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Birdsong for the Curious NaturalistBirdsong for the Curious Naturalist: Your Guide to Listening
by Donald Kroodsma

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Birdsong made easy to understand, lavishly illustrated with color photos, and accompanied by more than 700 online recordings

From a leading expert, Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist is a basic, how-to guide that teaches anyone—from beginner to advanced birder—how to listen. In understandable and appealing language, Kroodsma explains why and how birds sing, what various calls mean, and what to listen for from the birds around us. The descriptions are accompanied by color photos of the birds, as well as QR codes that link to an online collection of more than 700 recordings. With these resources, readers are prepared to recognize bird sounds and the birds that make them. Kroodsma encourages readers to find the joy of birdsong and curiosity—to observe, listen intently, be curious, ask questions, and realize that many unanswered questions about birdsong don’t have to rely on scientists for answers but can be answered by any curious naturalist.

 

No one writes about birdsong better than Donald Kroodsma. This book is the perfect introduction to it for birders or, as the title suggests, ‘curious naturalists’. The many sounds referenced in it are available on its website – birdsongforthecurious.com. Check it out to hear – and read a bit – what it’s all about.

 

Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist: Your Guide to Listening
by Donald Kroodsma
Hardcover; 208 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; March 10, 2020
ISBN: 9781328919113
$27.00

There’s already quite an impressive selection of bird books set to be published in 2020. Here are the ones that have caught my eye.

Apparently, 2020 is the Year of the Bird-Behavior-and/or-Senses Book. These topics are endlessly fascinating, so I’m certainly not complaining. I’m really looking forward to all of these:

 

Field Guides

I didn’t notice very many field guides coming this year, but that’s probably because I either missed them or they haven’t been announced yet. However, a new edition of one of the most popular North American guides is a big deal, and the latest addition to the ABA area is getting lots of love.

 

Texas

Texas is the subject of several books this year, several of which look to be of interest even if you don’t live there.

 

Everything else

Binge Birding: Twenty Days with BinocularsBinge Birding: Twenty Days with Binoculars
by Nancy Grant

From Nancy Grant:

Enjoy the thrill of discovery in this well-paced travel adventure that’s like going birding with a friend. When journalist and field naturalist Nancy Grant packed her SUV with a basket of maps and field guides to head south to explore the Texas Gulf Coast she had a simple plan. Look for birds everywhere. And she found them—more than 150 species—singing, soaring, hunting for food, searching for mates, and raising youngsters. Grant’s easy-going conversational style, with plenty of quirky travel anecdotes, blends in-depth natural history insights with vivid on-the-scene reporting. Grant admits with charming directness her own struggles to memorize field marks and songs, and the satisfaction of getting it right. Birders of all experience levels will enjoy coming along for the ride.

 

Ever wonder what it’s like to go on an extended, solo birding trip? Nancy Grant describes just such a trip she took to coastal Texas in this book. Interesting and well-written, it should appeal to newer birders.

 

Binge Birding: Twenty Days with Binoculars
by Nancy Grant
Paperback; 345 pages
Independently published; April 22, 2019
ISBN: 9781092878029
$15.00

Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck JaySaving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
by Julie Zickefoose

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

For fans of Wesley the Owl and The Soul of an Octopus, the story of a sick baby bird nursed back to health and into the wild by renowned writer/artist Julie Zickefoose.

When Jemima, a young orphaned blue jay, is brought to wildlife rehabilitator Julie Zickefoose, she is a virtually tailless, palm-sized bundle of gray-blue fluff. But she is starved and very sick. Julie’s constant care brings her around, and as Jemima is raised for eventual release, she takes over the house and the rest of the author’s summer.

Shortly after release, Jemima turns up with a deadly disease. But medicating a free-flying wild bird is a challenge. When the PBS show Nature expresses interest in filming Jemima, Julie must train her to behave on camera, as the bird gets ever wilder. Jemima bonds with a wild jay, stretching her ties with the family. Throughout, Julie grapples with the fallout of Jemima’s illness, studies molt and migration, and does her best to keep Jemima strong and wild. She falls hard for this engaging, feisty and funny bird, a creative muse and source of strength through the author’s own heartbreaking changes.

Emotional and honest, Saving Jemima is a universal story of the communion between a wild creature and the human chosen to raise it.

 

Reading anything by Julie Zickefoose is a treat, and her new book is no exception.

 

Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
by Julie Zickefoose
Hardcover; 272 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; September 10, 2019
ISBN: 9781328518958
$25.00

Where to Watch Birds in FranceWhere to Watch Birds in France
by Jean-Yves Barnagaud, Nidal Issa, and Sebastien Dalloyau

From Pelagic Publishing:

An introduction to France for anyone visiting with birds in mind, from casual birdwatchers checking a bird that flies over the terrace during a family holiday to addict birders who would sell their souls for a dream species or a record-breaking checklist. Some may have just a few spare hours to get their binoculars out between business meetings or museum visits, others will be out in the field for two weeks or more, from sunrise to sunset. The authors wrote this book for all bird lovers, birdwatchers and birders, whatever the duration of their stay, the number of kilometres they are prepared to travel and how they enjoy birds.

With over 400 regularly occurring species, of which 357 normally breed or winter, France has arguably one of the most diverse avifaunas of the whole of Europe, spanning an incredible range from colourful Mediterranean flagship species such as roller, bee-eater or black-winged kite to secretive cold-climate or mountain specialists like three-toed woodpecker and Tengmalm’s owl. The Birdfinder section provides targeted details for 30 species which often rank in the top wish-list of birders visiting France.

Dividing the country into 14 regions, the authors highlight 312 representative sites, chosen for their bird species composition and ease of access. The selected sites enable the reader to see the widest possible species diversity and largest range of local specialities in a reasonable time, while respecting the basic ethical rules obvious to all birdwatchers. Whenever possible, sites are arranged in clusters or itineraries that can be covered in two to three days without hurrying. To supplement the use of the book in the field, all the sites described are geolocated in a file that can be downloaded from the publisher’s website and loaded onto any GPS device.

 

All you could want in a birdfinding guide, with lots of maps and just the right level of detail, all in a very compact package.

 

Where to Watch Birds in France
by Jean-Yves Barnagaud, Nidal Issa, and Sebastien Dalloyau
Paperback; 336 pages
Pelagic Publishing; June 30, 2019
ISBN: 9781784271541
$32.99

Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North AmericaPeterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America
by Nathan Pieplow

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

A comprehensive field guide that uses an innovative Sound Index to allow readers to quickly identify unfamiliar songs and calls of birds in western North America.

Bird songs and calls are at least as important as visual field marks in identifying birds. Yet short of memorizing each bird’s repertoire, it’s difficult to sort through them all. Now, with the western edition of this groundbreaking book, it’s possible to visually distinguish bird sounds and identify birds using a field-guide format.

At the core of this guide is the spectrogram, a visual graph of sound. With a brief introduction to five key aspects—speed, repetition, pauses, pitch pattern, and tone quality—readers can translate what they hear into visual recognition, without any musical training or auditory memorization.

The Sound Index groups similar songs together, narrowing the identification choices quickly to a brief list of birds that are likely to be confused because of the similarity of their songs. Readers can then turn to the species account for more information and/or listen to the accompanying audio tracks available online.

Identifying birds by sound is arguably the most challenging and important skill in birding. This book makes it vastly easier to master than ever before.

 

The western edition of this innovative guide is now available (the eastern guide was published in 2017). All of the sounds in the book – “plus thousands more bonus recordings” – are available at petersonbirdsounds.com. It’s a valuable resource even without the book, as it’s a very extensive collection with spectrograms that allow you to see the sounds. But with the book, with its much-needed analysis and ancillary details, it should prove even easier to learn and identify sounds.

 

Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America
by Nathan Pieplow
Flexi-bound; 648 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; April 2, 2019
ISBN: 9780547905570
$28.00

Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North AmericaPeterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America
by Rick Wright

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Sparrows are as complicated as they are common. This is an essential guide to identifying 76 kinds, along with a fascinating history of human interactions with them.

What exactly is a sparrow? All birders, and many non-birders, have essentially the same mental image of a pelican, a duck, or a flamingo, and a guide dedicated to waxwings or kingfishers would need nothing more than a sketch and a single sentence to satisfactorily identify its subject. Sparrows are harder to pin down. This book covers the birds of the family Passerellidae, which includes towhees, juncos, and dozens of other not necessarily small and not necessarily brown birds.

Birds have a human history, too, beginning with their significance to native cultures and continuing through their discovery by science, their taxonomic fortunes and misfortunes, and their prospects for survival in a world with ever less space for wild creatures. This book includes not just facts and measurements, but stories of the birds’ entanglement with human history.

 

Despite the publisher’s claim above, this isn’t an identification guide (though it does have some information on ID), but rather a family natural history guide. However much this may look like the previous entries in this excellent series, though, once you start reading it you will find that it is unlike any other family reference guide. Instead of sticking with just the birds’ natural history, it deals greatly with their history with people.

 

Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America
by Rick Wright
Hardcover; 448 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; March 19, 2019
ISBN: 9780547973166
$35.00

Taking Flight (The Nature Club Book 1)Taking Flight (The Nature Club Book 1)
by Rachel Mazur

From Wild Bear Press:

Izzy’s family is moving to a big city at the end of the summer, and she is filled with anxiety. She’ll start fifth grade at a new school where she doesn’t know anyone. Meanwhile, a bird Izzy names “Señor Wilson” also faces a big move. He’ll soon migrate south for the winter—a journey full of peril. As Izzy’s adventure unfolds in parallel with Señor Wilson’s, it seems Izzy’s worst fears may come true. It’s only by finding her inner confidence—with a little help from her friends in The Nature Club—that Izzy can find her wings and fly.

 

I just found the next book for my daughter.

 

Taking Flight (The Nature Club Book 1)
by Rachel Mazur
Paperback; 136 pages
Wild Bear Press; January 27, 2019
ISBN: 9781732915602
$6.99

Common and Spotted SandpipersCommon & Spotted Sandpipers
by Phil Holland

From Whittles Publishing:

This wonderful book describes the fascinating lives of the two most ubiquitous shorebirds in the world. Between them the Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) and Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularia) make use of a large part of the world’s terrestrial habitat and they exhibit many of the exciting features of shorebirds.

As the birds arrive on the breeding ground, their displays are spectacular and their sounds are an exciting announcement of springtime. Unusually, the Spotted Sandpiper appears to be the only bird where the female is the territory holder, laying successive clutches of eggs for different males to care for, while the male of the Common Sandpiper holds the territory, has one mate, and shares most duties.

They stay on the breeding grounds only as long as is essential to reproduce before making a migration southwards to a broad range of non-breeding homes in Central and South America, Africa, India, and eastwards to Australia with vagrants reaching as far as Tristan da Cunha and New Zealand. The Common Sandpiper has also been recorded breeding in East Africa and wintering in Scotland so their flexibility is amazing.

The author has spent over 40 years studying the lives of these fantastic birds and provides a wealth of information including their breeding behaviour, migrations, distribution, food sources, habitats and their history from the present back to 36 million years ago.

This beautiful book will hopefully stimulate others to watch these worldwide birds more appreciatively and add to our knowledge.

 

A good introduction to Common and Spotted Sandpipers, with the former getting a little bit more attention. In-depth, yet readable, this would be perfect for anyone wanting to know these birds better than the usual accounts, like The Birds of the Western Palearctic or Birds of North America, allow.

 

Common & Spotted Sandpipers
by Phil Holland
Paperback; 176 pages
Whittles Publishing; November 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781849953610
$24.95

A quick perusal through the upcoming books for 2019 yielded some very interesting titles. Here are the ones that I’m looking forward to the most. But first, a couple quick observations:

  • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is killing it this year!
  • It seems there’s always one day on which several good books are coming. That day this year is April 2.