10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

This, 2022, has been a curious year for books about birds and birding. Despite the absence of two major publishers—Lynx and HMH–from the new title publishing scene (hopefully not permanently), we were happily surprised to read and peruse many excellent books. But this is more than a coffee table book. Highly recommended.

Sri Lanka 223

Sri Lanka Malaysia Suriname Malawi 223

10,000 Birds

JULY 6, 2021

If you had your choice of one bird family to pursue, to seek out and observe and photograph and kvell over, which one would you choose? A passion for one bird family is also very useful. It provides goals and a definite direction for your birding travels and thoughts; sometimes it even becomes the basis of a book!

Costa Rica 264

Costa Rica Brazil Bolivia Ecuador 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2021

It’s a big subject that has been embraced by biologists Barbara Ballentine and Jeremy Hyman in Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication, a largish, book recently published by Comstock Publishing Associates, an imprint of Cornell University Press. © 2021 Barbara Ballentine and Jeremy Hyman & Quarto Publishing.

North America 278

North America Research Birds America 278

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

It was a pleasure to make these observations at the same time I was reading The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think , Jennifer Ackerman’s new book about the diversity and complexity of bird behavior. Superb Lyrebird by John Burgoyne ©2020 .

Science 220

Science Costa Rica Birds Research 220

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2020

Fortunately, with a prescience that’s a little scary, David Allen Sibley has created a book perfect for beginning birders (and the rest of us): What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing–What Birds Are Doing, and Why. copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley. copyright @2020 by David A llen Sibley.

2020 263

2020 Birds North America Sparrows 263

10,000 Birds

MAY 4, 2021

This is the charm of Lima’s book. Marybeth learns as she birds, embraces listing goals as a means of engaging with community, unabashedly enjoys a little competition, struggles to balance her absolute joy in birding with unexpected, life-and-death family obligations. But, in Chapter Three the book takes on more shape.

Louisiana 264

Louisiana Species Mississippi Alabama 264

10,000 Birds

APRIL 7, 2020

2019), and now this book. The progression could be said to echo that of an earlier book about an obsessive nature criminal, The Orchard Thief by Susan Orlean, which started out as an article in The New Yorker.). The book is structured cinematically. wrote a lengthy article in Outside magazine (Jan. Author Joshua Hammer.

Falcons 206

Falcons United Kingdom Zimbabwe Eggs 206

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

The book is chiefly about how people have conceptualized and studied birds, but there is an underlying theme, the changing ways in which our Western culture has viewed animals, nature and God. It’s a huge scope for a 338-page book. With Birkhead, you never know what’s going to come next.

Dissection 216

Dissection Birds Europe Eggs 216

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

This shouldn’t have to be stated, especially in a book on bird evolution by an evolutionary biologist with a Ph.D. But, ‘synthesis’ is a dry word, and this is a book with a quiet yet firm personality underlying its words. The book is smartly organized into 12 chapters. This is a book that requires attention.

Science 211

Science Albatross Research Owls 211

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 4, 2018

In a birding world that celebrates identification, there are surprisingly few articles and books on gull identification.** There’s been a lot of excitement about this book. Pete Dunne has written and co-written 21 books (by my count, Wikipedia needs to update its entry!) This is their second co-authored book.

North America 198

North America El Salvador America Nicaragua 198

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2020

” The book in question is Birds of Bolivia: Field Guide , edited and written by Sebastian K. The guide covers 1,433 species, the number of birds documented at the end of 2014, the cutoff point for the book. The downside of the size (and quality of paper) is that this is a fairly heavy book, about 2.5

Bolivia 171

Bolivia Birds Brazil Switzerland 171

10,000 Birds

MAY 23, 2021

In six or seven months, the “best books of the year” features will come out in the important print and web publications. A few people share parts of this story and this book with the author – Ph.D. Even more curiously, that book has, it appears, little or nothing to do with Shearwaters. Stay tuned.]

West Virginia 201

West Virginia Rats Albatross Georgia 201

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

This is the book you will want to give to everyone in your life who has said ‘I’d like to bird too, but ….(fill Not only is Nate a birding and blogging colleague, but Mike Bergin, 10,000 Birds co-publisher, has written the Foreword and I have been threatened with all sorts of birder-type punishment if I give this book a bad review.

North Carolina 263

North Carolina Birds North America Owls 263

10,000 Birds

JULY 20, 2019

The last time a Julie Zickefoose book was reviewed on this blogsite, the piece began by saying “This is going to be a rave review.” That sentence will do for this review and this book, too: it’s unavoidable. On a couple of different levels, this is a wonderful story and a terrific book.

Ohio 139

Ohio Adoptable Emotional 2019 139

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

The full title of this exceptional book by Marie Read is Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Technique of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior. In this new book, she puts everything she has learned in over 30 years of wildlife photography down in writing.

Birds 190

Birds Ethics 2019 Puffins 190

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 6, 2019

It’s never too late or too early to buy a children’s book about birds. It’s been a few years since my last roundup of children’s bird books, and children’s book writers, illustrators and publishers continue to produce picture books that feature avian protagonists. First, the board books.

New York City 146

New York City Pelicans Penguins New York 146

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2015

Producing a book about birds and nesting is a dangerous business. Some people love books like that. I’m happy to say that Laura Erickson and Marie Read have written a book, Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting, and Family Lives of Familiar Birds , that is not too cute and that does not anthropomorphize.

Eggs 263

Eggs 2006 Family New York 263

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2014

It took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of Birds and People , Mark Cocker and David Tipling’s book that, in 592 pages, explores the intersection of just that—birds and us. Still, I found it a little disjointing that a book has been written about our relationship with birds. So, I just sit here, amazed at this book.

Egypt 211

Egypt Birds Albania Eagles 211

10,000 Birds

MAY 12, 2014

Birding being a visual and an auditory pursuit, it’s not surprising that publishers have taken advantage of the media of its day to produce bird books accompanied by CDs or DVDs. QR stands for Quick Response (the things I learn when I write a book review!). The process itself was easier to use than playing a DVD while reading a book.

2006 195

2006 2014 Connecticut North America 195

10,000 Birds

MAY 5, 2015

Karlson and Dale Rosselet in Birding by Impression: A Different Approach to Knowing and Identifying Birds, the latest addition to the Peterson Reference Guide series and a book likely to revive the continuing discussion about the merits of GISS (the term used in the book, as opposed to the popular jizz ) versus traditional bird identification.

New Jersey 169

New Jersey Birds Science New York City 169

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Two books, two authors, two countries bursting with neotropical avian diversity. Since the books share authors and a creation process, I thought I would review them together. There is no reason expertise and talent cannot be shared across field guides when the books are published close together, like these are.

Costa Rica 210

Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 210

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 7, 2020

Everyone is looking back on their best birds of 2019, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at a book that looks back a little further: Urban Ornithology: 150 Years of Birds in New York City , by P. Because, as this book demonstrates so well, it is sometimes important to look back in order to move forward. “Wait!”

New York City 148

New York City New York Birds Breeding 148

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

Each species account starts with names–family name at the top of the page, followed below by English name of the species, alpha code, scientific name, local name in Cuba and the standard name as accepted by the Sociedad Española de Ornitología (SEO). The book includes lots of space for Notes. There is even room for notes.

Cuba 228

Cuba Birds 2000 United States 228

10,000 Birds

JULY 16, 2012

Jake’s favorite before-bedtime book when he was just a bit younger was Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, a picture book I had picked up at a nature center. By the middle of the book, Jake and his younger brother Zach would be chiming in, “I want my mommy,” and when Mama Owl finally return, they would rejoice along with the owlets.

Switzerland 210

Switzerland Birds Owls Lions 210

10,000 Birds

JUNE 4, 2019

And the book is about much more, ripple effects from what happens when part of a living thing becomes the central ingredient to a highly visual, social, profitable business. I did often wonder while reading the book whether the result equaled the effort. The late Victorian age was not a good time to be an egret!

Virginia 118

Virginia Portland Industry New York City 118

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 7, 2014

The second edition of the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America, 2nd Edition has one of the longest book names in bird bookdom: National Geographic Complete Birds of North America, 2nd Edition: Now Covering More Than 1,000 Species With the Most-Detailed Information Found in a Single Volume. Karlson, and Brian E.

North America 177

North America America Family Falcons 177

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2021

The Pough & Eckelberry guides (add in artist Earl L Poole who did black-and-white drawings for the later titles) were notable for Pough’s discursive text and Eckelberry’s lovely painted portraits, and many older birders have stories about how they were inspired by these books. This is a fairly large book: 907 pages; 7.38

North America 278

North America America California Condor Birds 278

10,000 Birds

JULY 1, 2014

I love reading children’s books, even though my child is well over the age when she asks to have them read at bedtime and my nephews fall asleep all too easily after playing lacrosse all day. Here are three excellent but very different children’s books I enjoyed this year (two were published in 2013, one in 2011).

Puerto Rico 231

Puerto Rico Parrots New York City 2013 231

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2014

So, when Redgannet asked me if I was interested in reviewing Phillipps’ Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo: Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan, Third Edition , by Quentin Phillipps and Karen Phillipps, a book he had acquired at Birdfair, I hesitated. Not a great place for a family vacation, though I think Duncan will disagree.

Brunei 174

Brunei Asia Birds China 174

10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2018

The theft of some “dead birds” captures his imagination, and by the end of the book we’ve traveled with him around the world as he talks to famous fly tiers,* the Tring police, and Rist himself, seeking for the truth behind the story. Seriously, this book is crying out for a movie treatment!). Frustrated with the U.S.

Collecting 103

Collecting Iraq Ostriches Science 103

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 26, 2021

When was the last time you chose a book by its covers? This book is essentially about those birds that breed on the continent south of the Sahara, a topic few birders are familiar with. He has authored several other books and many articles, largely on natural history.

Congo 264

Congo Africa Madagascar Kenya 264

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

On one such visit I walked inside Sotheran’s rare books & prints, the longest established antiquarian bookseller in the world, founded in 1761. Later the owner of the bookstore told me that they in fact have one of his books and promptly went to fetch it for me. It must be a gift. Lansdowne and text by John A. tridactylus).

Woodpeckers 213

Woodpeckers Birds Canada ALA 213

10,000 Birds

JULY 4, 2017

The guide presents 69 species and 1 subspecies, from “NEW WORLD VULTURES: Cathartiformes” to “OSPREY: Pandioninae” to “FAMILY: Accipitridae” (Kites, Hawks, Eagles, Hawk-Eagles), to “FALONIDS: Falconidae” (Falcons, Forest-Falcons, Caracaras, Kestrels, Merlin). The book’s bio is not exaggerating when it says that author William S.

Mexico 161

Mexico America North America Falcons 161

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 6, 2016

This book is a field guide treat for traveling birders and birders who love to fantasize about travel, answering that age-old question, “I’m going on a trip to [fill in the blank—Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras], what field guide should I use?”. Of course, this is an identification guide, not a coffee table book.

El Salvador 231

El Salvador America Costa Rica Honduras 231

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2018

It is not a book for every birder, but it will be a fascinating read for those who love albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, storm-petrels–you know, tubenoses–as well as penguins, gannets, cormorants, and pretty much every bird family that spends most of its life at sea. Bruce Pearson is the book illustrator.

Albatross 114

Albatross Penguins Research Breeding 114

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2021

It had perhaps 20 or so species per plate, and a rather concise description on the opposite (left) page, but all maps were grouped in the end of the book, making it very impractical to check them and in order to use the checklist, you had to know what to expect and which species are unlikely. The book covers all the world’s birds.

Botswana 243

Botswana Africa Ecuador Birds 243

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Every now and then you read a book which you believe should be read by everyone on the planet. Nature’s Best Hope by American entomologist and conservationist, Doug Tallamy, is such a book. The book is simply yet persuasively written, filled with scientific and historical evidence to make his case.

North America 263

North America Wildlife Mammals Breeding 263