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. Only the subject matter—the imperiled status of its 66 chosen species—is less than a delight. As Kaizer discovered in the course of writing and illustrating Rare Air, the situation is worse than she believed at the outset of her project. The U.S. law that seeks to protect dwindling species, the Endangered Species Act, provides for creation and supplementation of a list of threatened and endangered species. But this is not a list of every species that need help; instead, it is a much shorter list of the species that are getting help in some form. The backdrop to this book is the very real imperilment to each of its featured animals and insects.

The content-generators’ goal is to increase awareness of this paradox and to heighten our concern for all vulnerable organisms. They select “species of flight” as indicator species because they are relatively easy to observe, have rapid metabolisms, and can be critical pollinators.

The text by Scott Meiser that accompanies each species is entertaining to read. For the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, for example, he tells us that each of the bird’s tree-piercing whacks has a force approaching 1,000 g, ten times as much g-force as it takes to give a human a serious concussion. Luckily, the Red-cockaded Woodpecker has a spongy skull. The tri-colored bat is “no longer than a credit card,” while the text about butterflies of California corrects some notable errors in Eric Carle’s popular children’s book A Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Rare Air would make a fine gift for a youthful birder or a beginning birder of any age. The size and weight of the book make it fit comfortably in the hand. The text is informative and approachable and not dry and technical. Rare Air could have included a range map for each featured species for ease of use rather than detailing the range in narrative fashion, but that is a small quibble.

The book succeeds on many levels, not the least of which is the information it contains about successful habitat restoration programs and popular citizen monitoring efforts. This gives readers hope that they may spot these species in the field and not just in a dreary report of extinctions. It is hard for any book on birding to avoid discussing the effects of climate change and habitat loss on bird populations, but Rare Air walks that line in an honest but constructive way by portraying both the reality of these species in decline and their beauty.