What do you think?
Rate this book
Watch and Wonder: Birding as a Spiritual Practice
Birding can nourish our spiritual lives.
Birdwatching is a delight, a deepening. It puts us in touch with the ineffable, and it draws us toward self-denial for the sake of love. Birding brings us close to hope, abundance, and joy. In fact, it looks a lot like prayer.
From having his vision opened by a rare flycatcher, to learning the power of naming while watching shorebirds, to forging friendships on a Christmas Bird Count, naturalist, birder, and Episcopal priest Ragan Sutterfield delves into how birdwatching shapes our souls. He writes of turning yards into refuges for birds on their long migration. Even as we reckon with the inconsolable grief of habitat loss and species decline, he writes, birds can give us hope amid the desolation.
Readers of Margaret Renkl, Drew Lanham, and Terry Tempest Williams will find a kindred spirit in Sutterfield as he explores, in verdant and lyrical prose, the spirituality of birding over a year of watching, waiting, and wondering. In each chapter, Sutterfield names a particular way in which paying attention to birds shapes our souls and draws us toward awe. Twelve virtues and practices rooted in the Christian tradition--including joy, attention, slowness, kenosis, and friendship--are nurtured within us as we wait and watch and wait some more. Watching birds, we move toward sacramental looking at the visible to find the holy hidden behind it.
Winged wonders that delight and sometimes disappoint, birds are ever within and beyond our vision. Whether you are a serious birder with an extensive life list or a casual observer of hawks along the highway, this book is an invitation to wonder and awe. It only takes paying attention.
Birdwatching is a delight, a deepening. It puts us in touch with the ineffable, and it draws us toward self-denial for the sake of love. Birding brings us close to hope, abundance, and joy. In fact, it looks a lot like prayer.
From having his vision opened by a rare flycatcher, to learning the power of naming while watching shorebirds, to forging friendships on a Christmas Bird Count, naturalist, birder, and Episcopal priest Ragan Sutterfield delves into how birdwatching shapes our souls. He writes of turning yards into refuges for birds on their long migration. Even as we reckon with the inconsolable grief of habitat loss and species decline, he writes, birds can give us hope amid the desolation.
Readers of Margaret Renkl, Drew Lanham, and Terry Tempest Williams will find a kindred spirit in Sutterfield as he explores, in verdant and lyrical prose, the spirituality of birding over a year of watching, waiting, and wondering. In each chapter, Sutterfield names a particular way in which paying attention to birds shapes our souls and draws us toward awe. Twelve virtues and practices rooted in the Christian tradition--including joy, attention, slowness, kenosis, and friendship--are nurtured within us as we wait and watch and wait some more. Watching birds, we move toward sacramental looking at the visible to find the holy hidden behind it.
Winged wonders that delight and sometimes disappoint, birds are ever within and beyond our vision. Whether you are a serious birder with an extensive life list or a casual observer of hawks along the highway, this book is an invitation to wonder and awe. It only takes paying attention.
219 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2026
About the author
Ragan Sutterfield
9 books34 followersRagan Sutterfield (M.Div. Virginia Theological Seminary) is ordained in the Episcopal Church and serves a parish in his native Arkansas. His writing has appeared in a variety of magazines including The Christian Century, Sojourners, The Oxford American, Men’s Journal, The Englewood Review of Books, Christianity Today and Books & Culture.
Ragan is the author of Wendell Berry and the Given Life (Franciscan Media 2017), This is My Body: From Obesity to Ironman, My Journey into the True Meaning of Flesh, Spirit and Deeper Faith (Convergent/Random House 2015), Cultivating Reality: How the Soil Might Save Us (Cascade 2013), and the small collection of essays Farming as a Spiritual Discipline. He also contributed the opening chapter to the book Sacred Acts: How churches are working to protect the Earth’s climate.
Ragan is the author of Wendell Berry and the Given Life (Franciscan Media 2017), This is My Body: From Obesity to Ironman, My Journey into the True Meaning of Flesh, Spirit and Deeper Faith (Convergent/Random House 2015), Cultivating Reality: How the Soil Might Save Us (Cascade 2013), and the small collection of essays Farming as a Spiritual Discipline. He also contributed the opening chapter to the book Sacred Acts: How churches are working to protect the Earth’s climate.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 23, 2026
Two years ago, a good friend gave me Ragan Sutterfield’s last book, "The Art of Being a Creature," and I immediately fell in love with his writing. Since then, I have read all but one of his books and followed his Substack writing, “The Way We Practice.” Last spring, I discovered the joy of birding, a hobby I have found immense joy in getting into. So, when Sutterfield announced this book, I felt like it was written just for me. I am happy to say that I was not disappointed.
Sutterfield structures the book around the calendar with a chapter devoted to each month. This allows the reader to experience the changes that come throughout the year with birding. As Sutterfield relays stories about the thrills of searching for and finding birds as the seasons change, he explores how birding can open our eyes to different spiritual practices and concepts with each chapter exploring a different one. He explores birds and birding as forms of icons, liturgy, hospitality, abundance, grief, kenosis, and friendship, among others.
While birding is obviously a very visual and auditory activity, Sutterfield’s descriptive prose made me feel like I was in the field with him. While I am a birder myself, I think that Sutterfield's writing conveys the excitement and satisfaction of birding in a way that non-birders will still be able to appreciate. He is good at writing things in a way that shares his passion in a contagious way (I started composting after reading "The Art of Being a Creature"), and I bet that if non-birders read this, they’ll soon be looking through a pair of binoculars themselves.
I have already shared this book with a friend, and it has me even more excited to get out into nature this spring. This is a book that has enriched a favorite hobby of mine and one that I am sure to return to often.
Sutterfield structures the book around the calendar with a chapter devoted to each month. This allows the reader to experience the changes that come throughout the year with birding. As Sutterfield relays stories about the thrills of searching for and finding birds as the seasons change, he explores how birding can open our eyes to different spiritual practices and concepts with each chapter exploring a different one. He explores birds and birding as forms of icons, liturgy, hospitality, abundance, grief, kenosis, and friendship, among others.
While birding is obviously a very visual and auditory activity, Sutterfield’s descriptive prose made me feel like I was in the field with him. While I am a birder myself, I think that Sutterfield's writing conveys the excitement and satisfaction of birding in a way that non-birders will still be able to appreciate. He is good at writing things in a way that shares his passion in a contagious way (I started composting after reading "The Art of Being a Creature"), and I bet that if non-birders read this, they’ll soon be looking through a pair of binoculars themselves.
I have already shared this book with a friend, and it has me even more excited to get out into nature this spring. This is a book that has enriched a favorite hobby of mine and one that I am sure to return to often.
April 11, 2026
A lovely book about the spiritual practices contained within birdwatching. It wasn’t perfect, and some chapters were better than others, but overall I really enjoyed Sutterfield’s intentional look at birding and how we all need to slow down to consider the natural world around us.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I think this book, Watch and Wonder, may have been sent to me by God (and not just the NetGalley gods - thank you NetGalley, for the ARC). When the first chapter was called ‘Icons’ - something I collect and have plastered all around my house - I knew I was in for a treat.
A disclaimer: I am not into birding, though I kept a bird journal as a child. I have a pair of binoculars, and I’m obsessed with the birds in my mountain valley in the French Alps. I’m also not religious, though I am deeply spiritual and do love Jesus. That being said, being into birding and being Christian are not really necessary to enjoy this book. There is wisdom throughout that will certainly resonate for many of any, or no, denomination. Like Sutterfield says, “Whether religious or not, the things to which we give our attention and the activities we do with intention can have profound impacts on who we are.”
This book has reignited my passion for birds with such intensity that, upon getting 50% of the way through it, I went and bought a book on the most common birds in my backyard in France. I was moved, in particular, by this line, “It took slowness to create an opening for it to happen— quiet, attentive looking on both our parts. In that encounter we were together, two creatures acknowledging one another, and it was beautiful.” With this spark, I discovered there were TEN different breeds at my feeder! I owe this wonderful discovery to Sutterfield. Nevertheless, I do not think my passion will transition into true birding, anytime soon (Sutterfield makes it sound pretty exhausting - and expensive).
October was easily my favourite part of the book. I would say 50% of my highlights come from that chapter alone. The way slow living and stillness are embedded in his birding is profound, and he doesn’t skimp on the spiritual and Christian references, either.
I am truly of the belief that any passion when done woven with true joy, stillness, and peace, is a spiritual practice and, throughout the the book, Sutterfield confirms this.
Be that as it may, the book still fell short for me in a few categories. I hated the discussion of politics because it felt like it contradicted the freedom and peace of birding and the spirituality of this practice. I also felt that Sutterfield contradicts himself a few times, such as discussing the importance of names of birds in one chapter but then emphasizing just being in the moment in another. This happens with a few other topics discussed, as well.
It’s hard to place who this book would appeal to, what the primary demographic would be.... I feel that it over-explains birding practices and concepts, and this might be tedious for someone into birding. I also think it’s too specific and detailed about certain species and practices, which makes it a bit overwhelming for bird-watchers who might be considering getting into birding (I was slow to read it because I found it quite dense at times). I don’t think there is enough spirituality woven through it to make it a truly Christian text. I think the sweet spot might be people like me: those who love nature but have never called themselves a nature person, who crave a slow, and more intentional life - with spirit woven throughout.
A disclaimer: I am not into birding, though I kept a bird journal as a child. I have a pair of binoculars, and I’m obsessed with the birds in my mountain valley in the French Alps. I’m also not religious, though I am deeply spiritual and do love Jesus. That being said, being into birding and being Christian are not really necessary to enjoy this book. There is wisdom throughout that will certainly resonate for many of any, or no, denomination. Like Sutterfield says, “Whether religious or not, the things to which we give our attention and the activities we do with intention can have profound impacts on who we are.”
This book has reignited my passion for birds with such intensity that, upon getting 50% of the way through it, I went and bought a book on the most common birds in my backyard in France. I was moved, in particular, by this line, “It took slowness to create an opening for it to happen— quiet, attentive looking on both our parts. In that encounter we were together, two creatures acknowledging one another, and it was beautiful.” With this spark, I discovered there were TEN different breeds at my feeder! I owe this wonderful discovery to Sutterfield. Nevertheless, I do not think my passion will transition into true birding, anytime soon (Sutterfield makes it sound pretty exhausting - and expensive).
October was easily my favourite part of the book. I would say 50% of my highlights come from that chapter alone. The way slow living and stillness are embedded in his birding is profound, and he doesn’t skimp on the spiritual and Christian references, either.
I am truly of the belief that any passion when done woven with true joy, stillness, and peace, is a spiritual practice and, throughout the the book, Sutterfield confirms this.
Be that as it may, the book still fell short for me in a few categories. I hated the discussion of politics because it felt like it contradicted the freedom and peace of birding and the spirituality of this practice. I also felt that Sutterfield contradicts himself a few times, such as discussing the importance of names of birds in one chapter but then emphasizing just being in the moment in another. This happens with a few other topics discussed, as well.
It’s hard to place who this book would appeal to, what the primary demographic would be.... I feel that it over-explains birding practices and concepts, and this might be tedious for someone into birding. I also think it’s too specific and detailed about certain species and practices, which makes it a bit overwhelming for bird-watchers who might be considering getting into birding (I was slow to read it because I found it quite dense at times). I don’t think there is enough spirituality woven through it to make it a truly Christian text. I think the sweet spot might be people like me: those who love nature but have never called themselves a nature person, who crave a slow, and more intentional life - with spirit woven throughout.
April 19, 2026
Ragan Sutterfield’s day job is as a priest in Episcopal Church. He is also a naturalist and a writer. Those three skill sets come together beautifully in this book.
Like Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, Watch and Wonder takes the reader through a year in Sutterfield’s birding practice. Also like Renkl, who limits her observations to her own backyard, Sutterfield limits his observations to his native Arkansas and nearby states.
Watch and Wonder is also like Courtney Ellis’s Looking Up: A Birder's Guide to Hope Through Grief, in that it is thematic and uses birding to draw attention to spiritual practices or virtues. The word “spiritual” might put some readers off, especially considering Sutterfield practices his spirituality in the Christian tradition. His discussions of practices and virtues are not always, or even mostly oriented toward Christianity. He has appeared as a guest on Courtney Ellis’s podcast, “The Thing with Feathers.”
Ragan Sutterfield shares his gifts with the world in other book and in magazine articles. I can attest that Cultivating Reality is also well worth reading, and I look forward to reading more of his work.
Like Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, Watch and Wonder takes the reader through a year in Sutterfield’s birding practice. Also like Renkl, who limits her observations to her own backyard, Sutterfield limits his observations to his native Arkansas and nearby states.
Watch and Wonder is also like Courtney Ellis’s Looking Up: A Birder's Guide to Hope Through Grief, in that it is thematic and uses birding to draw attention to spiritual practices or virtues. The word “spiritual” might put some readers off, especially considering Sutterfield practices his spirituality in the Christian tradition. His discussions of practices and virtues are not always, or even mostly oriented toward Christianity. He has appeared as a guest on Courtney Ellis’s podcast, “The Thing with Feathers.”
Ragan Sutterfield shares his gifts with the world in other book and in magazine articles. I can attest that Cultivating Reality is also well worth reading, and I look forward to reading more of his work.
March 27, 2026
I looked forward to reading this book because I like books on birding and spirituality. Yet this book is far more about birding than spirituality, so I felt disappointed. I also did not appreciate the author's frequent injection of left-leaning politics in the storyline. I wish it had been free of this so I could have focused more on the beauty of God's creation in birds, and the spiritual lessons they can teach us.
April 9, 2026
This book wasn't what I expected. Written by an Episcopal priest, it wasn't along the lines of my normal reading. I won this book in a giveaway, and this is just my opinion.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews