Reading New Guinea: Nature and Culture of Earth's Grandest Island during the quasi-lockdown phase of a global pandemic may make this distant location feel even more unattainable, but if it's the best one can do for now, it is an impressive second best.

Pelagic Publishing's new Where to Watch Birds in France and the Crossbill Guides Foundation's Provence and Camargue are two major new additions to the birding literature of France, both sure to whet the traveling appetite.

Anyone who loves birds, travel, or the idea of Big Year birding will enjoy Falcon Freeway.

This book is a testament to recognizing and saluting avian diversity in all of its forms. And above all, Ackerman relishes the pursuit of knowledge and the possibilities it uncovers: The more you learn about birds, the more they promise to astonish you.

Here is a highly anecdotal, engaging story of the quest by Bergman and his wife to see the world’s 18 penguin species. Intensely personal, his quest is full of adventure, challenges, serious medical issues, danger, and descriptions of some of the most remote areas anywhere.

This book drives home from multiple angles just how pervasively winter influences almost all parts of the life cycle. Birders of all backgrounds are likely to find that Birds in Winter greatly expands their appreciation of the season's influence, and will no doubt enjoy learning more about the lives of both familiar species and those they may have never heard of before.

Wenfei Tong’s new book, Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds, is important in bringing to popular attention some of the diversity in avian family organization and for placing that diversity in a contemporary explanatory framework.

A review by Daphne Gemmill  Mrs. Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury, and Feminism—Women’s Fight for Change, by Tessa Boase Aurum Press, 2018 320 pages, hardcover ABA Sales–Buteo Books 15094 read more >>

A review by Carrie Laben Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, by Katie Fallon Brandeis University Press, 2020 256 pages, softcover ABA Sales–Buteo Books 14711 One of read more >>

With this book, Floyd emphatically proves that he is the best sort of gatekeeper—one who takes the gate right off the hinges so that everyone has equal access to the wealth of knowledge and richness of experience that lies beyond.

The wisdom to be gained from Browning’s story relates to a preoccupation confronted by many birders: Once we have acknowledged our love of birds and bird-study, what contribution can we make?

The Doyle compendium makes an excellent addition to the audio library of intermediate to advanced birders who wish to boost their knowledge of and expertise with rare and local birds specific to the Arizona borderlands and northern Sonora.

These books are very valuable additions to any bird library and essential companions should you visit these countries.

A successful novelist may be no better than the rest of us at finding and identifying birds, but we can expect him to write about these activities better than the rest of us.

Like his Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America, author Nathan Pieplow presents an impressively comprehensive overview of the sounds of over 500 western North American birds.

Whether you’re an experienced birder or just starting out, this book will be a valuable resource for your next Ontario birding adventure.

If you have any interest in dragonflies and damselflies, this book is a superb primer on the things that field guides don’t cover about this amazing group of beautiful and powerful creatures.

The 21 chapters of text encompass all of ornithology and address the obvious topics, covering the evolution of birds, anatomy and flight, physiology, brain structure, social behavior, genetics, the annual cycle, migration, courtship, vocalizations, nesting, population and community dynamics, and speciation.

Howell and Zufelt have undertaken a monumental task. Not only have they compiled a worthwhile collection of striking photographs of our global assortment of seabirds, they have also taken the time to wade through the most vexing taxonomy and put it all into a sensible, useful format.

Birds of the Pacific Northwest is a comprehensive field guide that all users can enjoy, from casual birders and backyard birders to hardcore enthusiasts. The details specific to the region make it a valuable resource to study at home, toss in a backpack, or keep in the car while on a birding trip.

Birdsong is one of the most enchanting aspects of avian behavior, and birders especially love the times of year when birds can’t help but sing from dawn until dusk and even through the night. The impulse to sing seems just as strong in two passionate birders who are also talented and prolific musicians.

In her ambitious new Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Technique of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior, Marie Read has distilled decades of experience into a beautiful, well-organized reference on the topic.

Beyond its well-crafted essays and lovely photographs, a beauty of Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving BirdScapes throughout the Americas is its compositional richness and diversity. One can either pick it up off the bookshelf for a good educational read or lift it from the coffee table for the avian eye candy.

For every birder who faithfully devotes a half-shelf or more to global listing chronicles like Noah Strycker’s Birding without Borders or Phoebe Snetsinger’s Birding on Borrowed Time, Fisher’s book is an instant must-own.

Taking us through a journey of landfill visits with some of Europe’s most prominent gull-watchers, the book unfolds in southern Britain, and it is here that the author experiences the subculture of gull obsession, taking part in capturing and banding gulls.

Finding and appreciating birds in cities is fun. But there is one other major benefit to birding an urban area, namely, the people you meet. If you are wearing a pair of binoculars on public transportation, you will probably meet other birders on the way.

Birding in the city highlights the opportunities to bird close to home and to explore more accessible places.

When it comes to us and Ospreys, it’s deep and personal. Around 1970, a neighbor took an adolescent Carl to a secret fishing spot on an eastern Long Island pond. He saw a huge stick nest, and from what he’d been reading he knew some things: it was an Osprey nest, abandoned, and Ospreys were nearly extinct.