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Here are some bird book and product reviews from magazines and journals published in April, 2008.

If you are aware of any more, please add them in a comment to this post.

I recently came across a great site for book lovers like myself – Shelfari. You can catalog your books, tag and review them, and discuss with others. It’s basically a social media site based upon books. And it’s free.

I have yet to enter all of my bird books, but I have made a start. If you wish, you can check out my shelf. If you ever see anything on there that you’d like me to review, let me know, and I’ll do my best to accommodate. Also, using a Shelfari feature, I can show on my site here what books I’m currently reading. They appear at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Theoretically, they should become my next reviews.

There are some other, similar sites, such as LibraryThing, but you can only enter up to 200 books for free there.

Anyways, check it out, see if it could be useful for you. If you do join up, I’d love to know.

Here is a selection of bird books that will be published shortly.

• The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (Peterson Field Guides)
  Bill Thompson III
  April 30, 2008 (Amazon has it in stock now)

  The early remarks on this are universally enthusiastic. If you know a kid in eastern NA who is, or may become, interested in birds, definitely consider getting them this book.

• Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson
  Elizabeth J. Rosenthal
  May 1, 2008 (Amazon has it in stock now)

  This is the second Peterson biography this year.

  
  

• On Feathered Wings: Birds in Flight
  Richard Ettlinger
  May 1, 2008

  I love bird photography, so I’m looking forward to seeing this one.

  
  

• Falcon Fever: A Falconer in the Twenty-first Century
  Tim Gallagher
  May 9, 2008 (Amazon has it in stock now)

  From the author of The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

  
  

• The Raven: Soaring Through History, Legend, & Lore
  Lynn Hassler
  May 15, 2008

  
  

  
  

• Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
  Ted Floyd
  May 27, 2008

  This sounds very intriguing, especially the included DVD with 576 MP3s (from 136 species). And all for less than $20!

Some great bird book reviews have been posted lately.

If you know of any more recently posted reviews, please submit a comment with a link to it.

If Pete Dunne wrote a restaurant menu, I would read it word for word. He is easily my favorite birding author. Here is a list of all the books that he has written, along with magazines that for which he is a regular contributor.

I have read most of these books, and they are without exception highly recommended. For birders, the most important is arguably the Field Guide Companion. It is so helpful with identification that every North American birder should have a copy. I would say that Pete Dunne on Bird Watching is next on the must-read list, as it is probably the best introduction to birding that I have seen. And if you just want to sit back and enjoy a great read? You can’t go wrong with The Feather Quest, which is one of the best birding travel books. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of them!

Birding/Identification

• Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion: A Comprehensive Resource for Identifying North American Birds (Review)
• Pete Dunne on Bird Watching (Review)
• The Art of Bird Identification: A Straightforward Approach to Putting a Name to the Bird (Review)
• The Art of Pishing: How to Attract Birds by Mimicking Their Calls (Book & Audio CD)
• The Art of Bird Finding: Before You ID Them, You Have to See Them (Review)
• Hawks in Flight (Review)

Other

• The Feather Quest: A North American Birder’s Year
• The Wind Masters: The Lives of North American Birds of Prey (Review)
• Prairie Spring: A Journey Into the Heart of a Season (Review)
• Bayshore Summer: Finding Eden in a Most Unlikely Place (Review)
• Arctic Autumn: A Journey to Season’s Edge (Review)

Essays

• Tales of a Low-Rent Birder
• More Tales of a Low-Rent Birder (Review)
• Golden Wings, and Other Stories About Birders and Birding
• Small-headed Flycatcher. Seen Yesterday. He Didn’t Leave His Name.: and other stories
• Before the Echo: Essays on Nature (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)

Other books Dunne has contributed to

• New Jersey: The Natural State – wrote the forward
• Good Birders Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips From North America’s Top Birders (Review) – wrote the forward (complete text), and contributed one of the tips
• Hawks at a Distance: Identification of Migrant Raptors (Review) – wrote the forward
• Birds of Cape May (Review) – wrote the forward

Magazines

• Living Bird (Review) – Dunne writes a one-page column, “The Catbird Seat”, for every other issue (published quarterly)
• BirdWatching – Dunne contributes a column for every issue, usually focused on his travels (published bi-monthly)
• News from the Cape – this online magazine from the Cape May Bird Observatory has a regular column by Dunne. Be sure to check out the archives for more Dunne goodness (and after that all the other features on identification, book reviews, etc)

In addition to these, Dunne has been published in probably every birding magazine known to man (well, at least in the US).

There has to be more that I’m either forgetting or don’t know about. If anyone is aware of more, especially anything that can be accessed online, I’d love to hear about it!

Better late than never, I guess. Here are some bird book and product reviews from magazines and journals published in March, 2008.

If you are aware of any more, please add them in a comment to this post.

The guys at the excellent blog 10,000 Birds are giving away 5 copies of the wonderful book The Life of the Skies.

There will be several different methods by which you can win, as detailed on their giveaway page. As of the moment that page only details the first 2 methods. You can find info on the third way to enter here. And keep watching their site as they reveal the remaining ways in which you can enter.

If you haven’t read this incredible book, you definitely want to enter these contests.

Good luck!