AS LOUD AS A FEATHER

When I was a kid, teaching myself to bird-watch, I would go out to the arboretum, and I found this one Anna’s hummingbird holding a territory.” Ornithologist Chris Clark’s obsession with hummingbirds like the red-crowned Anna’s began with repeated visits to the University of Washington’s arboretum, in Seattle, at the age of 14. Though he didn’t yet know that the tiny, fast-flying birds would form the basis of his professional life, he quickly became enamored with them. “I would go out every day to check on that bird.”

Fast-forward to 2019. Clark strolls across the campus at UC Riverside, where he has been a professor of biology for the past six years. The springtime sun is shining as a gentle breeze blows from the west. The predominant sound is traffic, but if you close your eyes and ignore the din of nearby I-215, you can just about hear the and produced by the hummingbirds as they