Jamie Lorimer uses the concept of awkwardness to discuss encounters between humans and the Auks, a family of maritime birds found on remote coastlines in cooler, Northern waters.

Andrew Whitehouse considers the semiotics of listening to birds in the Anthropocene by drawing on Kohn’s recent arguments on the semiotics of more-than-human relations and Ingold’s understanding of the world as a meshwork, and comparing the work of Bernie Krause with responses to the the Listening to Birds project.

In this special “rant issue,” Rhubarb discusses the idea of industrial collapse, Phil Knight tells of a lone hiker killed by grizzlies, and Jeff Juel reports on planned drilling in the Hall Creek area of the Badger-Two Medicine, home to the grizzly bear, the grey wolf, bald eagle, and other endangered species.