If you’re quiet, you’ll hear the wind roll across the valley, or maybe the bell-like clink of a sage sparrow in a nearby bush.

And the birds — the wrentit, the scrub jay, the sage sparrow — taking flight to . . . where exactly?

“Let’s get another drink and think about it,” I said, but my skin was already buzzing with anticipation, thinking about the crow I’d get on my inner arm to match the one on his forearm, and the sage sparrow he’d talked about getting on his chest, like the one he'd drawn for me as a gift when we first started dating.

There, scientists found comparatively higher losses among the Brewer's sparrow and the sage sparrow, with the estimated rate of decline at six birds for every 10 additional wells per square kilometer.