Book reviewer Rebecca Minardi writes about Stacey Pazar Huth and Noah T. Gibb's new book, "An Experiment in Birding," a chronicle of their record breaking Maine Big Year in 2025 and a guide on how to have your own amazing Big Year.

Book reviewer Michael L. P. Retter, writing in the July 2026 issue of “Birding,” describes how cocktail enthusiast and ornithologist Katie Stryjewski's book, "Make Myna Double," is an engaging and informative read with delicious results!

Book reviewer Cathy Carroll, writing in the July 2026 issue of “Birding,” discusses how Paul Bannick's book, "Woodpecker" is a monograph of North American woodpeckers and is accompanied by astonishing photos and well-written and detailed text. Readers will learn about every aspect of the lives of North American woodpeckers.

Book reviewer Donna L. Schulman writing in the July 2026 issue of “Birding,” explains how Ryan Goldberg's book, "Bird City," presents the surprising joys of birding in New York City and highlights the personalities that populate its birding world.

Book reviewer Rachel Berardinelli, writing in the May 2026 issue of “Birding,” describes how "Feathered Marvels" is a thorough yet accessible overview of the avian world. Authors Sherony and Minetor summarize research on birds in the hope that readers will be moved to support conservation efforts.

Book reviewer Kate Sutherland, writing in the May 2026 issue of "Birding," details how Michael Brooke’s "No Island Too Far" is an intimate dive into the life of a seabird biologist and island addict. Each island you visit with him becomes real, and you can’t wait to see where he takes you next.

Book reviewer Julia DiGeronimo , writing in the May 2026 issue of Birding, explains how Joan E. Strassmann, comprehensively analyzes birds’ social patterns and behaviors in her new book, "The Social Lives of Birds." Strassmann uses her experience as an evolutionary biologist to dissect the complex behaviors that birds display.

Book reviewer Owen Robertson, writing in April's gardening issue of Birding, details how Craig W. Benkman's new book, "Crossbills and Conifers," is a landmark in science writing, and its contents are some of the most dramatic findings in evolutionary biology.

Book reviewer April Campbell, writing in April's gardening issue of Birding, describes how Mariette Nowak's new book "Birdscaping for Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Region" will help you transform your lawn into a bird nirvana by providing a wealth of information about native plant gardening.

For Georg F. Striedter and Andrew N. Iwaniuk's "Bird Brains and Behavior: A Synthesis," a dense treatise on avian neurobiology, the first sentence in the opening paragraph is disarming: “Watching birds is fun." In the March 2026 issue of "Birding," book reviewer Matt Hanson describes how anyone interested in cerebral functioning in birds will find intellectual nourishment in the patient, explanatory work of these authors whose vanguardist knowledge is on admirable display.

"The Best of Words on Birds" by Jeff Reiter is a collection of newspaper columns for suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald that Jeff has been writing since January 2004. In the March 2026 issue of "Birding," book reviewer Joel Greenburg writes that this book covers a wide range of birding experiences familiar to the more experienced birder but that it's particularly useful for those in the earliest stages of this potentially lifelong passion.

Michael Hurben's "The Physics of Birds and Birding" is a rather intense, though not incomprehensible, exploration of the seen and unseen mechanisms underlying how and why birds do so much of what they do. In the March 2026 issue of "Birding," book reviewer Rachel Clark writes that her eyes have been opened to a whole new world, one that continually plays out before us all, whether we are aware or not.

Owen Deutsch and Michael J. Parr's "Birds of the Tropical Andes" is hard to pigeonhole. In the January 2026 issue of "Birding," book reviewer Dominic García-Hall describes it as a serenade of light and color to the planet’s most avian-rich biome, replete with sprinklings of scientific insight, lessons on complex Andean biogeography, and ideas for where to go see some of the species pictured.

In the January 2026 issue of "Birding," book reviewer Lori Potter details how Joe Roy's new book, "The Art of Hawk Watching," is perhaps best understood as a cri de cœur—a passionate call to look, to look everywhere and to look more closely—for birds of prey.

Book reviewer Rebecca Heisman, writing in the Jan. 2026 issue of Birding, explains how British science writer Matt Ridley’s newest book, "Birds, Sex, and Beauty," is an attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: Why are some birds so astonishingly beautiful?

In the Dec. 2025 issue of Birding, Julian Hough reviews "Listers," a documentary on extreme birding that appeared on YouTube in a surprise appearance earlier this year. Directed by Owen Reiser, "Listers" was met with immediate acclaim in the birding community—and by the even bigger community of non-birding spouses/partners/friends of birders! According to Hough, the documentary "provided an unexpected jolt of dopamine birders didn’t know they needed." You don't want to miss this one!

The starling is the bird birders hate. And yet... Starlings are talented and resourceful, inarguably brilliant and beautiful, and so very human. Carrie-Edmund Laben reviews a recent starling book by Mike Stark. Spoiler alert: A comp with the extinct Passenger Pigeon is fascinating.

"Birds At Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep," by Roger F. Pasquier, is a book about a key aspect of avian biology that we almost always take for granted: sleep. Birding book reviewer Greg Lawrence praises "Birds at Rest" for its accuracy and thoroughness, for its compelling case studies, and, ultimately, for inspiring humans to protect the habitats where birds rest and roost and sleep.

The cover of The Joy of Birdwatching depicts a birding fantasy come true. A jungle of brilliant green foliage and deep red and pink flowers curves around a perfectly round sun, with a raptor soaring towards the top. A large green hummingbird drinks...

Borneo, the world’s third largest island, is the stuff of birders’ dreams. Its lush dipterocarp forests contain some of the highest biodiversity on earth and are home to such bucket-list birds as Helmeted Hornbill, Blue-banded Pitta, and Bornean Bristlehead; and David-Attenborough-worthy...

Unique geographic coverage, outstanding illustrations, and first-class species information make this an excellent new field guide for one of the must-bird places on Earth. In an era where a seemingly endless amount of information...

“This is a marvelous book that flies breezily by but is worth savoring with a slice of lifer pie…Mosco has served us a whimsical and delectable rarity.” —Melissa T. Yang

Among the unassuming cast of characters who grace the Hall of Fame at the Division of Birds in the Smithsonian Institution is one especially diffident visage, that of Roxie Laybourne. She is, as she is so often remembered...

Bruce M. Beehler’s 20th book, Flight of the Godwit: Tracking Epic Shorebird Migrations, is not only a study on the Hudsonian Godwits’ migration, but a journey through North America’s lesser-traveled roads. Though the title...

Perhaps for most birders, the bird in flight too often means the end of an observation. A warbler flits off through the understory; a hawk glides over the tree line; the shorebirds or ducks lift and tear off across the marsh; and it’s on to the next bird. But how often do we stop to wonder...

Pete Dunne’s The Courage of Birds: And the Often Surprising Ways They Survive Winter is an engaging exploration of how birds manage to survive the often unforgiving winter months. From tiny Black-capped Chickadees enduring...

I knew when my book club, without input from me, picked The Backyard Bird Chronicles for our next meeting that something was happening. For a group of non-birders to want to read about a woman watching birds...

Five months after Hurricane Katrina obliterated Trish O’Kane’s new home and upended the life she was about to embark on as a journalism instructor at Loyola University, she heard a metallic clicking in the yard. In the midst...

My Summer with Ospreys: A Therapist’s Journey Toward Hope, Community, and Healing Our Planet is a chronicle of Pamela Lowell’s time volunteering with Massachusetts Audubon’s South Coast Osprey Project in the summer of 2023. The book is richly...

Minnesota’s first-ever breeding bird atlas was officially completed in 2013 after four years of painstaking work. Birders collected nearly 400,000 records to completely survey this massive state. Many people don’t realize just how large Minnesota is, but Rock County in the southwestern part of the state is closer to...

It may be apocryphal, but birds and birding are purportedly popular for three reasons: their omnipresence in a world where nature is increasingly absent from the quotidian, their otherworldly dinosaurian plumage, and the envy and awe inspired by their flight. There are...

The arrival of not one but two tomes from Princeton University Press, dedicated to the identification of European passerines and non-Passerines, was highly awaited. These weighty handbooks are the brainchild of Dutch identification-meister, Nils Van Duivendijk and AGAMI photo-agency principal, Marc Guyt...

It will be spring when this book review is published, but no matter what time of year it is when you sit down to read Naira de Gracia’s The Last Cold Place, you’ll soon find yourself transported to a land of ice, snow, wind—and penguins...

It’s all in the details. Drawing Nature: The Creative Process of an Artist, Illustrator, and Naturalist, by Linda Miller Feltner, is an illustrated history of the author and artist’s career and creative work focused on all living things, large and small. As readers make their way...

I’m going to make a potentially provocative statement here: No bird family embodies diversity better than finches. Hear me out. The familiar House Finch flitting around your feeder is more closely related to the fantastic and almost mythical Palila, ‘Akiapola‘au, and Kiwikiu...

Identifying birds can challenge any level of birder—especially those musically challenged, like myself, who struggle to name common species by their calls and chip notes. Toss in nonbreeding plumages and tricky molts, and a confident ID...

This unique and well-researched guidebook by Jennifer L. Bristol will take birders on a reflective journey through the ecological uniqueness and historical importance of cemeteries across Texas. As a self-identified cemetery birder, I can attest...

Ask just about anyone in the ABA Area about extinct birds, and their mind will leap to the Passenger Pigeon. Ask a birder, and they will add to the list the Carolina Parakeet and the Heath Hen. With a little prodding...

Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson’s new book The Shorebirds of North America is an ode to what they propose might just be the “perfect” bird—the shorebird. Highly specialized, with incredible speed and endurance that allow them to embark...

Author James D. Paruk is a leading expert on loons, especially the Common Loon. His fascination with these birds is apparent from the first pages of Loon Lessons, his very readable account of three decades devoted to...

For around 100 million years before the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, the temperate forests of what is now northeastern China, the arid landscapes of Mongolia, and the open woodlands surrounding the lakes of modern-day Germany...

Sophie Osborn’s Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds may ostensibly be a memoir, but Osborn isn’t the true protagonist of this book. The birds are. Feather Trails details Osborn’s field work experiences with three different...

Melissa Hafting’s Dare to Bird: Exploring the Joy and Healing Power of Birds is a perfect combination of beauty and content. But I don’t know whether to put it on my coffee table or on my shelf of reference books. The introduction...

Kenn Kaufman’s The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness is an important book from a widely admired voice in our community. It is also a timely book, uniquely situated to our moment...

Here are some truths about birding Australia: it has an incredible diversity of birds—nearly a thousand species— with many bucket-list species; it’s a very long plane trip from North America; it’s a huge country with...

This comprehensive guide to China’s diverse avifauna is an excellent regional manual for a part of the world that has yearned for a truly modern field guide. Its illustrations are useful, and its facing data and...

At first glance, one might expect a 400-page book on the topic of bird vagrancy to be a daunting slog through dense scientific data and highly complex technical explanations of how birds navigate, but don’t let that deter you...

“I rejoice that there are owls,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden. You probably do too even if you’ve never put it quite so rhapsodically. And for those of us who love screech-owls—and I do (but who doesn’t?)—you’ll want...

Birding While Indian is a philosophical memoir filled with folksy humor and snarky social commentary. Thomas C. Gannon (Lakota) takes us on a journey of epiphanies through his life, each punctuated by a place, a date, and a bird...

It began with The Feather Quest. I was 12 and exploring the birding section of my local library. I’d recently started identifying the birds that came to my family’s feeders using the two plates in the middle of our Encyclopedia Britannica...

Rare Air: Endangered Birds, Bats, Butterflies, and Bees is a delightfully small book in all ways but one. It is lovingly illustrated with stunning hand drawings by Sarah Kaizer. Its graphics are crisp and inviting, and its text clear and concise...

For many people, the COVID-19 pandemic was a time of contrasts. While it provided an opportunity for many to connect more with nature and appreciate the joys of their home place, it was simultaneously a time of great loss and suffering...

Cameron Cox’s Terns of North America: A Photographic Guide is a terrific and attractively priced identification guide that should be on the bookshelf of every serious birder. This book covers 19 tern species that, despite the book’s title, may be found north...

Richard Cachor Taylor’s latest guide, Birds of Arizona, distills the essence of two mega data sources, the Arizona/New Mexico Birding Listserv and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird, into a birder-friendly format. And on that count, this pocket guide delivers...

Will McLean Greeley’s biography, A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate, on his great-great uncle George Payne McLean is quite unlike Mark Twain’s satire about a different Connecticut Yankee. This work contains a plethora...

For two Black men, one residing in New York City and the other in Minneapolis, May 25, 2020, was a fateful day. For Christian Cooper, an expert birder, the day's events would lead to celebrity and exciting career opportunities. For George Floyd...

The metaphorical title of this somber book obviously refers to the biblical story of Eden, which provided an early lesson about ill-advised human boldness and overstepping. The South African author, Adam Welz, argues convincingly that human actions coupled with an alarming lack of attention...

Readers familiar with Margaret Renkl’s writing will face a dilemma with her latest publication, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year. Should one read the book as a weekly nature devotional over the course of a year or...

Much has been written in recent years about pollinators, particularly bees and other insects. Jeff Ollerton is a noted international expert on plant and pollinator interactions; he has edited and written...

I’m lucky. My patch is my backyard. When we moved to the property almost two years ago, I quickly realized our yard attracted a wealth of birds, from woodpeckers to migratory warblers. I had never hosted...

We’re in trouble, and we know it. Bird numbers are decreasing at a scarily precipitous rate. Conservation, once as simple as convincing women not to wear feathers in their hats, has become a labyrinth of strategies for habitat restoration...

“The identification of Empidonax flycatchers and pewees can be a daunting challenge.” So begins, on the inside cover, the text of the latest contribution to ABA Area bird-ID challenges from the inveterate duo of Cin-Ty Lee and Andrew Birch...

What does it mean to say that I come from the Pelican State? I consulted Brown Pelican to find an answer, and writer Rien Fertel did not disappoint. Apparently, coming from coastal Louisiana means that I suffer from a savior complex...

Anticipating each sunrise, early birds chime in to build up a rousing and memorable soundscape of melodies and harmonies, cheeps and chatters, shouts and murmurs. Dawn Songs: A Birdwatcher’s Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration is a collection of poems and essays...

Owl fans, rejoice: Jennifer Ackerman’s latest book, What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds, is the ultimate guide to all things feathered and nocturnal. This popular science book sets out to...

Costa Rica is home to a large diversity of bird species in a small area that is easy to navigate. This and other factors have positioned the country as one of the world's favorite destinations for birding. Nine years since...

I remember opening my new Sibley guide to the warbler page as a beginner birder and feeling demoralized. How would I ever get the hang of birding if these warblers that I was supposed to adore...

Hot on the heels of Homo sapiens, Drosophila fruit flies, and now SARS CoV 2, birds might be the best-studied forms of life on the planet. So I was excited about reviewing this book, anticipating a deep dive...

In my profession, as in any, there are certain questions you get asked most frequently. Some of the questions I get include: “What’s your favorite bird?” “Is feeding birds bread bad or good?” “What do I do if...

If you ask a nonbirder to name a famous birder, they will probably say Audubon, perhaps Peterson if they are bookish, and then run out of steam. Birders themselves can do better of course...

These eight new titles from both new and veteran authors will encourage and inspire little ones to find joy outdoors while looking for birds. The first book, Timothy Musso’s gorgeous Chasing the Sun (The Creative Company) follows Arctic Terns as they spend their life on the wing. Musso’s woodcut illustrations...

Of all the places that I’ve visited in the world, none is more remarkable than the Galápagos Islands. It is the sort of place that every person with an interest in the natural world should visit. And birders certainly fit that definition...

One of my favorite parts of birding with other people is hearing their stories—as birders, we all have them. The time we spent an ungodly amount of time waiting for a rarity. The time we got our car stuck in the mud...

Because hope springs eternal, I spend an inordinate—and so far unrewarded—amount of time each summer looking for a Mediterranean Gull here in northern New Jersey. It’s bound to happen: As this species continues to rapidly increase in numbers and in range...

Seabird addiction for many of us began with Peter Harrison’s Seabirds: An Identification Guide back in the 1980s and 1990s. This niche has grown in the last 30 years with pelagic trips now available from ports all over the world! As more birders...

Consider Winged Migration, the 2001 documentary that is still available for streaming more than two decades later; A World on the Wing, Scott Weidensaul’s bestseller of two years ago; and Wingspan, the wildly fashionable board and video game. The popular appetite...

Robert Bell spent 35 years as a successful mineral exploration geologist and as such traveled widely. Eventually Lyme disease made life so challenging that he had to, with much reluctance, retire early. Unsparingly and intensely personal...

Warblers of Eastern North America by Chris Earley is a welcome second edition to Warblers of the Great Lakes Region and Eastern North America, published 20 years ago, and is one book in a whole library of field guides by Firefly Books...

Much as with birds themselves, it is not uncommon for birders to feel a sense of Zugunruhe, or migratory restlessness. Birding is, in many ways, a travel-centric hobby, and it is natural to desire to see new birds in far-flung places. I’ll never forget...

As a reader of birding media, you might ask yourself, who are the prominent women in the history of bird conservation? Rachel Carson is one name among many, our sisters in the field whose work has not yet garnered...

“The thrill of quiet adventure. The constant hope of discovery. The reminder that the world is filled with wonder.” One would be hard pressed to come up with a better description of the essence of birding than this...

First off, let me be entirely clear: I am biased. I am extremely biased. In 2005, I attended a conference in Chicago where Dr. Klem gave a presentation to architects about bird mortality caused by windows. He was the frustrated voice...

Northern Cardinals are one of the most common birds in much of the U.S. They are a frequent, maybe even daily sight for many of us. Despite the males’ bright red showy appearance and their laser-beam songs...

Wildlife biologist, photographer, and filmmaker Tim Laman’s Bird Planet is a vibrant, richly detailed, highly captivating, and in-spirational photographic voyage through eight different geographic regions: Southeast Asia, Japan, North America, Africa, South America, New Guinea, Australia, and Antarctica...

Danielle Belleny’s charisma shines through in this lighthearted read that delivers substance as a beautifully illustrated page turner. About one-quarter of This Is a Book for People Who Love Birds acclimates you to the avian world...

Monty and Rose 2: The World of Monty and Rose is an efficiently paced, earnest documentary about two Piping Plovers in Chicago who became symbols of triumph. These two diminutive shorebirds changed a literal landscape for the better, offering hope to a community. With the odds against their survival, Monty...

“Travel is inherently harmful,” he declared. It was 2017, and I was sitting in a lively graduate class in the Community Sustainability program at Michigan State when a classmate made this wild statement. The rest of us were flabbergasted. “What about our research trips?” my friend retorted. “Traveling is how...

One of the best parts of watching birds is observing their behavior. Birds are rarely boring. They fly, forage, interact with each other and with their environment, court, raise young, deal with danger, and undertake mind blowing migrations, just to name a few of the fascinating things birds do...

You’ll be celebrating more than birds when you pick up a copy of Celebrating Birds: An Interactive Field Guide Featuring Art from Wingspan, by Natalia Rojas and Ana María Martínez. This illustrated, introductory guide to North American birds is the outcome of two innovative women-led projects within two distinct industries...

I have to admit, my first impression of Richard Pope’s Flight from Grace: A Cultural History of Humans and Birds was of its size: This is a hefty, almost textbook-sized tome, not a book suited to light bedtime reading. But as I flipped through it, admiring the full-color illustrations on each page...

I have had spectacular fails birding in New Mexico. They have often resulted because I simply couldn’t find where the bird was supposed to be. The remoteness of many parts of the state, the inadequacy of various maps, and my predilection to figure out things along the way have all...

Birders love learning about the life histories of birds: fascinating migration routes, unique ecological adaptations, bizarre exceptions to standard bird biology—we can never get enough. In a similar way, ABA Area birders enjoy learning about the life histories of birders from outside the ABA Area, how the ways other birders...

When I first hefted Bird: Exploring the Winged World, all 11 square inches and six pounds of it, I deemed it a coffee table book and braced myself for the kind of tome that is gorgeously illustrated but whose covers are rarely cracked. I was wrong. Bird is many things...

Like any great story, the scene is set early in the book. Marina Richie first spots the pair of Belted Kingfishers she grows to love while im-mersing the reader in her experience at Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana. “To visualize the watershed,” she writes, “cup two hands together. Rattlesnake Creek...

Have you ever had the experience of being absorbed in observing a bird and having a stranger ask, “What are you doing?” and “What do you see?” How to answer such questions? Famed Louisiana ornithologist Van Remsen counsels birders to treat birding as a “serious pursuit”; he suggests we describe...

Compared to Christopher W. Leahy’s earlier encyclopedic tome of 917 pages, the Birdwatcher’s Companion to North American Birdlife (first published in 1982), Birdpedia is indeed a brief compendium. But don’t let its small size and number of pages fool you. This book packs an astonishing amount of information into 272...

The title of this book might not immediately grab the attention of those who don’t delve much into taxonomy, but the cover image will. Indeed, the photograph of a Zebra Waxbill represents the indisputable visual appeal that many members of the family of estrildid finches hold. It is that beauty...

The first hint for many of us that something was going on was a throwaway line in Chandler S. Robbins’s Golden Guide, “Watch for them [migrating parulids] flying within 500 feet of the treetops in early morning.” Watching, I found, was easy—but actually identifying passerines in the air posed…

If field guides had gestation periods, then the long-awaited Birds of Argentina and the South–west Atlantic’s was elephantine. Since Mark Pearman and Juan Ignacio Areta started work on it almost two decades ago, rumors of the mythical guide circled like vultures on the now quiescent Birdforum. Yet it survived...

I have often commented that we’re living in the golden age of field guides. Many titles have been published in the past 10 years, from guides exploring new countries or focusing on previously ignored bird families, to apps bringing instant information gratification. And then I wonder, “What’s next?” My money...

As someone who has spent most of my birding hours in Texas and Georgia, I think of Merlins as a species of the winter. They are wide ranging, fast moving, and inconspicuous. An encounter with one is always unpredictable and any day that has them on the list is a...

A conversation with the Bird Brother: That’s what it felt like I was having as I read the words on the pages. It was as if I was sitting right across from him, bonding over a glass of ice-cold sweet tea. Like relatives catching up at the family reunion,...

In his new book, How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals About Their Origins, Lives, and Diversity, Douglas J. Futuyma switches gears from writing textbooks to writing for the public, helping demystify the complexity of bird evolution. Futuyma is a renowned ecologist and evolutionary biologist, though, as he specifically mentions, he's...

The first time I heard about the California Gnatcatcher, it was 2015, and I had a part-time contract gig writing press releases to promote new ornithology research being published by the American Ornithological Society. That year, a series of dueling papers in one of their scientific journals debated whether or...

Bird migration has always been a fascinating topic for birders of all stages. Watching the tides of birds ebbing and flowing with different seasons. But how do they know where to go and when? And how do they pick the places that they travel so tirelessly to? Flights of Passage...

Rosemary Mosco opens A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird with one of my longtime favorite pigeon quotes—when Charles Darwin exclaimed to Charles Lyell in 1851: “I will show you my pigeons! Which is the greatest treat, in my opinion, which can...

Desde que era un niño, siempre he sentido curiosidad por las melodías de los pájaros que viven a mi alrededor. Incluso quise imitar algunas de las canciones que me animan cada mañana. Pero no fueron solo los cantos de los pájaros los que me llamaron la atención: También fue la...

What hobbyist birder has not imagined leaving a current job or career to pursue their passion for birds? Gretchen N. Newberry’s book The Nighthawk’s Evening: Notes of a Field Biologist provides an in-depth look at the experience that can await someone who does just that. An employee for the city...

My first impression of The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in West Virginia was that this was a substantial tome with striking cover art by Julie Zickefoose. The Cerulean Warbler was a perfect choice for the cover, as was the artist. Editor Richard Bailey calls this blue avian gem the...

What is it like to be a bird? This is a question inevitably asked by those who watch, study, and/or love birds for long enough. It is a query that Tim Birkhead explicitly explored in his book Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird, and which many other...

Birders love discussing bird names: whether they’re accurate, whether they’re useful, what an unusual word means, who did the naming, whom the names honor, and if they should honor anyone at all. Bird name buffs of all types will enjoy and benefit from Gary H. Meiter’s Bird is the Word...

Growing up in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains stood to the east, beckoning me toward them with dramatic snow-capped peaks on clear winter and early spring mornings. Just as enticingly, early autumn evenings hosted ominous congregations of colossal thunderheads looming above the highest...

When the world shut down in March of 2020, many of us were no longer able to do the things we enjoyed and took for granted. Squirreled away in our homes (unless we were those brave essential workers), people everywhere pondered what it was we could do to fill our...

If you’re a kid interested in birds, you’re in luck. Birding has exploded as a pastime in the U.S. and Canada for both adults and children, and authors are responding to the interest with books for practically every age level and birding region. Karen DeWitz’s new book, Look at That...

Broadly speaking, coffee table books are not a highly regarded genre by literary scholars or even birders: When was the last time you heard someone cite a coffee table book as their favorite book? But, I confess, I love them. The photos have to be really, really good to justify...

Almost a decade ago, I wrote a book review for Birding that included a field guide from Colombia and another that covered the Cerrado of Brazil. I started the review by noting that there was a revolution in South America, and it was a good one. Birding in the “Bird...

The last thing birders and nonbirders alike expect from James Bond is that Ian Fleming named the most famous spy in popular culture after teponymous ornithologist. The real, earthly James Bond (1900-89) went by the name of Jim rather than 007 and made history (ornithologically speaking) with his groundbreaking...

We’ve just about all had the thought: Every bird in the world. Pretty much impossible in one birder’s lifetime, but Lynx has found a way to do it, at least in book form. All the Birds of the World is the first book to feature illustrations of all the world’s...

It is difficult to imagine any birder who doesn’t get excited by migration. But many may primarily appreciate it for the pulses of birds that pass by each spring and fall. While A World on the Wing celebrates these spectacles, it also delves deeper into their underlying biology. Author Scott...

Susan Cerulean’s I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird opens with a description of the view from the window of her father’s room in a Florida nursing home. Kudzu, she notes, is slowly strangling the pines outside the facility. “I saw that those smothering lianas were like the tangles and...

Representatives in Washington are no doubt accustomed to unusual mail from their constituents, but I am hard pressed to think of anything that might rival one peculiar delivery made to the Capitol in the autumn of 1912. Every single one of the ninety-six United States senators received a slightly bulging...

At first glance, there may not appear to be much commonality between a collection of deeply personal short essays about Helen Macdonald’s lifelong experiences with wildlife and Carl Safina’s scientific deep-dive into how wildlife acquires critical survival skills. In fact, the common denominator of these two engaging books by award-winning...

If one appealed to our sense of fairness, a mindful and generous bird lover would acknowledge that all birds are intrinsically interesting. However, some honest introspection might inevitably reveal a preference or inclination for one species or a particular group. In the title of his debut book, A Most Remarkable...

We are living in an age of loss. In 2019, news headlines lamented the loss of 3 billion birds in North America in less than 50 years. Europe lost an estimated 421 million birds between 1980 and 2009. And we are seeing similar trends in other plant and animal groups.

As a person who reads often but tends to reach for a novel or self-help book, I found Owls of the Eastern Ice a fresh taste of how exciting a work of narrative nonfiction can be. My broad interest in birds, along with an intangible personal connection to owls, is...

For most British birders, the Ring Ouzel is a creature of mystery. We may glimpse it on spring or autumn migration, perched on a thorn bush or feeding on ripe berries. Otherwise, we must venture into the hills and mountains where it breeds—mostly in northern England and Scotland...

Ed Drewitt’s Raptor Prey Remains: A Guide to Identifying What’s Been Eaten by a Bird of Prey begs to be judged by its cover, where the intense yellow eyes of a Eurasian Sparrowhawk gaze into the throat of a European Starling pinned down and agape. Underneath, a grid of uncompromising...

Mountaineer Books, a Seattle-based book publisher specializing in outdoor and conservation titles, has recently produced a slew of exciting bird books, including Paul Bannick's Snowy Owl and Great Gray Owl, Kim Long's What Birds Eat, and Molly Hashimoto's Birds of the West.

National Audubon Society's Birds of North America and Trees of North America are surprising, impressive, scholarly, and worthy additions to any naturalist's library.

Two new nonfiction titles join the ranks of the already formidable canon of New England bird and nature writing: John R. Nelson’s Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts through Birds and Robert Tougias’s Birder on Berry Lane: Three Acres, Twelve Months, Thousands of Birds.

This is a beautifully written book that speaks to the extraordinary wonder of discovering birds, the elation yet trepidation of being part of a new community, and the emotional growth birds and birding may bring.

Kricher’s book is a gold mine of information for the curious bird enthusiast. There is little that birders won’t find in this wide-ranging volume; in particular, there is plenty to keep the interested reader abreast of the diversity of knowledge and research about birds.

How Birds Work is filled with solid, detailed information delivered in a way that allows for comprehension without loss of valuable content.

Parking Lot Birding is a fun guide loaded with must-see locations in Texas, with up to 15 birding destinations to choose from in each chapter.

While a children’s book about an extinct genus may not sound uplifting, Loebel-Fried manages to deftly tell the story of the enigmatic ʻōʻō while giving us reason to rejoice in the wonder of Hawaiian birds.

Well organized to assist readers in finding what’s most important to them, the book covers what and how to feed, how to create a bird-friendly backyard, bird feeder building plans, a quite extensive section on bird behavior and biology, and identification of the 196 species covered.

A review by Adrienne and Frank Izaguirre Wingspan (2019), Wingspan European Expansion (2019), Wingspan Digital Edition (2020), Wingspan Oceania Expansion (2020), by Elizabeth[...]

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[...]

A review by Carrie Laben Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, by Katie Fallon Brandeis University Press, 2020 256 pages,[...]

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.