Rosemary Mosco is a science communicator, cartoonist, and naturalist. She creates the Bird and Moon comic series, publishes cartoons in Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Living Bird magazine, and is the author and illustrator of ten books. Rosemary’s art and writing have also appeared in The New York Times and Audubon magazine. Outside of cartooning and birding, Rosemary enjoys making pottery and drinking copious amounts of tea.
I grew up in Ottawa, Canada, which is a beautiful city with a lot of green space. I would just go out whenever I could. I’d go hiking in the gardens and by the lake and go birding. I was really interested in birds and, really, in all kinds of creatures. My mom was a journalist – not a biologist – but she was really into that stuff, so she encouraged me. She would buy me bird books and nature guides, and I would go out and explore. I was a pretty nerdy kid. I was not the best at being social, so I went on a lot of solo outings.
I have always loved art and loved cartoons. I went to a nature summer camp at the Canadian Museum of Nature as a kid and one day this artist, Michael Léveillé, did a narrated presentation where he drew the history of life with cartoons. It was funny and inspiring, and I didn’t know that was possible before then. I grew up in the heyday of newspaper cartoons, and I was really heavily influenced by that. I came across some early on that combined humor and science and I really enjoyed them. There was also an exquisitely illustrated book called A Field Guide to the Little Known and Seldom Seen Birds of North America by Ben, Cathryn, and John Sill, where all the birds were completely made-up. They also had a fake birdwatching magazine called Beyond Birding. They had this dry humor, where it takes you a second to understand what’s going on, and beautiful art. I liked that the work could make people laugh. I think I just wanted to find palatable ways to tell people all the facts I knew.
I went to McGill University and wound up getting an anthropology degree. But anthropology wasn’t my passion and when I graduated, I thought, “Oh no, what have I done?” Even then I knew I wanted to do something that mixed art and science, but at the time I didn’t know it was possible to study that. Now they actually have a degree in science communication. I took some time off to work at the Fatal Light Awareness Program, a Toronto-based organization that tries to mitigate bird strikes. I graduated in 2004.
I worked for some non-profits after graduating, mostly doing communications, and made cartoons about science on the side, still not really knowing that science communication was a thing. One day, I realized, “I want to be a naturalist, like a true 18th or 19th century naturalist.” I literally googled “naturalist graduate school” and found the Field Naturalist Program at University of Vermont. I graduated from there in 2010 and then moved down to Washington, D.C., to work in the National Park Service.
I was only there for a few months when I got diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. I was 29 and I didn’t have any of the genes – it felt like it didn’t make sense. Dealing with cancer basically became my full-time job. They treat the living crap out of you; it was a couple years of bad stuff. When I came out of it, I didn’t know how long I would have. The risk of the cancer coming back was reasonably high, and I knew if it did, then it was only a matter of years. I thought, “Well, why not just have fun?”
It felt like the cartoons I made wound up having more of an impact – or at least reaching more people – than any of the other work that I had done. In 2014, I got an offer to do a book through some connections I had in the cartooning world. I figured I’d just do it and see what happened with it. Now I’ve published ten books. Most of them are for kids, and the last two – A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird and The Birding Dictionary – are for adults.
My cartoons and book on pigeon-watching reached a lot of people who didn’t know about my work before, and more importantly, didn’t know what was up with pigeons. These birds have a long and fascinating history with people. Most folks don’t realize that they are a domesticated species! Now I get strangers reaching out and telling me about rescuing pigeons because of reading my book, and that’s been really rewarding. There’s been unexpected publicity; for example, the book was on The Real Housewives of New York City. It’s strange, but I feel like I’m part of a movement trying to bring pigeons back, and people like an underdog, so people have kind of latched onto it. A lot of people have contact with pigeons, and they’re really accessible – and misunderstood. For a lot of human history, they were actually really loved and appreciated, but they’ve had this dip in popularity.
My newest book is The Birding Dictionary, which came out in May 2025. It’s full of actual birdwatching terms, but the definitions are silly. It’s educational and fun. And I’m working on two other books that I can’t really talk about yet. I also do a quarterly comic for Living Bird magazine by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They give me a piece of bird terminology, and I make a cartoon for it. It’s been a real joy.
I do a lot of talks at bird festivals and other nature events. I had a huge fear of public speaking before graduate school; I would shake and panic. But it was kind of trial-by-fire with the sheer number of presentations I did then, and then I got to a point where I actually found it fun. From a selfish perspective, it can feel really good to say weird stuff and talk about my own experiences, and have people mirror that back to me and tell me I’ve connected with them. That just feels amazing; it’s really gratifying to connect with people. I love hearing that I made someone happy when they’ve had a rough week or that I helped them take some kind of action.
Things can be rough in the science communication field, but then sometimes I think about how even if I had stayed with the National Park Service, I’d be getting laid off right now anyway. Things are unpredictable. I think it’s important to keep your humor and use it to get through. And I think in science communication it’s important to remember that we’re here to meet people where they’re at.
One of my dream projects is a book on gulls – I’ve gotten really obsessed with them. There’s only one species of city pigeons (lots of variety within it, though), but there are so many species of gulls. I think they’re really interesting because I like birds that say a lot about humanity. Gulls are so adaptable and have learned to exploit humans so much. And yet, they are also victims of climate change, hunting, and pollution, and so they can tell us a lot about ourselves and the state of the world. In general, though I just think they are so funny. The way they steal from us is incredible. I just like highlighting and celebrating unappreciated creatures and telling people how cool they are. Ultimately, I want people to take away a respect for wildlife and seeing that all of us creatures have more similarities than differences.