It’s snowed—hard, not just a few flakes—the first two days of April here in Ithaca. Nevertheless, the neighborhood songbirds have persisted, singing, despite the snow, their spring songs, which I, one of the budding bird-aware, am starting to recognize as distinct.

So this essay about a migrating bird out of place caught my attention this week: “What a songbird lost at sea taught me about survival.”

Science writer JoAnna Klein was at sea on a ship for weeks, with a team exploring the alien life of the deep ocean, when a creature from another world showed up. A female scarlet tanager (a drab green, despite the colorful name) dropped onto the ship and for five days became a star passenger.

Klein writes about the experience beautifully for Audubon, a meditation on lostness, companionship and isolation inspired by this “spark bird.”

“It wouldn’t have been unusual to find a Scarlet Tanager at the same latitude as our vessel in late October, but Homeslice was a little too far west from its typical route, and “a little bit lost,” [naturalist Ken] Kaufman said. “Being out there wouldn’t really be on its way to any place it wanted to be.”

…wouldn’t really be on its way to any place it wanted to be.

I can’t get this out of my head. Isn’t that the very essence of being lost? Not only not knowing where you are, but not knowing even where you want to be? I feel like this bird sometimes.

In the piece, Klein writes about her own “spark,” naturalist William Beebe, who ignited her interest in deep sea life. This essay fans the flames of my own interest in ocean invertebrates and those who study them.