The Pelican-- From the Book Shelf

By Tina Nappe

​As the winter weather hits, reading about birds may supplement our actual viewing of them and remind us of places and bird species we look forward to seeing in the future.

​We Are Starlings:  Inside the Mesmerizing Magic of a Murmuration  
By Robert Furrow and Donna Jo Napoli; illustrations by Marc Martin. Random House Studio. 2023.

This children’s book, written primarily for ages 4-8 years, contains illustrations of starling murmurations. Many You Tube and  Instagram videos document murmurings (click here for an example). I remember seeing a murmuration at the end of a Christmas Bird count from our McDonalds’s headquarters on Oddie Boulevard.

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Fastest Things on Wings:  Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood 
By Terry Masear. First Mariner Books Edition. 2016.

In California, care of hummingbirds is limited to certified caregivers; one of them is Terry Maser. During the hummingbird breeding season, her time and her home are dedicated to saving nestlings from trimmed trees, auto collisions, faulty first flights, dogs, and inept human saviors. There appear to be a variety of “cages” from individual hourly care cages, to large cages where multiple self-feeding birds are lodged, and then to flight cages.  Along the way we are introduced to lives of hummingbird species, the research, and their longevity; a few are recaptured at ages nine or ten.  The author does an excellent of job of including individual people and hummingbirds mixed with laws and biology. For dedicated hummingbird saviors, this “job“ is all-consuming for a few months. At the end of summer, the author has taken in 160 hummingbirds, released 135, and received 2,000 calls. Baby hummingbirds have to be fed every half hour during the day. Cages require daily cleaning. Feeders require constant refilling.  The author has a few “special” cases where the bird’s personality is highlighted.

One tip I learned, and maybe you have tried it, is to leave bananas out during the summer to grow fruit fly colonies to help feed those needy babies.

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Bird Cottage 
By Eva Meijer. Pushkin Press. 2016.

This is a fictional account of Len (Gwendolyn) Howard (1893-1973), who gave up her life as a musician and retreated to the country in Sussex, England to live with birds.  Birds were permitted to fly in and out of her house, tear apart paper and roost. Human visitors were not welcome. Titmice seemed the most comfortable with her.   She published several books on her observations, the first being Birds as Individuals published in 1952 and a second one Living with Birds in 1956. As a novel it is OK but not great. I suggest supplementing the novel by reading the online article Up Close and Personal:  When Len Howard Lived with Birds. 
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Her work portended the development of ethology by scientists Niko Tinbergen and Conrad Lorenz.