‘Birdwatching is close to rapture’: Margaret Atwood on why she has given C$1m to avian research

Award-winning novelist celebrates late partner’s love of birds with gift to establish the Graeme Gibson chair in avian biology If she could be any bird, Margaret Atwood would transform into a raven. “They’re very smart.

They’re social, playful and just a very successful bird,” she says while seated in a corner of a bird observatory in the Lake Erie Islands archipelago. “They’re quite an intelligent problem solver. ” The observatory, which she set up with her…