Robert Michael Pyle is the author of twenty-eight books of essays, natural history, fiction, and poems, including a flight of well-known butterfly books. His previous poetry collections are Evolution of the Genus Iris, Chinook & Chanterelle, and The Tidewater Reach. He is a John Burroughs Medalist (Wintergreen) and a Guggenheim Fellow (Where Bigfoot Walks), among many other literary and conservation awards. A Yale-trained ecologist and Honorary Life Fellow of both the Royal and American Entomological Societies, he founded the renowned Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Bob Pyle has dwelled along a rural tributary of the Lower Columbia River for forty-five years, along with the jays, the band-tailed pigeons, and the voles.