Reddit reviews The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature

Condolences to you.

The awareness that animals have is different from ours. Dogs for example are so happy-go-lucky that while we might be brooding over a broken leg, they might just do their best to hobble around after a ball you throw in spite of themselves. I'm sure you gave your little friend a far better existence in many respects than one of her counterparts in the wild. Among her memories of trying to fly or scrabbling for food or whatever are memories of happily following you and your boyfriend around, getting tasty treats, and otherwise having fun. Certainly better than being plucked from the ground by a hawk and made into lunch!

The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley has an eloquent passage about death.

The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred
softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some
commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down
through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some
vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the
long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an
enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.

The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling's
parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek
black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak
on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the
little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of
all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise.
Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn
by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.

No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some
instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The
glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as
though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim
intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of
death.

And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on
there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving,
unperturbed, untouchable.

The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the
judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully
presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.
For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that
clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the
hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and
then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully
at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till
suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously
together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is
sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow
of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they
were the singers of life, and not of death.

I did the bio route, specifically botany. B_Prov has a great list, but my 2 cents: The origins go back to native American traditions of animism. Trying to find some quality and formative ethnographies on their world view may give you more of a chronistic context.

Many of the modern romance authors are, sort of, a proto-revisitation of those themes. Thoreau is solid (you can certainly pick apart things, but his premise is solid). I second Muir, and Leopold. Sand County Almanac was the precursor to the modern environmental movement and the foundations of deep ecology. Again, this is a more articulated 'white-man's' animism. Edward Abbey is a bit more cynical, but also a better author then many of his predecessors.

That said, here are a couple that you may find interesting as a biologist:

Gathering Moss

lives of a cell

Natural History of North American Trees: 2 vol ,

The Immense Journey

Oddly, I thought Vonnegut's Galapagos was riveting.

I'm an extreme water nerd.

I agree with all of geocurious' recommendations. For textbooks, those are the main ones for groundwater, especially. Fetter is another mainstay. I'm sure you can find the textbooks easily enough.

As for less academic, Cadillac Desert is good and goes into the policy behind U.S. dam building (which is long but interesting). Water: The epic struggle... is a history of the world with some interesting connections to water (though doesn't get enough into the water, from my perspective).

As for beautiful writing about water, I can't recommend Loren Eiseley enough. The Immense Journey has some really great chapters about water (and then goes on and on about human evolution, but still ok). A really neat excerpt book about geologic themes is Bedrock and that is how I found my pal, Loren.

I have also been amassing a public Spotify playlist of songs that have a hydro-theme. Message me if you want it. Sitting at a couple hundred songs right now, but definitely biased towards my musical interests.

Other books:

• Unquenchable: I thought this was a rather haphazard, sensationalized, and doomsday perspective on water [I have a phd in hydro].
  
  A good list by someone else: Aguanomics
  
  Quotes