Books which do more than identify birds

Although I cannot claim to be a die-hard birdwatcher yet - possibly due to lack of time - I love books about nature and especially birds. The more fascinating books I have read recently have been about birdsong and about bird intelligence.

To that end, I can recommend two newish books by a Canadian author Candace Savage, who has written Bird Brains : The intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays and Crows: Encounters with the wise guys. They are both beautifully illustrated and artistically creative books with an engaging narrative about these intelligent birds.

Strongly suspect that I would become like Dan Koeppel and want to see every bird on Earth if I had the time. His book on that theme - To see every bird on earth : a father, a son, and a lifelong obsession - is appealing. Birdwatchers will identify with his story. This idea really appeals to my obsessive side - almost as much as collating all my books on LT.

Glad to have found this thread.

I wasn't too thrilled with "To See Every Bird on Earth". I found "Kingbird Highway", "A Season at the Point" and "The Big Year" much more enjoyable. Try those if you like gossipy adventure tales of birding. Oh speaking of tales, don't forget Pete Dunne's "Tales of a Low Rent Birder" books.

Good reading!

I forgot to also mention Pete Dunne's excellent book "The Feather Quest," about his travels about the US.

Redmond O'Hanlon's harrowing accounts of his expeditions in the tropics include descriptions of the birds that he encountered.

See Into The Heart Of Borneo, In Trouble Again: A Journey Between The Orinoco And The Amazon, and No Mercy: A Journey Into The Heart Of The Congo. I haven't yet read Trawler, but would expect that he commented on the seabirds.

I'll second Sandydog1's recommendation of The Big Year by Mark Obmascik. It's quite funny - about three hard core birders trying to break record of most bird species seen in North America in one calendar year. I truly enjoyed that one.

Three books that I found fascinating in my teens were Bernd Heinrich's Ravens in Winter (not birds, but his Bumblebee Economics is even better!), Niko Tinbergen's The Herring Gull's World and David Lack's The Life of the Robin. Besides being unsurpassed examples of natural history observation, they are now classic ethology (behaviour) texts. For America, almost any book by Alexander Skutch is worth reading, especially as preparation for a trip to the tropics. Looking as much at the people as the birds, a nice insight into South American ornithology is Don Stap's A Parrot Without a Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth. His later Birdsong seems to be well regarded too, though I have not seen it. Donald Kroodsma's The Singing Life of Birds is a popular book (plus CD) on bird song by an expert in the field. Identifying Birds by Behaviour by Dominic Couzens is admittedly still an identification guide, but is different in that it focusses on bird behaviour as an identification tool. For reference rather than straight reading, Paul Ehrlich's A Birder's Handbook (North America) or The Birdwatcher's Handbook (Europe) are handy. Oh, there are too many good (and expensive!) bird books these days...

I would second the Bernd Heinrich suggestion and Season at the Point. I also enjoyed Spix's Macaw by Tony Juniper and Dreambirds by Rob Nixon - the latter is actually about ostrich farming, very off-the-wall yet reflective. If you liked the father-son element in To See Every Bird On Earth, Dreambirds has a similar element.

But without a doubt the book on birds that comes off my shelf most often, after my field guide, is Lives of North American Birds by Kenn Kaufman. It lets you get to know a species more than a field guide can.

About 15 yrs ago I got a Japanese publisher to buy Paul Brooks: Speaking for Nature. I tried and failed to get them to buy a book of nature essays entirely about bird-watching. It was a fat and happy historical compilation. I recall it had good essays by Burroughs and many I never heard of. The book was so damn good, you would think every one would know about it. Can anyone please tell me its name (my library is 3000 miles away and my journals 500)? HELP!

As far as individual books go, i have been impressed by elegantly written books about the peregrine falcon and a snark of a bird called a rail, and the personable and alert Birds as Individuals and a title-forgotten, touching book by the keeper of the sparrow that helped Londoners keep up their spirits during WWII.

Just bought a book about owls of US and Canada by Wayne Lynch which is an indepth look at this species. It also has some beautiful photographs. If you live in Canada or the USA you might enjoy it.

For those interested in the subject, Jobling's A Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names is a treasure trove, though not easy to get hold of.

>10 chrisharpe: I've had a pristine copy of this book sitting quietly on my shelves for a few years, occasionally referred to - paid £10 for it. Until your post I had no idea it was scarce - the prices being asked on ABE are amazing/absurd.

Yes, Jobling is in great demand. Mine is also a pristine 2nd hand copy I received as a gift several years ago from someone who found it in the USA. Given the obvious market, I'm not sure why it has not been reprinted or a new book published to fill the gap.

I hope that I am not being to simple, but, for a bit about N. American bird descriptions, sometimes with telling behavioral short descriptions, I like to read what John James Audubon wrote about birds (as a start when looking into a new species).

But I must admit that his paragraph-long sentences are part of the appeal, and his descriptions, for me, have a literary beauty not found in guides. Not for the soft of heart, for he frequently describes how best to shoot and collect many of the birds. Stay away from the autopsy info also!

His listings are archaic, so it is sometimes difficult to find the bird you are looking for.

www.audubon.org/bird/BoA/BOA_index.html

i haven't spent enough time yet to connect my love of watching birds with gathering books about them as of yet, but i have been doing this long enough to notice the seasonal patterns; which sounds i hear in winter, which announce the spring, etc.

I've been hoping to find a book/CD combination of birds, their sounds and their habits. And, of course, being completely greedy, I was hoping to find one that groups the birds at least by regions if not by seasons.
I did manage to pick up "101 Birdsongs" where the reader announces each bird then plays a recording of one or more of the birds songs, but it's in alphabetical order! I've also found field books suc as "birds of New York".

Do any of you know of book/CD combinations that are broken down by area, or cover only one area?

any help you might offer would be great. thanks.

Hello tcw! I'm not sure there is a book + CD combo available for any specific region of the US, but you could simply buy a sub-national field guide (e.g. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America if you're out that way) and then track down a relevant CD set, such as the "Bird Songs of Southeastern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico" which is very handy for birding that area. Other CD collections are available from, say, your local Audubon shop or the ABA (http://www.abasales.com).

tcw, depending on how large of an area you want, there are a number of CDs with "Eastern Birds" or "Western Birds". The problem with breaking it down more finely is that there's so much overlap, which CDs aren't well-suited for; for what region do you have the American Robin, or do you duplicate it in all of them? The birdJam for the iPod handles this better, since playlists can overlap, so you could make a "spring birds of southern California" playlist without worrying about how much it overlaps with "summer birds of southern California" or "spring birds of Arizona".

There may be a locally-produced CD covering your area, but there's no series that I know of doing this.

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/
i decided to browse for books or cds on this and look what i found!

I can't get the Touchstone(s) to work for Jeff Wells' excellent book Birder's Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk (Princeton Press). But do check it out as well as his blog and an important site that deal's with Canada's boreal forest:

http://www.borealbirds.org/index.shtml

I got the Touchstones to work however, for those excellent books mentioned by me and others previously:
The Feather Quest
The Big Year
Season at the Point
The Singing Life of Birds
Kingbird Highway

I'd like to add a few others:
The Owl Papers
The Birds of Heaven
"Bird Song" by Donald Stap
The beak of the Finch ok, this one is mostly about evolution but it won the Pulitzer
The Owl Papers
The Complete Birder ok, this is mostly about identification but it is excellent
Songbird Journeys

Lots of great bird books are referenced here. Being "a Birder and a Booker" it can get somewhat frustrating to look for a book and not find it or find a related book. It may be of help to some the organization I use in arranging bird books in my library.

First are Birding Field Guides (ie Recognition Guides)- this includes all books ment to be carried or used in the field or traveling. It includes things like Sibley's Field Guide, National Geographic Field Guide, Stiles, Skutch and Gardner's Birds of Costa Rica, Williams' The Birds of East and Central Africa, etc.

Second are Location Guides - this includes all the Lane (ABA) Guides to various states, Regional Guides like Hardings Birding the Delaware Valley Region, Pettingill's Guide to Bird Finding West, etc.

Third are 'ornithology' books (ie Behavior Guides)- this includes the non-field reference books like Bent's Lives of North American Birds, Beaman and Madge's Handbook of Bird Identification, Audubon's Birds of America, Alderfer's Complete Guide to North American Birds, Stokes' Guides to Bird Behavior, Sibley's Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, Dunn's Gulls of the Americas, etc.

Forth are Books about Birds - This group of books somewhat blends from the previous group but moves toward the less technical and includes things like Heinrich's Ravens in Winter, Juniper's Spix's Macaw, etc. This group becomes a general bird group.

The fifth group are Books about Birding - This group includes Ehrlich's Birder's Companion, Dunne's Pete Dunne on Birdwatching, O'Brien's Americas 100 Most Wanted Birds, Dunn's National Geographic Birding Essentials, etc.

The next group are Books about Birders - This includes Kaufman's Kingbird Hiway, Featherd Quest, The Big Year, Snetsingers biography, etc.

The next is a group of Biographies - This includes biographies of Audubon, Wilson, MacGillivray and others. It also includes the Mearns' Bird Collectors and their Audubon to Xantus.

Then is a group of Historical Bird Books - This group is growing area of my library and covers a collection of Historical Field Guides like Reed's Bird Guide East of the Rockies, Historical books like Coues' North American Birds and also here are reproductions of Audubon and other art books.

Last is a small group of books on extinct birds, like Fuller's Dodo, etc.

This organization came about to help find my birding books a little more easily. I hope it helps someone else.

Kingbird Highway was excellent and Kenn Kaufman is my hero. The Feather Quest was fun to read, being that it was about birds, but was not on the same level as Kingbird Highway.

#19:

I think I'd split out "guides to a specific family of birds" -- something like The Shorebird Guide or Hawks In Flight or A Field Guide to Hummingbirds -- from general-purpose field guides as well. At least, I do in my library.

I've just finished reading and enjoying Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird by Gisela T. Kaplan. For such a ubiquitous bird, there is surprisingly little written about the Aussie magpie.

bluejw: Excellent suggestion for library organization.

I do it largely the same (with lorax's suggestion of having a separate family category), with just some minor differences. I also have a category for Art and Photography.

As for book suggestions, there have been some great ones made so far. A recent addition is A Supremely Bad Idea, which is a hilarious account of the author's trips around the US to see birds. Even non-birders should enjoy it.

Thanks Grant for the compliment.

I think lorax's is correct in his grouping of specific family guides too. They would probably fit as a group between the 1st and 2nd I listed. Also your addition of a seperate group for Art and Photography is good. I just don't have very many that would fall in that area and what I do have are more historical.

I'll check your suggestion on the Bad Idea too.

Just finished reading an appealing book about birds called Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo by Michael McCarthy. McCarthy is an English journalist who gives an interesting account of the migratory drop-off of English birds such as the cuckoo. His theories for the marked drop in the last decade include global warming.

He also devotes a chapter to the charm of the swallow and the lucky person who gets the privilege of their nest at their house. I am one of those lucky people - every year we have green swallows nesting in our cabin's eaves. They are wonderful birds to watch with amazing aerobatics.

Kiwidoc-sama

i just posted a message which seemed to disappear

at any rate, i wondered where you lived

Down under?

There was a bk by patterson-hamilton or something like that Playign With Water (?) where a prof shot the first cuckoo of the year by mistake . ..

keigu - hi, I am living in BC, Canada (at the moment). Bought up in UK and then NZ.

I must get to reading some of Patterson-Hamilton. He keeps on cropping up in conversation. (I don't think there will be many cuckoos in the UK to shoot any more, if #25 read is anything to go by.)

I recommend W.H. Hudson's memoir Far Away And Long Ago, recounting his childhood spent on the Argentine pampas in the mid-19th century in the company of a host of birds and other wildlife.

Also recommend Life List: A Woman's Quest For The World's Most Amazing Birds, Olivia Gentile's biography of Phoebe Snetsinger.

Kiwidoc, i have not heard of P-H since leaving my job as an acquisitions editor in Japan in 1998. What did he write after Playing With Water and 7/10? And, speaking of JApan, it is so tough to figure out what bird is what in translation as the only hototogisu i heard did not sound cuckoo enough to me . . .

Tropics, I love Hudson's writing so much that I have found at least half a dozen times to work in "Far Away and Long Ago" into lines of poems I translate and whatnot. In Japan where it is easy to find said book in pocketbook, there is also a translation of what I believe may be Birds of Patagonia, a separate work. But the more surreal ambience of Long Ago cannot be beaten. And birds are never long forgotten in his other work a score of which can be found in a real ugly reprinting (I read all the volumes in the library of Sophia/Jochi Univ. in Tokyo).

In The Light Garden Of The Angel King: Travels In Afghanistan With Bruce Chatwin the celebrated Oxford professor of poetry Peter Levi (sadly, no longer with us) describes in exquisite detail the birds that he and his famous companion encountered as they traveled through Afghanistan in 1970 on foot, via horseback, by car and plane. It is perhaps the birds that are the least afflicted beings in this war-ravaged region.

Wow! If a certain Japanese publisher, like Levi, no longer with us, were, I would scout The Light Garden right away for translation as it seems just the sort of book i love most, but sadly, i cannot afford the time/$ for recreational reading at present.

Question. Would you by any chance recall the book and the bird that descended in a village -- Italian, i think -- and became a thing of legend? It was Hudson for sure, but i cannot recall if it was Far Away and Long Ago or another book and whether the bird was a huge stork or the proverbial legless albatross . . .

Have just finished "Bird Coloration" by G. Hill (National Geographic Pub). A great readable discussion of the factors giving birds color. An outstanding read for those interested in birds. One of the few in depth discussions of color. The only major short-coming is the total lack of any discussion of leucristic effects and leucrism. In fact the word isn't even mentioned and albinism is mentioned only in the context of feather strength.

All in all, even with the major hole it is a worthwhile addition to the bird section of the library

bluejw

32>

I saw that one at the bookstore recently, and it looked gorgeous, but I was already spending too much money, so it went on the wishlist for later. Glad to hear it was as good as it looked!

>32 bluejw: Thanks for your recommendation, my local library has a copy and I have reserved it. Sounds fascinating!

Great list of books here, certainly a few I need to track down. I did note that The Big Twitch by Sean Dooley was not mentioned. It is an account of a very funny guy as he tried to break the Australian Big Year. It is in the league of The Big Year but actually written by the author. Silence of the songbirds is also an interesting book that I read recently about the decline of songbirds in North America.

Irene Pepperdine's books about Alex the parrot are astonishing. Alex and Me is the most accessible.

Just came across and read another "big year" book this time set in Ontario Canada the reluctant twitcher was okay but not a winner in my mind. I did laugh out loud once or twice but other jokes just made me groan. A very nice looking little book so it is a shame the content was not a little better.

Don't forget Last of the Curlew by Fred Bosworth, a moving account of the last Eskimo Curlew and a story of extinction. Try to find an edition with the T.M Shortt illustrations.

I love all of Bernd Heinrich's naturalist writings. His "The Mind of the Raven" is excellent reading. This is not the same book as "Ravens in Winter".

This thread is going dormant, but I want to note that I second Silence of the Songbirds. I have recently had the pleasure of attending a seminar in which the author was a speaker and am impressed by not just his words but actions as well.

Raven's End is a beautiful piece of fiction written by a man who knows these birds and the rocky mountains they live in intimately.

I have just read bird cloud from Annie Poulx.

I would like to own a place like that too.

I've just been going back through ICBP's old Threatened Birds of the Americas, a fascinating compendium of what was known at the time about endangered American birds. Despite it's age, recommended for anyone who has an interest in American birds on the brink of extinction.

I recently read David Lack life of the Robin and really enjoyed it, I was surprised at how accessible it was to read and ashamed at how long it had remained on my bookshelf before reading. While flocks last by Charlie Elder was hilarious and (for me) hard to put down. Elder gives himself the challenge of seeing (and not just hearing) every bird on the U.K's Red List within one year.
Has anyone read Robin Redbreast by David Lack's son? I purchased a copy this summer but have yet to get around to it.

38>
I'll second Last of the Curlews, Fred Bosworth's debut, an elegy to extinction. It has the impact of John James Audubon's 10 page chapter chronicalling the vast flocks of the Passenger Pigeon.

I recently read Oology and Ralph's talking eggs bird conservation comes out of its shell which was remarkable readable and has some wonderful pictures.

I've just been given J A Baker's The Peregrine with The Hill of Summer by the editor of this recent edition, John Fanshawe, which reminded me that The Peregrine is another classic which does a lot more than identifying birds. It's a short, but wonderfully poetic elegy based on the author's experience with this falcon in Essex. This edition includes some of Baker's other writing, including some diary extracts that I have been leafing through at odd times of the day. It's interesting to see these other materials together with his best-known work, and I'm looking forward to reading more. Another very different non-fiction book on the same species is Derek Ratcliffe's The Peregrine Falcon, a classic natural history essential for anyone with an interest in this bird.

Has anyone checked out the relatively new Crossley ID birding guide? I bought it when it was released
and have been seriously dissapointed in it. It is too big for a field guide so at most it is a car guide (i.e. throw
it in the back seat and look at it after you come back to the car). The printed text is a very small size and a
light color ink...the result is that it is difficult to read (especially for us 'mature' birders) in anthing but the
good light. For all the hoopla about the new picture format, while it is different, I find it not very helpful
for sorting out field marks. A large percent of the pictures are just not that good. Given the size, it seems more
targeted as a reference book and if that is the intention it could use a lot more text. Sibley, Nat Geo and
Peterson have nothing to worry about.

Hi bluejw! I quite like the Crossley ID guide, but you're right - it's not the size you really want for the field. Nevertheless, it breaks new ground and develops the photographic approach to identification pioneered by the Kaufman guides and WILDGuides series. I wonder if there are plans to produce a field version? If so, I would be very tempted to purchase a copy. After all, the Sibley guide began as a doorstop before the Eastern and Western fieldguides came out.

Another thought: I think the author is from the UK, and Brits are schooled into never taking a field guide into the field: rather, British birders use a notebook to capture ID features, and only afterwards consult a guide. This may excuse the size.

Hi Chris
sorry for the delayed response....
Crossley is a photographic guide and I basically don't find them
nearly as useful as artwork guides. A photo is a specific bird and a painting is an average bird. Since there is a fair amount of variability in the coats of birds the average is more useful I think.
I have both Kaufman and Crossley (among many others) and I'd say Kaufman is better but I find they both not as effective as NGM or Sibley or reliable old Peterson. Your point on British birders not being as field guide oriented as the US folks is well taken. And we could learn a bit from them in terms of using notebooks. I've been trying to improve my birding by taking notes. It is a useful skill to develop.

As for new guides I am really enthusiastic about the new 6th edition of the Nat Geo Guide. The substantial increase in data on subspecies is fantastic. It is really useful for helping you determine what birds to concentrate on and note when you are traveling. Keeping aware of subspecies prepares you for species splits made by AOU and ABA. One of the editors of the guide, John Dunn, is a great teacher of subspecies differentiation and the new edition reflects it. The result is, I think, the greatest bird guide yet.

Say well, take care
Good birding
Jim

Hi Jim

I used to find artists' illustrations much more congenial than photographs (especially those old Audubon photo guides, and there was a similar European guide too), but when I was given the Kaufman guide, I found myself keeping it by the bedside and referring to it all the time. I don't think the newer photo guides do show "specific" birds any more: Kaufman, Crossley and WildGuides all use digital manipulation to produce what they consider to be a depiction of a typical bird. So I think the gap is closing and whilst I love to marvel at the work of a fine bird illustrator - Sibley, Mullarney or Lars Jonsson - I believe that photo guides are now beginning to rival them for accuracy in field identification. I confess to never having got over my initial dislike of the Nat Geo guide, though I have several editions. I agree that it is one of the best guides to nearctic North America - clearly there's still a need for an accurate, well illustrated, portable guide to the region that describes subspecies and vocalisations properly (Sibley is my choice, but not very strong on either). At the end of the day, it still comes down to whatever works for you, but I expect to see more digitally-enhanced photograph guides in the future.

Happy birding to you! Chris

Aah.....As a great friend of mine always reminds me.......that's why they make chocolate and vanilla.......
While I, at this stage will always carry my Nat Geo, I think the future belongs to the digital handtool (ie cell phone) based guides.
They accomplish what our printed formats can only imagine...audio reproduction of songs and calls. Applications like iBird (I'm not sure what the equivalent is the UK is) will become the future of bird guides. Either art or photo based, the ability to provide guidance for the aural sense will allow them to dominate field activities for birding and all natural history. I have concerns about the overuse of vocalisations in the field but I don't think anything will stop the trend.
I enjoy reading ornithological and "natural history" history and have collected several older bird (nearctic NA) identification books. It is interesting to see major turning points in the evolution of the form. We are at a major turning point now with the development of the digital phone apps. I am continually amazed at the number of people buying the apps and who they are......Lots are folks who probably would not buy a printed guide because they don't consider themselves 'active birders'. I don't believe our printed guides are going to begin collecting dust anytime soon, but the future seems to be moving rapidly toward the more comprehensive tool.

Sibley has a second edition due out late this year or next that I am looking forward to. His guide in a constant in my car.

Take care
Jim

If you have an Audible membership A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds is on sale for $2.99. Definitely worth it.

(I'm a lurker in this group.)

>52 clamairy: You're welcome any time!

>53 John5918: Thank you!