Her writing has appeared in Science, Discover and Smithsonian, and she previously worked for U.S. News & World Report and National Geographic. In recent years she traveled to the homelands of the keel-billed toucan, the tufted puffin and the hoopoe, and spent six weeks on an icebreaker in the Bering Sea, but she also enjoys watching house sparrows grabbing seeds off the grass near her apartment in Washington, D.C.