Birding Books
This is a sophisticated guide for amateur bird watchers and a door-opener for newbies.
Science writer Ackerman looks at the new science surrounding avian intelligence. Fans of birds in all their diversity will want to read this one.
Wolf-birds
by Bernd Heinrich.
"reading this book was the next best thing to wandering in the woods with Peter Cashwell hoping to add a rufous-capped warbler to my life list. No, it was better—I could laugh out loud in delight as I turned the pages without fear of scaring the birds."—Katharine Weber, author of The Music Lesson
Age ranges: 5–9. A young citizen scientist helps count birds for the Christmas Bird Count, a hemisphere-wide event run by the National Audubon Society.
by American Bird Conservancy, photographed by Owen Deutsch.
by Ashley Bryan, illustrated by Ashley Bryan. Blackbird shares his gifts with the birds of Africa in this colorful read-aloud picture book. Age ranges: 4–7.
Blackbird talks of the difference a little black can make, but he also emphasizes that external appearances do not reflect the inner self. Which of the two
is more important is never clarified. Still, the rolling language and appealing illustrations make this a must.
by Tim Birkhead. One thing that Birkhead explains in Bird Sense is that some birds “tend to use their right eye for close-up activities like feeding and the left eye for more
distant activities such as scanning for predators.” An entertaining book guaranteed to bring pleasure to bird-watchers that will also fascinate students contemplating a career
in ecology.
by Kirk Wallace Johnson. A captivating tale of beautiful, rare, priceless, and stolen feathers.
by Stacey O'Brien. When biologist Stacey O'Brien first met a four-day-old baby barn owl with nerve damage in one wing,
she knew he had no hope of surviving on his own in the wild,
so gave him a permanent home living with her. This is the funny, poignant story of their two decades together.