Large numbers of birds, bugs, and plants are floating and flying, hunting and fighting, migrating and playing above our heads, especially overnight. Intrepid human observers of these activities wait patiently in line to hoist special equipment up the elevators and onto the viewing decks of skyscrapers to get a closer look, because skyscrapers pierce into the shallows of the sky; much of the action is even deeper, that is, upward.

Observing the ecology of the air is not only a hobby, but also a vocation: Aeroecology, the study of how airborne biological lifeforms interact in the habitat of the atmosphere. Weather radar, which for decades has been filtered to eliminate images of flocks and swarms, can now detect a single bumblebee thirty miles away, and is used along with other imaging technologies to count species wafting under your nose as well as those streaking through the stratosphere. A researcher in Britain reports over seven billion insects passing over one square mile of farmland in a single month, that is, over 5000 pounds of bug biomass.

The stars of the show are birds, and scientists report that there is no physical reason birds can’t fly as high as jet aircraft. In 1973 a Ruppell’s Griffon Vulture, which typically searches for food while cruising near 20,000 feet, sadly collided with an airplane at 37,000 feet. Unsurprisingly, instead of basking in believe-it-or-not stats about the breadth and wealth of life in the heights or showing off super-cool sky-creature spycraft technology, aeroecologists mostly work out how anthropogenic modifications like buildings, windmills, and lighted nights disrupt this little-studied habitat, and what we can do to alleviate the disruptions.

When I’m driving through SF at night, I’m always struck by the brilliance of the city spread over its myriad hills, a view which I find both beautiful and somehow comforting, yet for night migrators, a city is a death trap. Confused by lights, reflections, and midair obstacles, more than 100,000 songbirds die annually in NYC alone. Highrise denizens don’t really like finding piles of crippled birds on the sidewalks, but there isn’t much to do; turning off a building’s lights helps some. The annual 9-11 Tribute in Light, stunning and affecting even on video, is an important and inspired memorial event. Yet the massive light plumes captivate clouds of migrating birds. The organization now partners with an Audubon monitoring team; in 2021, the display was switched off for eight 20-minute periods during the night, allowing circling birds to reorient and fly onward.

I’ve been doing ocean-related volunteer work for a while, and I’m starting to get an idea of what we don’t know about our vast oceans, which is approximately everything. Really. I’ve read about forests, and learned that we are terrible at understanding species whose lifespans are so much longer than ours, such as trees–and invertebrates, for that matter. Now I find that the atmosphere is possibly as unknown as the oceans. While I’m at it, I may as well mention our own human bodies, of which we clearly have forgotten whatever we once knew, given that we have become the most unfit, unable-to-survive-on-our-own species ever to grace the planet.

What is it with us? Could we just stop ripping everything apart and observe and think, see if we can maybe figure out what is even going on around us? I think we can.