Not only monkeys and mammals are capable of curing and preventing the diseases that afflict them, but also birds and even insects. Foolish people prevent them from doing so, but wise people observe them.

I tread through the forest with high, heron-like steps. I try to brush as gently as possible against the wet hazel catkins and dripping branches. The forest smells of water and moss. I’m holding a map with mysterious little crosses marked on it—I feel as if I were playing some kind of outdoor game. Each cross is a miniature world of one bird couple, a rectangular box made of pinewood hiding a nest woven of grass, moss and feathers, always as unique and one-of-a-kind as the female that builds it. This is the setting for a mini-epic that quietly unfolds over the course of about one month—from the initial weaving of the delicate structure and the appearance of the impossibly small and fragile eggs to the feathered fledglings leaving their wooden home in mid-June.