A Practical Illustrated Guide to Attracting and Feeding Backyard Birds: the Complete Book of Bird Feeders, Bird Tables, Bird Baths, Nest Boxes, and Garden Bird-Watching

With the title A Practical Illustrated Guide to Attracting and Feeding Backyard Birds: the Complete Book of Bird Feeders, Bird Tables, Bird Baths, Nest Boxes, and Garden Bird-Watching, there is hardly any need to write a review. The title explains how the book is practical, and the cover hints at how beautifully colorful. Judging books by their covers can lead to disappointment, but not with this book. I renewed it to keep looking at its thematic two-page illustrated articles and its projects. I might use several ideas to enhance our yard's bird-appeal.

The topics in A Practical Illustrated Guide to Attracting and Feeding Backyard Birds are wide ranging. Readers may learn about bird anatomy, physics, and behaviors, as well as how to attract them by offering feeders, fountains, and nesting boxes. Gardeners find recommendations for landscaping, while hobbyists find templates for wood-working projects. There is also an essential guide to birds who frequent yards.

Though the publisher is British, this edition seems to be aimed at the American market. The range maps show North America. A Practical Illustrated Guide to Attracting and Feeding Backyard Birds is a great selection for public or personal libraries. I am now returning it to let others enjoy it.

A Practical Illustrated Guide to Attracting and Feeding Backyard Birds: the Complete Book of Bird Feeders, Bird Tables, Bird Baths, Nest Boxes, and Garden Bird-Watching. Southwater, 2014. 256p. ISBN 9781780192802.

This Strange Wilderness: The Life and Art of John James Audubon by Nancy Plain

I think the first biography that I ever read was John Audubon, Boy Naturalist by Miriam Evangeline Mason, a 1962 publication in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. I think I read it in a single evening. So I was thrilled when Bonnie brought home This Strange Wilderness: The Life and Art of John James Audubon by Nancy Plain, a 112 page illustrated biography for tween and teen readers. Ironically, I could not read it in a single evening because I can not stay awake long enough now.

If I could have started in the morning and ignored all my obligations, I would have had a wonderful time reading without stop about the Frenchman born in Haiti who became the most famous of American ornithologists and wildlife artists. His life is a quintessential American hero story. He came to Pennsylvania as a teen, fell in love with the country, and left a lasting legacy. That he struggled financially and at times was discouraged makes the story even better. I enjoyed This Strange Wilderness a little at a time over a couple of days.

Plain's book is more modern and honest than Mason's, which was written when our culture supported faultless accounts of our ancestors. Plain acknowledges what now seems unthinkable - Audubon shot many birds for the sake of studying and drawing them. In the early 19th century, future extinction of abundant wildlife seemed impossible. Audubon saw skies filled with passenger pigeons and the plains covered with bison. He witnessed the beginnings of the slaughter of these species and even warned others that it was unsustainable, but he did not alter his own habits. Readers may wish they had time machines to see what Audubon saw.

Naturally, This Strange Wilderness is filled with Audubon's own paintings of birds and mammals of North America. It is a good choice for aspiring naturalist as well as mature readers reviewing the world they think they know.

Plain, Nancy. This Strange Wilderness: The Life and Art of John James Audubon. University of Nebraska Press, 2015. 112p. ISBN 9780803248847.

The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation by Mike Unwin

This book review blog has gone to the birds! As any frequent reader must have noticed, I have written many reviews of bird-related books lately. In front of me now is The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation by Mike Unwin, an attractive paperback reference book on birds from Princeton University Press. It is not really meant to be read straight through, but I am finding very few pages to skip.

The author points out in his introduction how by being so omnipresent and visible, birds established themselves as an indicator of the health of specific habitats and the earth as a whole. Today numerous factors are contributing to declines in the populations of many birds, habitat destruction being the leading cause.

There are many observations throughout that fascinate me:

Bird diversity concentrates on tropical and subtropical regions, especially in forests.  Russia, which is over 60 times larger than Ecuador, hosts only 645 bird species while the small tropical South American country hosts a whopping 1,515 species.

About 6,900 species are found in the forests of the earth while about 200 are found in its deserts.

Birds migrate at various altitudes. Bar-headed geese fly at 29,000 feet.

William Shakespeare mentioned doves 60 times in his plays, more than any other bird. Geese were second at 44 and eagles third at 40.

Illegal hunting of songbirds in Southeastern Europe threatens the survival of numerous migrating species. Most of the illegally killed birds are smuggled into Italy for the restaurant trade.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds with over a million members is the world's largest bird conservation organization. With Audubon and other regional groups it forms BirdLife International, which is identifying and securing sanctuaries around the world.

A beginning birder wishing to understand the world of birds and veteran bird advocates can both learn much from The Atlas of Birds.

Unwin, Mike. The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation. Princeton University Press, 2011. 144p. ISBN 9780691149493.

Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests by Sneed B. Collard III

On topics of nature and conservation, adults should sometimes turn their attention to children's books, some of which get to the point quickly and effectively. Bonnie brought home such a book, Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests by Sneed B. Collard III. The author takes readers to Montana to follow University of Montana biology professor Dick Hutto through forests burned by wildfire to show that our society's ideas about forest fires have often been mistaken.

How can this be? Smokey the Bear told us to prevent forest fires. It turns out, and many of us discovered this in a big way in the 1980s when fire swept through Yellowstone National Park, suppressing small natural fires for decades contributes to hugely destructive fires in the future. Suppression of wildfire also inhibits growth of some plant and wildlife species that need periodic fires. Hutto shows how beneficial fire has been to Montana's birds.

Fire Birds is an attractive and informative book with many photos that let you feel as if you have been to Montana. I especially liked all the photos of woodpeckers, bluebirds, and other species that I want to see when I go to Glacier National Park later this year. (The black-backed woodpecker, western tanager, and mountain bluebird are on the book jacket.) I hope many children and their parents and grandparents find this book at the library.

Collard, Sneed B., III. Fire Birds: Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests. Bucking Horse Books, 2015. 48p. ISBN 9780984446070.

The House of Owls by Tony Angell

The owls of North America have not only been important to the career of artist and naturalist Tony Angell, they have been a great pleasure. In The House of Owls, he recounts his encounters with almost all of the species. The exception that I see upon looking back through his very personal reference guide to owls is the ferruginous pygmy owl. In his introduction to this owl that lives in Central America, Mexico and just the smallest sliver of Arizona, he tells how early twentieth century ornithologist George Sutton's saw his first ferruginous pygmy owl.

For all of the owl profiles, Angell describes range and habitat, food preferences, vocalizations, courtship and nesting, threats and conservation, and vital statistics (length, wing span, and weight). Some details seem to repeat. Owls that use cavities in trees depend on either pileated woodpeckers or northern flickers to excavate them. Most eggs hatch between 21 and 24 days after being laid. Owlets fledge at around three to four weeks and remain with their parents for a couple of months or more. Cooper's hawks prey on many of the owlets and some of the small adult owls.

Angell starts his guide to owls with a chapter recounting his raising a western screech owl. In this chapter and throughout the book he includes his own topical drawing that support the text.

The House of Owls is a delightful book that will interest birders and other amateur naturalists. More libraries should add this new book.

Angell, Tony. The House of Owls. Yale University Press, 2015. 203p. ISBN 9780300203448.

Birding by Impression: A Different Approach to Knowing and Identifying Birds by Kevin T. Karlson and Dale Rosselet

When I attended David Sibley's book signing last year, he said that he looks at shape and listens to songs more than spotting marks and plumage in identifying birds. Sibley and many skilled birders do not have to get long close looks at birds to know what they are. With years of experience, they just know because of bird songs, behaviors, habitats, size, and shape. They often do not even have to see the birds.

New birders may have trouble naming species unless the birds sit still in full view, which they rarely do so. Luckily, novices may learn about expert ID methods by reading the new book Birding by Impression: A Different Approach to Knowing and Identifying Birds by Kevin T. Karlson and Dale Rosselet. In this Peterson Reference Guide, the authors group similar birds and then explain size and shape differences, as well as where to find the birds and important plumage. The new birder then needs much book and field study beyond the book, but a foundation can be laid.

The authors include many illustration, some in quizzes that are fun to take. I scored well on heron-like birds, woodpeckers, jays, and even sparrows. I was weak on shorebirds, flycatchers, and warblers.

Birding by Impression is an excellent choice for public library collections. Birders might like having personal copies, too.

Karlson, Kevin T. and Dale Rosselet. Birding by Impression: A Different Approach to Knowing and Identifying Birds. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 286p. ISBN 9780547195780.

A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts by Sue Leaf

When our daughter Laura led us through the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird Sanctuary just north of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis in the summer of 2013, I had never heard of the nine-year-old boy who moved with his family to Minnesota in 1867 and grew up to be a leading doctor in the city. As a boy, he and his friends wandered the woods and canoed the lakes of the area, noticing the birds, about whom Roberts had learned much from his bird-fancying father. In A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts, Sue Leaf tells how Roberts balanced his dedication to medicine and his patients with his love of birds.

Roberts accomplished much in his life. Before medical school, he worked as a land examiner and civil engineer. Working as a doctor for over half a century, he treated many patients, delivered many babies, helped found the local medical society, and helped build hospitals. As a  ornithologist, he started birding clubs with his friends, led many bird walks, taught ornithology at the University of Minnesota, collected species for the natural history museum on the University campus, served as museum director, and eventually led the effort to build what is now the Bell Museum of Natural History. He may be most remembered for his two-volume The Birds of Minnesota which was published in 1930.

On one level, A Love Affair with Birds can be read as a tribute to an exemplary life. The author, however, offers the reader more than that. Her section on Roberts' medical career serves as a compelling history of health care in Minnesota, spanning the era in which Roberts road a horse to reach his rural patients or sometimes caught a trolley in town to his mature years when he rode with his chauffeur. The growth and development of Minneapolis runs through the story. Readers learn about the planning and building of hospitals and museums. Most of all, Leaf tells the story birds and the birding community of Minnesota.

Having been to Minneapolis over a dozen times now with prospects for many more visits, wanting to see all the Minnesota birds, I enjoyed A Love Affair with Birds immensely.

Leaf, Sue. A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 271p. ISBN 9780816675647.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Falconry tests the endurance and sanity of anyone keen to attempt the sport. Author T. H. White was ill-prepared for his first attempt. Over 70 years later, Helen Macdonald was more experienced and realistic when she acquired a goshawk. Still, her experienced included self-doubt and despair, as well as self-discovery, as she recounts in H is for Hawk.

Just as it helps to read Middlemarch by George Eliot before reading My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, having read The Goshawk by White will enrich anyone's reading of Macdonald's book. Thankfully for me, reading H is for Hawk also explained much of what puzzled me about The Goshawk.

Of course, you are more likely to have read Middlemarch than The Goshawk, as Eliot is still fashionable and White is mostly forgotten. He was most popular in the mid-twentieth century when children were reading The Sword in the Stone and their parents were reading The Once and Future King. In the 1960s, his Arthurian tales were source materials for a Disney animated film and the broadway musical Camelot.

Luckily for all, you do not have to have read White's book before reading Macdonald's, as she liberally recounts and quotes sections of it as she describes her experiences with Mabel, a young goshawk that she acquired from a breeder in Ireland and brought to her home near Cambridge to train to hunt. Like White, she take's her bird on walks through field and forest and frets over how much it weighs. For the benefit of good reading, Macdonald did not stick to White's narrative as a template for hers, and her prose flows more pleasingly.

Mead's book My Life in Middlemarch is an easier book to compare with Macdonald's title. Both mix these elements:

• Memoir of the author
• Biography of famous author
• Story of a famous book
• Observations about English history and culture

To this formula, Macdonald adds a dose of natural history, letting readers know much about hawks and falconry. The result is a great book that keeps the reader engaged.

Now I should try So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan, another book in which a reader recounts her relationship with a book.

Macdonald, Helen. H is for Hawk. Grove Press, 2014. 300p. ISBN 9780802123411.

The Goshawk by T. H. White

In the 1930s, before he became famous for writing The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, T. H. White was an impoverished young writer with an interest in falconry. He read numerous classic books on the subject and supposed that he could apply what he learned from them to train a bird of his own. He acquired a goshawk and quickly discovered he was totally unprepared. He recounted the experience in his 1951 book The Goshawk.

Being a writer in search of a topic for a book at the time of his acquiring his bird, White started a journal, which he used for much of the content and structure of this book. Helen Macdonald, author of the recent memoir H is for Hawk, read it as an aspiring young falconer and was upset by it, as were many falconers of 1950s and 1960s. White was roundly criticized for being a know-nothing. Since that time literary critics have reviewed it more favorably, saying that White was courageous for being so honest about his ineptitude. They also argue that his tale contributes to the literature of adversarial relationships between humans and other animals, joining Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ideas about how humans should treat animals have changed since the middle of the 20th century. When I recently read The Goshawk, my sympathies aligned with the bird. White put it through much needless torment, which he seemed to realize as he spent night and day with the goshawk, trying to subdue its will. I wanted the bird to escape. The conflict does resolve about halfway through the book, but readers will find the aftermath just as interesting. It is a good reading choice while waiting for H is for Hawk.

White, T. H. The Goshawk. New York Review Books, 2007, 1951. 215p. ISBN 9781590172490.

Cuckoos: Cheating by Nature by Nick Davies

If I wasn't a librarian, I might enjoy being a naturalist. Reading Cuckoos: Cheating by Nature by Nick Davies, I am impressed by the dedication of scientists who spend countless hours outdoors observing the behaviors of birds and other wildlife. Davies has spent over three decades doing such work in the fens outside Cambridge where he is a professor of behavioral ecology. He also takes trips to other sites in England and around the world to observe cuckoos and the birds that they victimize with their egg laying. What an interesting life!

What a strange and hard-to-understand bird! The cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, so the foster parents raise the chicks. Is this good parenting? How many of the hosts fall for the deception and raise the cuckoo chicks instead of their own? Davies tries to answer these questions through conducting many experiments in the field. Many involve egg swapping.

Through his own observations and studies of cuckoos conducted over hundreds of years, Davies has come to some conclusions. One is that the host birds are not totally defenseless; they do sometimes reject the cuckoo eggs. Another is that there are numerous subspecies of common cuckoos in Europe that can only be identified by their eggs. One subspecies has eggs that resemble reed warbler eggss, another makes meadow pipit-like eggs, and so on. Their breeding success relies on getting their eggs into the right nests at the right times.

If the cuckoos were invariably successful, they would probably wipe out their host species. Studies show, however, that the common cuckoo is declining in number, as global warming is allowing their target species to nest earlier and earlier, but the cuckoos are returning from their winters in Africa at their tradition times, sometimes too late to lay their eggs unnoticed.

Davies has a fascinating subject and his reporting is lively and personal. Cuckoo should prove popular with natural history readers.

Davies, Nick. Cuckoos: Cheating by Nature. Bloomsbury, 2015. 288p. ISBN 9781620409527.

Froodle by Antoinette Portis

On Old MacDonald's farm, every animal has only one thing to say. "Quack quack" or "Moo moo" or "Cluck cluck." Anyone who has been around animals, however, knows it is not so simple. Animal, especially birds, are a bit more expressive. Each has a range of grunts, calls, chirps, etc.

In Froodle by children's author/illustrator Antoinette Portis, everyday birds say their everyday things at first, day after day, through the seasons, until Little Brown Bird suddenly says "Froodle sproodle!" Cardinal, Crow, and Dove are shocked. They insist Little Brown Bird return to simply saying "Peep." LBB, as many birders know sparrows, wrens, and other hard to identify little birds, complies at first but then exclaims "Tiffle biffle, just a miffle! A revolution is declared.

I can imagine reading Froodle to children will be much fun for people of all ages. Silliness shall reign. Take that Conformity!

Rumba numba wonka skirby dirby!

Portis, Antoinette. Froodle. Roaring Book Press*, 2014. ISBN 9781596439221.

*How appropriate!

Birdology: 30 Activities and Observations for Exploring the World of Birds by Monica Russo

In both of the first two libraries in which I worked as a librarian with my MLS, the adult and juvenile nonfiction was shelved together. The reasoning was that adults and children could benefit from many of the same books and they could be found all in one place. Birdology: 30 Activities and Observations for Exploring the World of Birds by Monica Russo is just the kind of book that supports that philosophy. It is aimed at young readers but offers much to readers of any age.

Inside the brightly illustrated cover of Birdology are lessons on birding, basic ornithology, do-it-yourself experiments, and many beautiful photographs of birds. Though I am about 50 years beyond the target audience, I read with interest, gaining understanding of some aspects of bird life that I had not realized reading more scholarly works. That birds who eat only insects in flight must migrate in winter is probably in the books I've previously read but it never registered with me. Woodpeckers who pick insect eggs and larvae from bark can winter over in many climates. I saw woodpeckers all winter long because of this.

I read with the interest the section on attracting birds to your yard with plants. We are expanding our flowerbed and replacing shrubs in the next few weeks. I will keep the birds in mind.

Birdology is a good addition to any public library.

Russo, Monica. Birdology: 30 Activities and Observations for Exploring the World of Birds. Chicago Review Press, 2015. 108p. ISBN 9781613749494.

The Art of Migration: Birds, Insects, and the Changing Seasons in Chicagoland by Peggy Macnamara

The spring migration of birds has just begun. While there are many books, articles, and websites that tell birders what species to expect when and where, a particularly interesting title to me is painter Peggy Macnamara's The Art of Migration: Birds, Insects, and the Changing Seasons in Chicagoland. With text by John Bates and James H. Boone, she alerts readers to the birds and insects that will come up the Mississippi flyway through the counties surrounding Chicago.

Macnamara's watercolor illustrations are not by any means photographic, but they reproduce the effects of sunlight and shade on birds and insects as observed outdoors. Their intentional impressionism prepares spotters to natural conditions that are not ideal for seeing everything that the best photographers have been able to present in their bird and insect guides.

Working often with the scientists at the Field Museum of Chicago, Macnamara has access to the museum's specimens of birds and insects collected for over a century. Of particular interest to her are the birds who died during migration when they crashed into buildings in downtown Chicago or along the lakefront. These birds were gathered and brought to the museum every day for about 30 years. A census of them shows trends in the migrations passing through the area. Current numbers are way down thankfully because building managers have reduced lights and architects have designed friendlier buildings, but there are still plenty of bird corpses to gather.

Macnamara's book will interest artists as well as birders, as she often describes how she uses her brush to apply colors and shading. As a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and illustrator-in-residence at the Field Museum, she has much experience. The Art of Migration could as easily be shelved in the art section as the zoology area.

Since Macnamara and her co-authors tell so much about the birds and where to see them in the Chicago area, we shelve it with other helpful birding guides.

Macnamara, Peggy. The Art of Migration: Birds, Insects, and the Changing Seasons in Chicagoland. University of Chicago Press, 2013. 202p. ISBN 9780226046297.

Bird Books Old and New

I have been devoting much of my free time to birding this spring, lessening the time I have spent writing this blog. I haven't stopped reading, though I may be reading a little less, and my focus lately has been books about birds or Italy.

I live in the Chicago suburbs and visit various DuPage County Forest Preserves to see what I might see. My reading, however, is geographically unbound. Through the pages of The World of the Shorebirds by Harry Thurston, I have been able to travel by armchair all over North and South America, learning about the behaviors and migrations of plovers, sandpipers, oystercatchers, jacanas, stilts, avocets, and thick-knees. This Sierra Club Book is nearly twenty years old, so readers need to look up more recent statistics about bird populations and what is happening in critical flyways. The photos are still beautiful, and the author inspires love of birds.

I am traveling around the planet in Woodpeckers of the World by Gerard Gorman. Woodpeckers can be found on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. South America has the most, some of which have very small ranges. Many do not migrate, so they won't be coming up my way this spring or ever. Gorman explains that little is known about some of the more remote species and that there is disagreement about which ones should be certified as species. He profiles 239 woodpeckers, identifying ranges, habitats, behaviors, and population status; the photos he includes are gorgeous. This recent guide is hefty. The author put many years into its making.

Sweep Up the Sun by Helen Frost and Rick Lieder is a children's book that brings me home. I have seen every bird in this book already this year, either in our yard or at one of the nearby preserves. The text is a poem about flying by Frost set into amazing photos by Lieder, each showing a familiar bird in flight. Sweep Up the Sun is a great addition to any young ornithologist's collection.

I also just read a book about hummingbird rescue for Booklist. Watch there for a review.

Thurston, Harry. The World of Shorebirds. Sierra Club Books, 1996. 117p. ISBN 0871569019.

Gorman, Gerard. Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide. Firefly Books, 2014. 528p. ISBN 9781770853096.

Frost, Helen and Rick Lieder. Sweep Up the Sun. Candlewick Press, 2015. ISBN 9780763669041.

Noisy Bird Sing-Along by John Himmelman

I find much to like in Noisy Bird Sing-Along by John Himmelman. The bright, colorful bird illustrations are nicely detailed, making the species identifiable. All the birds seem to be in motion; none are stiff. I can imagine young readers absorbing the images and becoming junior ornithologists.

Adult readers should have lots of fun performing the bird sounds under the author's directions, and young readers will want to repeat them.

I appreciate that Himmelman chose some less obvious species, including three night birds. In the appendix, the author provides fun facts about all twelve species, as well as advice for young bird watchers.

I did not know that the white belly of a nuthatch reflects light onto bark, helping it find insects. Great book.

Himmelman, John. Noisy Bird Sing-Along. Dawn Publications, 2015. ISBN 9781584695134.

Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests by Arnette Heidcamp

I have been at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library for over twenty years and weeded/inventoried the nature books several times. So I must have held Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests by Arnette Heidcamp several times before I plucked it from the shelf early in February. I did not recognize it. I wondered why I had not read it yet. I checked it out.

Over the years, I have read several bird rescue books, including The Bluebird Effect by Julie Zickefoose and Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson. I am always charmed and fascinated by stories in which caring people nurse injured birds back to health, whether for returning to the wild or for adoption into a human households when release is not possible. These stories usually have everything you want in good stories: tragedy, comedy, and unforgettable character (usually of the avian kind).

In her third hummingbird book, Heidcamp is the bird rescuer. She is known in her New York community and into New England for her unique calling and recalls that various members of the local police had started calls to her asking if she were "Hummingbird 911." In Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests, she takes four hummers (two ruby-throats and two rufous) into her sunroom for the duration of a winter. The little birds may be cute, but they do not get along.

Heidcamp's book is nearly 20 years old at this point, and few libraries still have it, but it does not seem dated. The color photos are remarkable, freezing the energetic birds hovering over flowers and feeders, showing their brilliant feathers, and documenting their previously unobserved interactions. It is just the kind of book a bird watcher loves.

Heidcamp, Arnette. Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests. Crown Publishers, 1997. 204p. ISBN 0517708841.

Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife by John M. Marzluff

As soon as I saw a review of Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife by John M. Marzluff in the Chicago Tribune in November, I knew I wanted to read it. I had noticed in the past couple of years, as I became more dedicated to bird watching, that we have a great number of bird species in our neighborhoods and parks. I saw goldfinches and cedar waxwings in our yard for the first time in 2014. It probably helps that Bonnie and I are adding bird-friendly plants to our yard annually. Still, I assumed that birds are more populous in the woods, prairies, and other environments that are more natural than the suburbs.

According to the author, many birds actually do quite well in Subirdia, as there is a wealth of food and shelter to be found. While plants that provide seeds, berries, and nectar draw some birds, others come to feast at bird feeders and water features. The diversity of plants also attract insects on which birds feed. If species can find safe nesting locations, the breeding is great for some, but not all birds in Subirdia.

There are concerns. As cities and their suburbs become more alike, they support the same species and some diversity is lost. Marzluff points out five birds that are found in abundance in many metropolitan area worldwide: rock pigeons, house sparrows, European starlings, mallards, and Canada geese. They may displace some native species, but the consequences are not always that simple.

The latter part of Welcome to Subirdia is about what individuals and communities can do to promote bird and other wildlife diversity. I am thinking of replacing even more of the lawn with tall grasses, thistles, and shrubs. I am also eager for the spring migration to see what other birds might come through our suburb.

Marzluff, John M. Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife. Yale University Press, 2014. 303p. ISBN 9780300197075.

On the Wing by David Elliott with Illustrations by Becca Stadtlander

There are several ways that one may read On the Wing by David Elliott.

As an adult who reads everything at hand, one can zip right through this thin book of poetry for children in ten minutes or less.

As an adult who appreciates clever poetry and beautiful illustrations, one can pleasantly linger and absorb.

As a birdwatcher, one can study the shapes and colorful markings of the birds.

As an adult reading aloud to children, there can be the joy of sharing well-chosen words with eager listeners, committing poems to memory, and looking at the artful illustrations with younger eyes. I can imagine On the Wing becoming a favorite for naptime or bedtime.

Elliott, David. On the Wing. Candlewick Press, 2014. ISBN 9780763653248.

The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Jonathan Rosen

"Some days, of course, there's nothing but starlings." Jonathan Rosen 

Sometimes I come upon books without seeking, just finding them, similar to Gene Spandling spotting an ivory-billed woodpecker (he thinks) when he was just enjoying a outing in a cypress swamp. I came across a positive reference to The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature and borrowed it. For some reason, I expected the book to be more scientific, detailing what can be found in the atmosphere. Instead, I found it to be a literary history of birdwatching infused with Rosen's own story of becoming a birdwatcher (a term he seems to like better than birder).

The Life of the Skies is also a travel memoir. Rosen describes outings in the swamps of Louisiana, the woods of Central Park, and the valleys in Israel, all places with important environmental stories. Often in the company of local experts, he sought birds of note. His essays about these outings explain how global geopolitics and individual efforts for conservation have determined what birds birdwatchers see. He also populates his book with stories about famous birdwatchers, including John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Russell Wallace, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Frost, Roger Tory Peterson, and E. O Wilson. He also quotes songwriters Lucinda Williams, Chris Hillerman, and Gram Parsons.

Rosen is an essayist for the New Yorker and the New York Times and has written other books that examine current life in philosophical, religious, and ethical terms. This book continues his diverse scholarly interests. In it I found many quotable passages, like one above.

In the world of books, The Life of the Skies is not common like a starling. It is also not an ivory-billed woodpecker of a book, for you will successfully find it in some libraries, if you look. I will call it an indigo bunting, an uncommon and delightful find.

Rosen, Jonathan. The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. ISBN 9780374186302.

Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds by Miyoko Chu

The fall migration of birds is in full swing now. Not wanting to miss any of it, I am eager to leave the house with our binoculars and camera to see what I can see and photograph. But I do want to stop for a moment to say I just read a great book on bird migration, Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds by Miyoko Chu. The author tells fascinating stories about little birds who take incredible journeys and about some of the people who follow them. She also identifies some of the best locations for witnessing the glories of the migrations. More places go on my travel list.

.......................

Later. I am back from the Morton Arboretum. I saw lots of birds today, but they were mostly resident birds instead of migrants. Many of the birds who need to go south have already started doing so. In Songbird Journeys, the author tells how dates and routes of migrations can vary from year to year, but the result is often the same - birds arriving in the same locations, maybe even the same nests. This may be a year for early cold. Birds can sense this, but their decision-making as to when to migrate is not perfect. Sometimes great numbers of birds die in storms.

I enjoyed Chu's stories about bird researchers. In 1965, Richard Graber from the Illinois Natural History Survey tried to follow a gray-cheeked thrush on which he had tied a tiny radio transmitter. Small birds need tiny transmitters to keep from weighing them down. At dusk when the bird rose for its nighttime journey, Graber took off from the Urbana, Illinois airport to follow. Little did he know that he'd get as far as Lake Superior before losing the bird a little before dawn. The bird burned a couple of ounces of body fat. Graber had to land once and refuel his plane.

Another story involved a researcher who banded a warbler near Lake Erie in late summer. When he travelled to the Dominican Republic to study warbler, the first bird he caught in his net was the same bird.

Chu emphasizes how much there is still to learn about bird migrations. Where some of the birds spend winters has not yet been discovered, which worries conservationists. The loss of habitats in both North and South America is the major threat to the survival of songbirds.

I am glad to have read Songbird Journeys. It would be great winter reading for many North American birders.

Chu, Miyoko. Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds. Walker & Company, 2006. 312p. ISBN 9780802714688.