The Birds of Dog opens in the early days of the Boston Society of Natural History and simmers with remarkable lost stories about America's emerging fields of science and its first scientists. Catharine Pickering, a curator's assistant, finds herself increasingly drawn to Nature's treasures, especially birds, and more and more opposed to the "kill-and-collect" methods of hunters. Her cousin, Charles Pickering, is off serving as chief zoologist for the Navy's first voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and her outbound letters tell of scientific findings at home and memorable encounters-with John James Audubon, Junius Brutus Booth, Charles Dickens, and other eminent visitors to Boston. When she meets James Cutting, a brilliant inventor whose discovery leads to the world's first public aquarium, she finds a kindred soul. It's plain to both that certain new technologies are on a destructive course with Nature-guns, in particular, have strayed far from their original purpose.

The Boston Society of Natural History eventually evolved into Boston's Museum of Science.