman said he wrote with a curious reader in mind, but not necessarily one who’s already familiar with the ins and outs of the birding community that’s already gearing up for the Biggest Week in American Birding.

These birders hail from around the world, and they already know what a special place this is, he said. He thinks everyone, birder or not, should be aware “that this is really a cool place to be.”

“You can see some brilliantly colored thing that weighs less than an ounce and flew here from South America,” the author marveled. “It’s really kind of a miraculous thing. It’s worth knowing more about it.”

First Published March 8, 2020, 1:00 p.m.