Birding Books

docx · **Posted:** Mar 17 10:39 pm

I finished The Snoring Bird by Bernd Heinrich. It was a terrific read on birds, bees, a pet panther, Nazis & Russians among other things. Really liked this book. I'm now into The Audubon Reader by John James Audubon. It is the everyman library edition, and has some nice color plates along with a collection of essays by the artist.

I also picked up Alien Animals in British Columbia by G.C. Carl and C.J. Guiguet. In covers interesting introductions of animals into BC, both successful (starlings) and not so much (blue tits). There is also a selection of books in the same series dedicated to the birds of BC, however all are out of print (I picked mine up at a used bookstore).

docx · **Posted:** Mar 17 11:44 pm

Because I'm a list nut, I've made a list of all the books mentioned in this thread so far.
Notes on format:
- a & the at the beginning of a title have been removed
-list is alphabetical by book title
-magazine articles, videos and web pages are not included
-books with 3 or more authors are amended to "whoever et al"

revs · **Posted:** Mar 19 9:33 am

thanks for the updated list docx.
i'm quite into listing stuff myself so can understand the urge :lol:

revs · **Posted:** Apr 10 5:06 pm

i just finished reading The Big Twitch by Sean Dooley
and it was great

the book has already been mentioned in this thread but i'd just like to say that i can relate to Sean totally, he's my type of guy i think.
we both seem to share that "punk ethos" and it was cool to follow his year-long twitch-athon across all of Australia in a quest to see 700 species and become the Big Year king of his country.
when i first started reading it i got a bit worried as the dialect and some of the slang just seemed foreign (duh) but after a few pages i got into the swing of things and found it a humorous, addictive and satisfying read.
i really respected his determination to follow through when most figured it was impossible.
best of all is that it's a book about a birder and his passion and obsession towards birds. and what's not to like about that?
cheers mate.

docx · **Posted:** Apr 18 10:14 pm

There is an interesting article in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 edited by Richard Preston called "Ruffled Feathers". It tells the story of the writing of a bird guide book and the fraud that was uncovered due to it. Another article touches on the bird flu in a piece called "The Flu Hunter".

campbellrivergal · **Posted:** Apr 19 7:03 am

Finially have a book to add to the list (I'm sure I haven't seen it listed yet)

Birds The definitive Visual Guide
Audubon (copyright sept 2007)??
A great book with alot of info on the different habitats to the body of birds. Hope it wasn't listed already and I missed it somehow??

Bonnie

revs · **Posted:** Apr 24 4:27 pm

thanks for the contributions docx and campbellrivergal, both sound very interesting

i can't believe i haven't mentioned
All Things Reconsidered - My Birding Adventures by Roger Tory Peterson (2006 Houghton Mifflin).
it's a collection of RTP's best columns from Bird Watcher's Digest spanning the seventies and early eighties.
i like the quote on the cover "His tales read like pulp adventure." - Outside
it's true, after reading this stuff i want to go out and have bird adventures of my own.

revs · **Posted:** Apr 29 7:14 pm

i'm very happy to say that i finally found a copy of a book (that was recommended to me by a birder at Reifel; thanks Carlo) called

birders - Tales of a Tribe by Mark Cocker (Grove Press 2001)
the wait was worth it as every page had me totally enthralled.
well written and informative.
a perfect read IMO and even though it's from a UK perspective, birding is universal.

valerie · **Posted:** Apr 30 2:58 pm

I echo the suggestion to pick up Sibley Field Guide and the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behaviour, which is a beautiful book. His illustrations are quite impressive.

revs · **Posted:** May 13 6:32 pm

Been a while, and a few pages back now but i've got a stack of new books so here goes.

The Curse of the Labrador Duck by Glen Chilton (Harper Collins 2009).

I know Guy's not really down on stuffed specimens of extinct birds but i admit to a slight fascination with seeing for myself some of the tragic birds that fly no more.
Knowing that over-hunting, and trophy-bagging produced a lot of the specimens in museums we see today made me feel slightly uneasy when i saw the Passenger Pigeon at the Vancouver Museum, was it one of the last few?

Anyways, Glen goes on a quest (30 cities, 130,000 km) to view all the remaining stuffed specimens of the tragic extinct Labrador duck, a cool-looking duck if ever there was one.

It's an entertaining ride filled with booze, birds and mystery and i hope he writes another bird book soon.

revs · **Posted:** May 13 6:52 pm

Life List - Olivia Gentile (Bloomsbury 2009).

Read this one soon after reading Birding on Borrowed Time - Phoebe Snetsinger (American Birding 2003).

Both books should be read one after another (Life List last) as it's quite a fascinating look into the life of the first person to see 8,000 species of bird worldwide.

Phoebe, the daughter of advertising mogul Leo Burnett was a housewife who got into birding at the fairly late age of 34.
Her interest in "seeing all the birds" began when she was diagnosed with cancer and given a year to live.
She devoted all her remaining time to the birds, and as it turned out was a survivor, clocking in another 17 years in the pursuit of all things feathered.

Being from a wealthy family she used her inheritance to travel around the world several times over in a journey often at the expense of her loved ones.
Along the way she faced earthquakes, shipwrecks, assaults and even rape in New Guinea, as well as re-occurrences of melanoma.
Thus is the way of passion.

I would have loved to have met her, a birding legend.

Birding on Borrowed Time is Phoebe's story in her own words, Life List is a biography, interesting to read about events from both perspectives.

revs · **Posted:** May 13 8:42 pm

A Supremely Bad Idea - Luke Dempsey (Bloomsury 2008)

Ok, here's another Big Year yarn about 3 friends on a trip across America in search of birds.
Quite a funny read although i found some of the authors remarks off-putting, a bit of a mean streak, albeit with tongue in cheek.
It's all good though, i never get tired of birder stories like this

revs · **Posted:** May 13 8:50 pm

Hope is the Thing with Feathers - Christopher Cokinos (Tarcher Penguin 2009)

As the jacket says "a personal chronicle of vanished birds", i really enjoyed this one as it was a informative, fact-based account of extinct North American species like the Carolina parakeet, Ivory-billed woodpecker, Passenger pigeon and Labrador duck.
It was the chapter on the Labrador duck that made me eager to read Curse of the...
Well written and poignant.

revs · **Posted:** May 13 9:04 pm

Birdsong - Don Stap (Scribner 2005)

Recently finished this one and i was amazed at the amount of information i gleaned from this book.
It made me start thinking more about the songs i hear on a daily basis and the amount of complexity and variation in species.

Who knew that the Brown Thrasher is capable of over 2,000 different songs? :shock:

The author follows a professor of biology by the name of Don Kroodsma around as he deaves into the surprising mystery of the song of the Black-capped chickadee for starters.
I sometimes have problems staying focused when reading scientific data oriented subject matter but was entertained actually throughout.
Can't say it's made me better at ID'ing songs but i listen a lot closer now to the songs i do hear, especially for variations.

revs · **Posted:** May 13 9:13 pm

A Field Guide to Advanced Birding - Kenn Kaufman (Houghton Mifflin)

This is part of the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide series and i got a leather-bound 50th anniversary edition that looks like a small bible.
Loads of information, i read it through cover to cover but it bears repeated reading as chapters are separated into specific ID challenges.
Illustrations throughout, plus it looks cool to leave it out casually, Advanced Birding? wow

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