Reason 5,794 why I love universities: My family has been enjoying watching a mockingbird nest in a tree right outside our second-story window, with both bird parents caring for three (noisy and hungry!) chicks.

It got me to pull out my copy of Joan Strassmann’s book Slow Birding, which presents research on common birds in an accessible way.

Strassmann used to teach at Rice, and her chapter on mockingbirds walks through the dissertation of a former student who studied them. I was able to pop over to Rice’s open access research repository and download the thesis, complete with the author’s detailed maps for her three-year observational study of mockingbirds on our campus.