During spring 2015, creative writing graduate student Saraiya Kanning traveled from Tucson AZ to the Konza Prairie to try to fall in love with the "little brown jobs"... the cryptic, brownish sparrows that make the prairie their home. After spending several days shadowing Konza researcher Alice Boyle, she discovered not only the subtle beauty of one of our most common bird species, but also learned a lot about how prairies function, and how their management affects wildlife. Her account, reaching thousands of birders nationally, highlights several of the main themes of the Konza LTER including the role of grazing and fire on grassland population dynamics.