Something Funny Happens When Rosemary Mosco Mixes Art and Science

The beloved cartoonist and writer teases humor (and wonder! and poignancy!) out of the avian world (and beyond!).
Portrait of Rosemary Mosco in profile looking up and smiling, overlaid with bird illustrations and a cartoon snake on her head.
Rosemary Mosco has built a career on making jokes out of science and nature. Photo: Sophie Park. Illustrations: Rosemary Mosco

Suppose you had to summarize the whole 43-year arc of Rosemary Mosco鈥檚 life by picking just six pivotal moments to draw in as many panels. Comics artists call this encapsulation, and it is painstaking work: choosing which scene fragments will best coalesce into a story. For Mosco, a naturalist and science writer and the award-winning cartoonist behind the Bird and Moon webcomic, a biographical strip might look
something like this: 

I. 
A slight, brown-haired girl sits with a gaggle of kids beneath a banner reading 鈥淲elcome to Nature Camp/Bienvenue au Camp Nature.鈥 A man in front of her holds a sketchpad showing a doodled T-Rex fleeing a scribbly meteor. The girl鈥檚 mouth is agape, her eyes two giant stars.

II. 
The silhouette of a teenager slumps, head bowed, before an enormous desk with a 鈥淕uidance Counselor鈥 nameplate. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 combine art and science,鈥 reads a speech bubble. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e two entirely different departments.鈥

III.
Sitting at her light table, pen in hand, a bespectacled 20-something looks out the window at a skyline dominated by Toronto鈥檚 needlelike CN Tower. Above, in the night sky, a crescent moon sports the faintest pair of wings.

IV.
The same woman sits in a classroom under a 鈥淲elcome to Grad School鈥 banner. It鈥檚 a remix of panel 1, with a mustached professor and a projector screen showing a blue-spotted salamander. The woman鈥檚 eyes, once more, are stars.

V.
 In a sterile hospital room, her hair replaced by stubble, the woman sinks into an oncology chair, staring listlessly at a book in her lap. An IV connects her arm to a dangling drip bag.  

VI.
With hair to her shoulders, where a pair of Green-cheeked Conures perch, the woman gazes at the glow of a computer screen. In her right hand is a stylus. To her left are a half-dozen stacked books with spines reading 鈥淏y Rosemary Mosco.鈥

But Mosco鈥檚 comics are not, for the most part, autobiographical. They are about birds. Also invertebrates and herpetofauna. Also butts鈥攕o many butts! And regurgitation and mucus and off-putting mating habits. They are about the hilariously weird ways that species have adapted and the arguably weirder rituals and neuroses of the nature-loving humans who observe them. Her comics are full of goofy made-up species and groaner in-joke dad puns. Even when they are sometimes about, say, climate change or species loss, they are not necessarily without lolz.

Earlier this year, I sat in an auditorium while Mosco explained her work to an audience of natural-history buffs in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. 鈥淢y focus is on familiar creatures,鈥 she said, 鈥渁nd encouraging people to look at them in new and different ways鈥攊n silly ways, interesting ways, sometimes ways that are really about the broader world.鈥 On a screen was a four-panel comic labeled Three panels鈥攖he first, second, and fourth鈥攕howed the crested songbird in familiar shades of brown, red, and tan, captioned 鈥淛uvenile,鈥 鈥淎dult Male,鈥 and 鈥淎dult Female,鈥 respectively. The third showed the disconcertingly bald head of a cardinal in heavy molt. Its caption read, 鈥淏lo枚dche毛p, Frightful Molt-Demon of the Cursed Abyss.鈥

鈥淎 lot of us write off humor,鈥 Mosco continued, 鈥渂ut I鈥檝e found that if you take any piece of science, no matter how incredibly dry, and you attach a joke to it, then people will get excited and share it and tell all their friends.鈥 

That kind of virality has helped Mosco build an Instagram following of more than 70,000. It鈥檚 helped move copies of Birding Is My Favorite Video Game, her 2018 collection of Bird and Moon comics, and A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, her indispensable 2021 paperback that鈥檚 alone in the tiny Venn overlap of illustrated field guide, pop social history, and cheeky cloaca-joke vehicle. 

It鈥檚 the same approach she brings to her work for children, including seven books, all illustrated by others, with titles like Butterflies Are Pretty 鈥 Gross!, Flowers Are Pretty 鈥 Weird!, and her brand-new There Are No Ants in This Book (spoiler alert: there are ants). The day after her lecture in Vermont, I watched Mosco run a kids鈥 drawing workshop where she showed her elementary-age pupils one of her comics, about the beetle Nymphister kronaueri. The Costa Rican histerid is known for clamping onto the waists of army ants, mimicking a body part while hitching a free ride. Mosco asked the room, 鈥淲hat do you notice about the ant in this picture?鈥

鈥淚t has two abdomens!鈥 declared a boy wearing a 鈥淣ature Rocks!鈥 T-shirt.

鈥淚t has two butts!鈥 Mosco gleefully replied.

T

he morning after the kids鈥 workshop, Mosco guided a half-dozen hikers through a wooded preserve stewarded by St. Johnsbury鈥檚 Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, the sponsor of her weekend residency in Vermont. The day was overcast, the blackflies thick. Mosco wore a pair of sneakers, a light zip-up jacket, and a cadet-style cap with a Pigeon Lovers Society patch. (Not a real organization鈥擨 asked.)

A spooked deer careened through the brush as we set out from the trailhead. We didn鈥檛 walk far before pausing to listen to some bubbling birdsong (鈥淎 Winter Wren, really symphonic,鈥 Mosco said), then to sniff some red trillium (鈥淗ey, wanna smell something bad?鈥), then to poke at some slime mold (鈥淯nicellular creatures that get together to form these hideous masses鈥攕o cool!鈥). Mosco ping-ponged from a clump of ostrich ferns to a patch of oak ferns to a scatter of Christmas ferns, enumerating their differences. 鈥淪top me if I鈥檓 fern-splaining,鈥 she said.

She was in her 30s before she heard the term 鈥渟cience communicator,鈥 but from a young age, Mosco seemed destined to be one. As a kid in Ottawa, the daughter of a pair of professors, she was drawn to the natural world: loved Watership Down, hunted fossils, rescued injured pigeons, made her own Green-winged Macaw costume for Halloween. She also loved the funnies鈥攊n particular Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, The Far Side, and Cathy. When an educator from the Canadian Museum of Nature showed up at her summer camp, scribbling zany illustrations while narrating a concise history of life on Earth, Mosco鈥檚 eight-year-old mind was blown. She became a museum regular, volunteering all throughout high school鈥攚hich, Mosco says, wasn鈥檛 a happy place for an awkward, wildlife-obsessed kid. 鈥淭o have the museum,鈥 she told me, 鈥渋t was like, 鈥極kay, here鈥檚 a place where I belong.鈥欌夆

Okay,鈥 Mosco thought. 鈥淪o if you make it funny, then people will buy the bird guide.鈥

She remembers plucking a book off a shelf at a friend鈥檚 home: Ben, Cathryn, and John Sill鈥檚 1988 parody A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America. Her friend鈥檚 parents weren鈥檛 birders鈥攕he knew that much鈥攁nd it took a few confused, delighted page-flips before she realized the bizarre species inside were fictional. 鈥淥kay,鈥 Mosco thought. 鈥淪o if you make it funny, then people will buy the bird guide.鈥

At Montreal鈥檚 McGill University, she was crushed to learn she couldn鈥檛 create a course of study that encompassed both science and art. She settled on anthropology (鈥淚 thought, hey, it鈥檚 got culture, art, and monkey skulls鈥). In 2003, three years into college, she took a year off and moved to Toronto, where she went to work for the nonprofit (FLAP) and, in her spare time, got serious about the comics she鈥檇 been drawing since childhood. In the small hours, she strolled downtown with FLAP volunteers, toting a butterfly net to scoop up injured birds and cataloging fatalities from window collisions. Back at her apartment, she worked on a long, wordless, black-and-white comic about a lonely city bird who befriends a ghostly, avian-shaped incarnation of the moon.

Mosco and started frequenting comics shows all over eastern Canada and the United States, selling printed copies. Webcomics were catching on, and the indie-comics subculture was thriving. 鈥淵ou鈥檇 walk around the show floors and just meet these wonderful people and find all this great work,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e鈥檇 crash on each other鈥檚 floors. We鈥檇 make all our money during the day, and then once we exceeded our table and printing fees, we鈥檇 take the money and go do karaoke all night.鈥

She finished her degree in Toronto while posting her nature comics and short stories online. She did a few strips for The Globe and Mail and Torontoist, and got some traction in what was then called the blogosphere. 鈥淏ut I was still kind of sad, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do,鈥 Mosco says. 鈥淭here was this city park I liked, and I would sit by the water there and feel so happy. I remembered reading about how sometimes you need to sit and listen to your body and be, like, what makes me happy? And I realized, well, being outside in nature feels good.鈥

She enrolled in the University of Vermont鈥檚 cross-disciplinary Field Naturalist Program, and from the moment a salamander filled the screen in a herpetology class, she knew she had, again, found a place she belonged. 

鈥淵ou know how you meet someone and you鈥檙e just, like, 鈥業鈥檓 in love鈥?鈥 Mosco says. When her field studies coincided with blue-spotted salamander migration, getting to hold one was a transcendent experience. 

She鈥檚 no less enamored with salamanders today, and searching for them in a slash pile鈥攁long with newts and snakes鈥攚as one of many preoccupations during our hike in Vermont. We also spent a while, spurred by Mosco鈥檚 enthusiasm, admiring how Viceroy caterpillars look like bird poop and unsuccessfully pishing to attract a Canada Warbler she鈥檇 seen the day before. 鈥淥ne of two things happens when you do this,鈥 Mosco explained between pissshhhhes. 鈥淓ither the birds come over or else you humiliate yourself.鈥 

When it was time to turn back鈥擬osco had another group coming鈥攚e realized we鈥檇 walked only a fraction of the trail system. Mosco, as it happens, : A hiker sets out with his naturalist pal, but after a couple of panels cataloging their wondrous trailside sightings, he complains, 鈥淚t鈥檚 been an hour and we鈥檝e walked three feet.鈥 

鈥淭hree amazing feet!鈥 the fist-pumping naturalist exclaims.

A

nother Mosco comic, made more than a decade ago, of cute, cartoonish folks in lab coats squaring off against a mob in paint smocks and tutus. 鈥淪CIENCE!鈥 bellow the poindexters. 鈥淎RT!鈥 retort the bohemians. And then: It鈥檚 on. The second panel is your classic fight cloud, arms and legs and beakers and paintbrushes sticking out at crazy angles. 

But wait! One little scientist and one little artist have escaped the scrum. 鈥淭his looks like it might take a while,鈥 the former says. 鈥淲ant to, uh . . . grab some coffee?鈥 

鈥淥k!鈥 the latter replies, and off they walk, hand in hand. 鈥淪cience + art = 鉂わ笍,鈥 reads the caption.

The first time I read it, I wondered: Wasn鈥檛 Mosco setting up a bit of a straw man here? Is there really so much tension, so much antagonism, between advocates for art and science? In this day and age? 

When I brought this up with her over coffee one weekend, sitting at a bookstore near her home outside Boston, she took her phone out of her pocket. 鈥淚f you Google 鈥榮cience鈥 and 鈥榓rt,鈥欌夆 she said, typing the terms into a browser, 鈥渨hat you get is this.鈥 She showed me a screen full of image results: brain after illustrated brain, their right sides colorful and swoopy, their left sides angular and monochrome. 鈥淲hat they are all implying is this idea that these are two different things.鈥 

Back when she drew that comic, Mosco says, the term 鈥渟cience communication鈥 was still gaining purchase, a descriptor for a field of professionals who use鈥攇asp!鈥攂oth sides of their brains to present scientific concepts to laypeople in engaging, creative, accessible ways. The first time she heard the phrase, at a conference full of science bloggers and journalists, she thought, 鈥淥h, so I鈥檓 not the only person who does this!鈥  

These days, Mosco has a much better sense of herself as part of a community of comics artists who are also science communicators. Among her role models, she says, is entomologist Jay Hosler, who put out his first graphic novel鈥Clan Apis, about honeybee ecology鈥攊n 2000. He鈥檚 since published a half-dozen more, along with peer-reviewed research touting the pedagogical benefits of comics in the classroom. For his part, Hosler includes Mosco鈥檚 A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching on the syllabus of his undergraduate science-communication course at Pennsylvania鈥檚 Juniata College, where he chairs the biology department. (The class is called Talk Nerdy to Me.) 

The tension in Mosco鈥檚 science vs. art comic? It鈥檚 real, Hosler suggests. 鈥淭here鈥檚 distrust because of the perception that one side is more intuitive and one side is more inquiry-driven,鈥 he says. 鈥淥f course, here鈥檚 the thing: Art is experimental, and science is experimental. Art is inquiry-driven, and science is inquiry-driven. But I think by the time folks get to the point of the people in that cartoon, they鈥檝e had it beat into their heads that theirs is the correct way to address the world.鈥

And one trouble with the schism, both Mosco and Hosler believe, is that it sows doubt about how effectively artistic mediums can get across scientific concepts. 鈥淭here are a lot of people who think that if you鈥檙e communicating science, then you鈥檙e not doing science鈥攜ou鈥檙e watering it down,鈥 Mosco says. Hosler agrees: 鈥淚鈥檝e had people ask me, especially about science comics, 鈥楧oesn鈥檛 that dumb things down?鈥 And I say,  鈥楴o. It smartens them up.鈥欌夆

What makes comics great vehicles for ideas, says comics scholar Adrielle Mitchell, is the principle of amplification through simplification鈥攁 phrase coined in the 鈥90s by comics artist Scott McCloud. 鈥淎nd I think Mosco is absolutely brilliant with it,鈥 says Mitchell, a professor in the English and communication department at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, as well as an avid birder. Mosco鈥檚 panels are uncluttered, Mitchell points out, and there are rarely more of them than you鈥檇 care to read in an Instagram carousel. Yet for all their digestibility, they are jam-packed with facts.

鈥淪he is accurate and precise and, at the same time, clever,鈥 Mitchell says. 鈥淲hen I encounter one of her comics, I know it鈥檚 going to be a whole thing unto itself, in a very small space. Am I going to laugh? Am I going to have that frisson of recognition? I have that a lot with her work: 鈥極h my god, yes, that鈥檚 exactly how those ducks behave! That鈥檚 exactly how people behave!鈥 I just feel a little bit of joy.鈥 

Science + art = 鉂わ笍.

E

arlier this year, Mosco lost her dad, Vincent Mosco. He was 75, an emeritus sociology professor, and a prolific author of academic texts on communication and technology. In the dedication to her Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, she wrote how he 鈥済rew up in a Manhattan tenement and only knew three kinds of birds: the gray ones, the little brown ones, and seagulls.鈥 

She mentioned this taxonomy while the two of us loitered around a transit station near her apartment, one of her favorite spots for pigeon watching. The species undermines our sense of what鈥檚 wild and what鈥檚 domesticated, her book argues, with segments exploring why pigeons were feudal status symbols, how meat birds became show birds became feral birds, what it means to spot banded pigeons in an urban flock, and more. It was her dad, Mosco says, who taught her to look for the backstories and complexities of things others take for granted. 鈥淲henever I look at one of these urban species,鈥 she told me, 鈥淚 always think of the histories that got them and us here.鈥 

A puff-chested Adonis of a pigeon strutted by, in pursuit of a hen. 鈥淚 named that one Romeo,鈥 Mosco said, then explained its coloration is a legacy of generations of human manipulation.

She鈥檚 made some poignant comics about grief this year, and in between speaking gigs, she鈥檚 shuttled back and forth to Ottawa to be with her mom. But even in bereavement, Mosco has had moments of bittersweet silliness, sifting through a trove of childhood drawings and comics her parents saved. She got a laugh from one about self-conscious hadrosaurs buying falsie cranial crests and another that spoofed a mail-order catalog written for ants. It felt good to laugh.

Humor, for Mosco, is more than just a Trojan horse for knowledge. It鈥檚 a reflex and a balm. 鈥淚鈥檓 kind of goofy,鈥 she says. 鈥淎s a kid, I really struggled with depression and anxiety. And I would read comic books and Dave Barry鈥攎y parents knew Dave Barry was like an antidepressant for me. And comedy got me through! It seemed like an important part of life.鈥

Humor, for Mosco, is more than just a Trojan horse for knowledge.

Her sense of humor helped, somewhat, when she underwent treatment for stage 3 breast cancer in 2010. She was 29 and had only just finished her master鈥檚 degree in Vermont. She came to Boston for treatment. It was a trying time, of course, but it also nudged her to lean into comics as a vocation, newly armed with her naturalist鈥檚 training. 鈥淧art of why I do what I do is because I sort of said, fuck it, I don鈥檛 know how much longer I have left,鈥 she says. Then she follows this with a punch line: 鈥淥f course, 鈥榞et cancer鈥 is bad career advice. Don鈥檛 do that.鈥 

Mosco only occasionally makes climate-change comics鈥攊n part because they鈥檙e research-intensive and emotionally taxing. A recent strip about the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, where she ice skated as a kid, no longer reliably freezing over was downright heartbreaking. But she can bring wit even to a topic as alarming as global warming: See the strip in which a Marvel-esque supervillain threatens the planet with doomsday scenarios, only to find himself in the crowd. 

鈥淐omedy is such a huge thing, especially when things are hard,鈥 says Mosco鈥檚 birding buddy Maris Wicks, an illustrator and writer with her own substantial science-comics r茅sum茅. Wicks contrasts Mosco鈥檚 work to the 鈥渄oom-and-gloom scare tactics鈥 that have sometimes characterized the environmental movement. Among her favorite of Mosco鈥檚 strips is 鈥淚nstinct Is Weird,鈥 in which a Yellow Warbler stares at a nest, unsure why she鈥檚 built it, then quietly panics when her chicks hatch. 鈥淭here鈥檚 humor there, but there is also this universality,鈥 Wicks says. 鈥淪he鈥檚 done the academic route, and she has the degrees to back it up, but there鈥檚 such a warmth and sensitivity and compassion to all of her work.鈥 

For writer Nick Lund, a contributor to this magazine and longtime blogger behind The Birdist, Mosco鈥檚 best comic might be . The six- to seven-inch owl, the strip explains, can catch prey twice its size. Across four panels, the unassuming owl鈥檚 victims pile up. When they culminate with a moose, the unseen narrator鈥檚 speech bubble simply reads, 鈥淥h. Oh no.鈥 

鈥淭he nature-comics space is full of a lot of jokes about tits and boobies,鈥 says Lund, who put a poster of the owl strip on his young son鈥檚 bedroom wall. 鈥淲ith Rosemary, it鈥檚 so apparent off the bat that she鈥檚 writing these from a place of deep knowledge. You can immediately tell that she鈥檚 one of us in a way that few others are.鈥 

After we had peeped our share of pigeons, Mosco offered to walk me through Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, one of her favorite birding destinations. First, though, we had to check on her babies. In her tidy apartment, in a room chock full of perches, gyms, and swings, her pair of conures sat listening to Beyonc茅. Once uncaged, one of the colorful parrots settled on my shoulder as I scoped out Mosco鈥檚 low-key workspace: a Wacom pen tablet, a laptop stand, piles of scratch paper, and bookshelves filled top to bottom with field guides.

From a high shelf, Mosco pulled a copy of A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America, the parody guidebook that captivated her as a preteen. In a way, it鈥檚 a conceptual cousin to the project that has lately occupied a lot of her time: a humorous dictionary of birding terms, written and illustrated by Mosco and tentatively dropping next spring. She鈥檚 juggling that with another picture book, still under wraps, along with plenty of speaking engagements. One of the last times I texted Mosco, she was prepping for a Zoom chat about science communication with a class at Johns Hopkins University. 鈥淚鈥檓 going to berate them for not curing cancer yet,鈥 she shot back.

Mount Auburn was calling, but Mosco was in no hurry to stop showing me pages from Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds. We admired the Auger-Billed Clamsucker, which drills into shellfish by pecking into the sand, then walking in a clockwise circle. We ogled the Eastern Narrow Sparrow, which looks unremarkable from the side but hilariously compressed head-on. We giggled and snorted and flipped another few pages. Real-life birds could wait.

This story originally ran in the Fall 2024 issue as 鈥淲hat鈥檚 So Funny  鈥檅out Geese, Doves, And Pigeon Banding?鈥 To receive our print magazine, become a member by .