The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne
Book Talk and Signing featuring Author Chris Sweeney
Sunday, November 2, 2025 / 3 – 4:30 PM
Copies of The Feather Detective will be available for sale – Preorder your book today!

Free, Register today to reserve your seat

Walk-ins Welcome

$10 Donation Suggested

Ambassador Adopt Special Opportunity: Make a $25 donation at this talk and adopt our Snowy Owl, LaGuardia, a lucky survivor of an encounter with an airplane at LaGuardia Airport. Adopt LaGuardia for $25 ($30 value) and receive an Adoption Certificate, Species Fact Sheet, Color Photo, Window Cling Decal, and 1 Guest Pass.

The Feather Detective takes readers deep within the vaunted backrooms of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to tell the fascinating story of the world’s first forensic ornithologist – Roxie Laybourne. Using nothing more than her microscope and bits of feathers, Roxie helped prosecute murderers, investigate deadly airplane crashes, and break up poaching rings.

In this talk, author and award-winning journalist Chris Sweeney will discuss the astonishing life and work of Roxie, a woman who overcame cultural and scientific obstacles and forever changed our understanding of birds—and the feathers they leave behind. With a focus on the legacy of Roxie’s work to identify birds struck by airplanes, Sweeney will highlight the challenges still posed by birds at airports and the work to make air travel safer for both planes and birds.

Sweeney will be available after the talk to answer questions and sign books.

Reviews

• An NPR Book We Love
• An ELLE Best Book of Summer 2025
• “A timely story about the benefits of government-funded science, the invisibility of public safety’s most important workers, and a fascinating—and peculiar—ecosystem: one woman, and lots and lots of birds.” —NPR
• “True crime meets birding in this biography. . . . A captivating tribute to Roxie’s remarkable life.” —Audubon magazine
• “A biography that reads like a novel . . . The book moves at a brisk and enjoyable clip, with smart writing and an affectionate, warts-and-all view of a gifted scientist and sometimes struggling human being—flawed, as are we all, but with her intellectual and investigative powers in perfect alignment with the work to be done.” —Wall Street Journal

About the Author
Chris Sweeney is an award-winning journalist whose reporting has appeared in Audubon, The Guardian, Popular Science, Men’s Journal, and WIRED, among many others.