Steve Nowicki is about to become a father. Before dawn on a spring morning, he and his graduate students rise from warm beds in the rustic cabin, shivering and sipping hot coffee in the chilly darkness. They don layers of clothing against the cold and sleepily pull on stiff hip waders, emerging from the cabin as the sun rises dimly over a still lake. They drive bouncing and swerving along rutted back roads in the damp Pennsylvania woods until they reach the swamp. Swatting at breakfast-bent mosquitoes, bracing themselves against cold water, they wade into the slough, binoculars at the ready, ears cocked for the faintest sound.

With luck, over the next hours they will spot an evanescent flash of brown feathers or hear a tell-tale twitter that marks their quarry – a swamp sparrow carrying food. If they are luckier still, they will pinpoint a sparrow’s nest of newly hatched baby birds. Gently, they will ease both nest and birds into a cloth bag and return to their cabin. There, Nowicki and his students will become the birds’ fathers and mothers, every half-hour faithfully feeding the baby birds “meat glop” – a health-giving mix of ground sirloin, tofu, baby carrots, vitamins, and minerals.

Thus does Nowicki, a Duke associate professor of zoology, obtain the fascinating animals whose complex trills, warbles, chirps, and exquisitely pure tones he seeks to decipher....