Next week (Tuesday, January 14, 2025) our One Village, One Book club meets to discuss Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles, an illustrated record of her journey into bird-watching as an antidote to a difficult world.
If reading this book has sparked your interest in birding, here are 11 more nonfiction books about birds and birders, from practical to personal, how-to books to memoirs. (For even more great bird books, see our previous blog post from August 2021 or this OPL staff list about birding.)
Quoted descriptions are from the library catalog unless otherwise noted.
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper
Expert birder and “self-described Blerd (Black nerd)” Cooper was launched into the national spotlight in 2020, when his racially-charged encounter with a dog walker while birding in Central Park went viral. “Equal parts memoir, travelogue and primer on the art of birding,” Cooper’s book exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover your own.
The Birds that Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness by Kenn Kaufman
Kaufman weaves a tale of “raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration and fraud” in this account of natural historians (including John James Audubon and his bitter rival, Alexander Wilson) studying birds in eastern North America during the early 1800s.
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think by Jennifer Ackerman
Ackerman explores the ever-evolving scientific knowledge about birds, including “Birds that give gifts and birds that steal, birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves, birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call….Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world…Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being.” (Recommended by Tan in The Backyard Bird Chronicles)
Sibley Birds West: Field Guide to Birds of Western North America by David Sibley
Sibley’s carefully illustrated book is a great tool for identifying birds that live in the Rockies and western United States, including the Bay Area.
The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds by John Muir Laws
Local naturalist Laws was one of the people who guided Tan on her bird-watching and bird-drawing journey. His book is as much about observing birds as drawing them, as “drawing becomes the vehicle for seeing.” “This how-to guide will perfect the technique of serious artists but also, perhaps more importantly, it will provide guidance for those who insist they can’t draw.”
The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live by Jack Gedney
“Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general.” (Recommended by Tan in The Backyard Bird Chronicles)
One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives by Bernd Heinrich
Heinrich details “close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds” in this book filled with “passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science” (New York Times Book Review). (Recommended by Tan in The Backyard Bird Chronicles)
Birding Basics: Tips, Tools & Techniques for Great Bird-watching by Noah Strycker
“A colorful and comprehensive handbook packed with all the basic skills and knowledge you need to become a better birder.”
The Life of Birds by Sir David Attenborough
Attenborough’s classic book is “a brilliant introduction to bird behaviors around the world: what they do and why they do it. He looks at each step in birds’ lives and the problems they have to solve: learning to fly; finding food; communicating; mating and caring for nests, eggs and young; migrating; facing dangers and surviving harsh conditions.”
The Bird: A Natural History of Who Birds Are, Where They Came From and How They Live by Colin Tudge
“In this fascinating exploration of the avian class, Tudge considers the creatures of the air. From their evolutionary roots to their flying, feeding, fighting, mating, nesting and communicating, Tudge provocatively ponders what birds actually do – as well as why they do it and how.”
Birding to Change the World: A Memoir by Trish O’Kane
“In this memoir, O’Kane, a natural sciences lecturer at the University of Vermont, elegantly weaves personal and natural history as she details how her fascination with birds compelled her to quit her journalism career, return to school at age 45 to get a PhD in environmental studies, and become an ardent conservationist. Interspersed with O’Kane’s account of deciding to go back to school after observing the resilience of New Orleans sparrows in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are riveting details about how the birds likely followed humans out of Africa and were alternately treated with admiration and contempt.”
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