BIRDS AND BOOKS READING GROUP
Archives of all the Books we've read by year
​
In case you want to find a book to read about Birds, Nature, Evolution, Adventure....

​
​2020  BIRDS AND BOOKS ​

JANUARY 16, 2020
Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
​ by William Souder
In the century and a half since Audubon's death, his name has become synonymous with wildlife conservation and natural history. But few people know what a complicated figure he was--or the dramatic story behind The Birds of America.
Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-racked skies or ripping flesh from freshly killed prey, Audubon's life-size birds looked as if they might fly screeching off the page. The wildness in the images matched the untamed spirit in Audubon-a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science. 
It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. 
​
Paperback, 384 pages Published July 6th 2005 by North Point Press (first published June 16th 2004)
ISBN 0865477264 (ISBN13: 9780865477261)

FEBRUARY 20, 2020
Path of the Puma
​ by John Williams
During a time when most wild animals are experiencing decline in the face of development and climate change, the intrepid mountain lion -- also known as a puma, a cougar, and by many other names – has experienced reinvigoration as well as expansion of territory. What makes this cat, the fourth carnivore in the food chain -- just ahead of humans – so resilient and resourceful? And what can conservationists and wild life managers learn from them about the web of biodiversity that is in desperate need of protection? Their story is fascinating for the lessons it can afford the protection of all species in times of dire challenge and decline.
Hardcover: 288 pagesPublisher: Patagonia (October 9, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1938340728    ISBN-13: 978-1938340727

​2019  BIRDS AND BOOKS ​

​January 15, 2019
LIVING ON THE WIND: ACROSS THE HEMISPHERE WITH MIGRATORY BIRDS 
by Scott Weidensaul
Bird migration is the world's only true unifying natural phenomenon, stitching the continents together in a way that even the great weather systems fail to do. Scott Weidensaul follows awesome kettles of hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, bar-tailed godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 7,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and myriad songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent decades. Migration paths form an elaborate global web that shows serious signs of fraying, and Weidensaul delves into the tragedies of habitat degradation and deforestation with an urgency that brings to life the vast problems these miraculous migrants now face. Living on the Wind is a magisterial work of nature writing. 
Paperback, 420 pages Published April 15th 2000 by North Point Press (first published 1999)
Original Title Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds
ISBN 0865475911 (ISBN13: 9780865475915)

​February 19, 2019
MOZART’S STARLING by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Goodreads: On May 27th, 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met a flirtatious little starling who sang (an improved version of!) the theme from his Piano Concerto Number 17 in G to him. Knowing a kindred spirit when he met one, Mozart wrote "That was wonderful" in his journal and took the bird home to be his pet. For three years Mozart and his family enjoyed the uniquely delightful company of the starling until one fitful April when the bird passed away.
 
In 2013, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Crow Planet, rescued her own starling, Carmen, who has become a part of her family. In Mozart's Starling, Haupt explores the unlikely bond between one of history's most controversial characters and one of history's most notoriously disliked birds. Part natural history, part story, Mozart's Starling will delight readers as they learn about language, music, and the secret world of starlings. 
Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (May 15, 2018) ISBN-10: 0316370908 ISBN-13: 978-0316370905

March 19, 2019
COYOTE AMERICA: A NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL HISTORY by Dan Flores
Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award 
Legends don't come close to capturing the incredible story of the coyote In the face of centuries of campaigns of annihilation employing gases, helicopters, and engineered epidemics, coyotes didn't just survive, they thrived, expanding across the continent from Alaska to New York. In the war between humans and coyotes, coyotes have won, hands-down. Coyote America is the illuminating five-million-year biography of this extraordinary animal, from its origins to its apotheosis. It is one of the great epics of our time.
Hardcover, 271 pages Published June 7th 2016 by Basic Books
ISBN 0465052991 (ISBN13: 9780465052998)

April 16, 2019
THE BIG BURN: TEDDY ROOSEVELT AND THE FIRE THAT SAVED AMERICA 
by Timothy Egan
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men  — college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps  —  to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot’s rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected  —  or not —  today. 
Hardcover, 336 pages Published October 1st 2009 by Houghton Mifflin
Original Title The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
ISBN 0618968415 (ISBN13: 9780618968411)

May 16, 2019
SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS: A SURPRISING EXPLORATION INTO THE WONDER OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Sy Montgomery
​In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.
Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
Hardcover, 261 pages Published May 12th 2015 by Atria Books
ISBN 1451697716 (ISBN13: 9781451697711)
​
JUNE 20, 2019
 Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness by Michael Branch
Combining natural history, humor, and personal narrative, Raising Wild is an intimate exploration of Nevada's Great Basin Desert, the wild and extreme land of high desert caliche and juniper, of pronghorn antelope and mountain lions, where wildfires and snowstorms threaten in equal measure. 
In Branch's hands, this exceedingly barren and stark landscape becomes a place teeming with energy, surprise, and an endless web of connections that ultimately includes his family and home. In this exhilarating, lyrical, and humorous exploration of natural history, Branch reveals a desert wilderness in which our ideas about nature and ourselves are challenged and transformed. 
2017 Finalist - Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award
2017 Finalist - Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Creative Book Award
2017 Finalist - Evans Biography and Handcart Award
Hardcover, 286 pages Published August 23rd 2016 by Roost Books
ISBN 1611803454 (ISBN13: 9781611803457)

JULY 18, 2019
How To Be a Good Creature – a Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery
National Book Award finalist Sy Montgomery reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals—her friends—who have profoundly affected her in this stunning, poetic, and life-affirming memoir featuring illustrations by Rebecca Green. Understanding someone who belongs to another species can be transformative. No one knows this better than author, naturalist, and adventurer Sy Montgomery. To research her books, Sy has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet’s rarest and most beautiful animals. It also explores vast themes: the otherness and sameness of people and animals; the various ways we learn to love and become empathetic; how we find our passion; how we create our families; coping with loss and despair; gratitude; forgiveness; and most of all, how to be a good creature in the world.

AUGUST 15, 2019
The Cattle Empire – The Fabulous Story of the 3,000,000 Acre XIT Ranch  by Lewis Nordyke
Biography True story. This is the first authoritative account of the biggest ranch in the history of the US. Stretching for nearly 200 miles from north to south, the XIT lay in nine Texas counties. But its affairs reached out to Chicago, London, and the halls of Congress. The story began in 1875  Hardcover: 273 pages Publisher: William Morrow; First Edition edition (1949) ASIN: B001IQIWOGPublisher: William Morrow & Company; Second Printing edition (1949

​SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
​The River by Peter Heller
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.Hardcover: 272 pagesPublisher: Knopf (March 5, 2019)  ISBN-10: 0525521879    ISBN-13: 978-0525521877

OCTOBER 17, 2019
​ The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century     by Kirk Wallace Johnson
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a thought-provoking exploration of the human drive to possess natural beauty for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin’s obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins–some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin’s, Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d risked everything to gather them–and escaped into the darkness.
 Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man’s destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature. 
 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Viking (April 24, 2018)
ISBN-10: 110198161 XISBN-13: 978-1101981610
Kindle Edition, 320 pages Published April 24th 2018 by Viking  
​ASIN B074DGMF88

2018  BIRDS AND BOOKS 

 January 16, 2018
To keep us entertained over the holidays, we are suggesting reading all or part of the following trilogy:
EVER SINCE DARWIN: REFLECTIONS ON NATURAL HISTORY BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD Part 1 of the Series
Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights. Paperback, 285 pages
Published July 17th 1992 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 1977)
THE PANDA’S THUMB: MORE REFLECTIONS ON NATURAL HISTORY BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD Part 2 in the Series
Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born into the world? What led the famous Dr. Down to his theory of mongolism, and its racist residue? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration tell us about imperfections that prove the evolutionary rule? The wonders and mysteries of evolutionary biology are elegantly explored in these and other essays by the celebrated natural history writer Stephen Jay Gould. (less) Paperback, 352 pages
Published August 17th 1992 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 1980)
HEN’S TEETH AND HORSE’S TOES: FURTHER REFLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD Part 3 in the Series
Over a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species, Darwinian theory is in a "vibrantly healthy state," writes Stephen Jay Gould, its most engaging and illuminating exponent. Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the reader to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology. Paperback, 416 pages
Published April 17th 1994 by W.W. Norton & Company (NY) (first published 1983) 
​
 February 20, 2018
 THE WINDBIRDS: SHOREBIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA, by Peter Matthiessen
In this nature-writing classic, now available for the first time in paperback, National Book Award winner Peter Matthiessen captures the essence of the world's most fascinating group of birds:  "The restlessness of shorebirds, their kinship with distance and swift seasons, the wistful signal of their voice down the long coastlines of the world make them, for me, the most affecting of wild creatures," writes Matthiessen. He conveys the biological and behavioral intricacies of shorebirds without dulling their romance and wonder. 
Paperback, The Curious Naturalist, 168 pages
Published September 25th 1996 by W. W. Norton & Co. (first published 1973) 

 March 20, 2018
 NATURAL ACTS: A SIDELONG VIEW OF SCIENCE AND NATURE BY DAVID QUAMMEN Essay Collection #1
Most of the pieces found in this book appeared first as installments of thee 'Natural Acts' columns that Quammen wrote regularly for Outside magazine. In an upbeat and original way of thinking Quammen writes about beetles, bats, crows, snakes and other interesting animals. Paperback, 221 pages
Published March 1st 1996 by Avon Books (first published 1985)

 April 17, 2018
 UNTAMED; THE WILDEST WOMAN IN AMERICA AND THE FIGHT FOR CUMBERLAND ISLAND, by Will Harlan
 Carol Ruckdeschel is the wildest woman in America. She eats road kill, wrestles alligators, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built herself in an island wilderness. She’s had three husbands and many lovers, one of whom she shot and killed in self-defense. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self- taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia.
Cumberland is the country's largest and most biologically diverse barrier island—over forty square miles of pristine wilderness celebrated for its windswept dunes and feral horses. Steel magnate Thomas Carnegie owned much of Cumberland, and his widow Lucy made it a Gilded Age playground. But in recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island’s future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high-school diploma tries to stop one of the wealthiest families in America? Untamed is the story of an American original standing her ground and fighting for what she believes in, no matter the cost.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published May 6th 2014 by Grove Press

May 15, 2018
Rivers and Birds by Merrill Gilfallan
 This book is a collection of 14 essays containing keen observations of rivers and birds — with an emphasis on the latter. His prose is highly evocative and his love for both wing and water is rendered in the language and cadences of poetry.

June 19, 2018
The Meaning of Birds by Simon Barnes
 This is a passionate and informative celebration of birds and their ability to help us understand the world we live in. Besides exploring how birds do what they do, Barnes muses on the uses of feathers, the drama of raptors, the slaughter of pheasants, the infidelities of geese, and the strangeness of feeling sentimental about blue tits while enjoying a chicken sandwich.

July 17, 2018
A Sand Country Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
 This is a classic, first published in 1949, that has brought many a person to an understanding of the ways of nature. It contains some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau. Leopold wrote these informal pieces over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba and elsewhere. In a final section, he addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. 

August 21, 2018
Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul
 Scott Weidensaul follows kettles of hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, bar-tailed godwits that hitchhike on gale winds of 7,000 miles non-stop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and myriad songbirds whose numbers have dwindled dramatically. Migration paths form an elaborate global web now showing serious signs of fraying. Weidensaul delves into the tragedies of habitat degradation and deforestation with an urgency that brings to life the vast problems these miraculous migrants now face.

September 18, 2018
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
When Desert Solitaire was written in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. It is thought-provoking and mystical, angry and loving. It is a view of Abbey's quest to experience nature in its purest form. And it asks if any of our natural treasures can be saved before the bulldozers strike again
 
October 16, 2018
The Homing Instinct: Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration by Bernd Heinrich
 ​Acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has returned every year since boyhood to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. What is the biology in humans in this deep-in-the-bones pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing? He explores how geese retain true visual landscape memory, how scent trails are used by many creatures, from fish to amphibians, and how the tiniest songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. Most movingly, he portrays the deep psychological emotion in sandhill cranes newly arrived at their home pond in the Alaska tundra. He reminds us that to discount our own emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself. 

2017  BIRDS AND BOOKS 
 
January 17, 2017
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, by Naomi Klein
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geo-engineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not— and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism. The changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should be viewed as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. 

​February 21, 2017
DOLPHIN DIARIES, by Denise L. Herzing
Dr. Denise Herzing began her research with a pod of spotted dolphins in the 1980s. Now, almost three decades later, she has forged strong ties with many of these individuals, has witnessed and recorded them feeding, playing, fighting, mating, giving birth and communicating. Dolphin Diaries is an account of Herzing's research and her surprising findings on wild dolphin behavior, interaction, and communication. Readers will be drawn into the highs and lows―the births and deaths, the discovery of unique and personalized behaviors, the threats dolphins face from environmental changes, and the many funny and wonderful encounters Denise painstakingly documented over many years. This is the perfect book for anyone who loves these incredibly versatile and intelligent creatures and wants to find out more than the dolphin show at the zoo can offer. Herzing is a true pioneer in her field and deserves a place in the pantheon of naturalists and scientists next to Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. 

March 21, 2017
THE INVENTION OF NATURE, by Andrea Wulf
Go all around the globe with Alexander von Humbold, explore deep into rain forests, climb the world’s highest volcanoes, influence princes, presidents, scientists and poets alike. His thinking was so far ahead of his time that it is only coming into its own now. He wanted to know and understand everything, and in doing so he invented the way we now look at nature. He inspired Charles Darwin and fueled Simon Bolivar’s revolution. Wulf will illustrate just why his life, ideas and philosophy remain so important today. 

April 18, 2017
THE FEATHERY TRIBE: ROBERT RIDGWAY AND THE MODERN STUDY OF BIRDS, by Daniel Lewis
This book gives long due tribute to the shy, impassioned man, the Smithsonian's first curator of birds, who was so instrumental to the emergence of professional ornithology. It does so as it masterfully explores the history of that science. It also helps us better understand how science is practiced today, including tensions between indoor and outdoor work. Lewis helps us to appreciate what it took for bird-lovers to cross the bridge from old school natural history, suffused with belief in the immutability of species, to Darwinian evolutionary theory. He makes us appreciate the massive amount of exhausting, meticulous work that went into classification and clarifying names of species at this crossroads. 

May 16, 2017
THE GENIUS OF BIRDS, by Jennifer Ackerman
Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research 
the distant laboratories of Barbados and New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom and the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy and the warming mountains of central Virginia and the western states
Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent. But beyond highlighting how birds use their unique genius in technical ways, Ackerman points out the impressive social smarts of birds. They deceive and manipulate. They eavesdrop. They display a strong sense of fairness. They give gifts. They play keep-away and tug-of-war. They tease. They share. They cultivate social networks. They vie for status. They kiss to console one another. They teach their young. They blackmail their parents. They alert one another to danger. They summon witnesses to the death of a peer. They may even grieve. This elegant scientific investigation and travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science. Ackerman delivers an extraordinary story that will both give readers a new appreciation for the exceptional talents of birds and let them discover what birds can reveal about our changing world. 

August 15, 2017
ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE?  by Frans de Waal
In this New York Times bestseller, de Waal asks this question: what separates your mind from an animals? Elephants, crows, bats, whales, wasps and octopuses all amaze with their feats of memory and cognition. This book reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal―and human―intelligence.
32 illlustrations
 
September 19, 2017
THE HIDDEN LIVES OF OWLS, by Leigh Calvez.  
A naturalist probes the forest, mainly at night, to comprehend the secret lives of owls in this book that will appeal to readers of "Crow Planet "and "H is for Hawk."  These birds are a bit mysterious, and that’s part of what makes them so fascinating. Calvez makes the science entertaining and accessible while exploring the questions about the human-animal connection, owl obsession, habitat, owl calls, social behavior, and mythology. 
eBook, 224 pages
Published August 16th 2016 by Sasquatch Books 
 
October 17, 2017
SEA FEVER, by Anne Cleeves
Amateur sleuth George Palmer-Jones and his fellow bird-watchers abroad the Jessie Ellen catch sight of a rare sea bird. But when one of the party goes missing and is found, floating in the sea, his head bludgeoned, Palmer-Jones must found out who murdered the man, and why.
Mass Market Paperback, 192 pages 

​2016 BIRDS AND BOOKS 

January 28, 2016
THE PASSENGER PIGEON, by Erroll Fuller
At the start of the nineteenth century, Passenger Pigeons were perhaps the most abundant birds on the planet, numbering literally in the billions. Yet, in 1914, the last known representative of her species, Martha, died in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. This stunningly illustrated book tells the astonishing story of North America's Passenger Pigeon, a bird species that--like the Tyrannosaur, the Mammoth, and the Dodo--has become one of the great icons of extinction. Errol Fuller describes how these fast, agile, and handsomely plumaged birds were immortalized by the ornithologist and painter John James Audubon, and captured the imagination of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. He shows how widespread deforestation, the demand for cheap and plentiful pigeon meat, and the indiscriminate killing of Passenger Pigeons for sport led to their catastrophic decline. Fuller provides an evocative memorial to a bird species that was once so important to the ecology of North America, and reminds us of just how fragile the natural world can be. 

February 24, 2016
WINTER WORLD: THE INGENUITY OF ANIMAL SURVIVAL, by Bernd Heinrich
The animal kingdom relies on staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who alter the environment to accommodate physical limitations, most animals are adapted to an amazing range of conditions. In Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, biologist, illustrator, and award-winning author Bernd Heinrich explores his local woods, where he delights in the seemingly infinite feats of animal inventiveness he discovers there. Because winter drastically affects the most elemental component of all life---water---radical changes in a creature's physiology and behavior must take place to match the demands of the environment. Some creatures survive by developing antifreeze; others must remain in constant motion to maintain their high body temperatures. Even if animals can avoid freezing to death, they must still manage to find food in a time of scarcity or store if from a time of plenty. Infused by the author's inexhaustible enchantment with nature, Winter World awakens the wonders and mysteries by which nature sustains herself through winter's harsh, cruel exigencies. 

March 15, 2016 
WELCOME TO SUBIRDIA: SHARING OUR NEIGHBORHOODS WITH WRENS, ROBINS, WOODPECKERS, AND OTHER WILDLIFE, by John M. Marzluff and Jack Delap for Illustrations
Welcome to Subirdia presents a surprising discovery: the suburbs of many large cities support incredible biological diversity. Populations and communities of a great variety of birds, as well as other creatures, are adapting to the conditions of our increasingly developed world. In this fascinating and optimistic book, John Marzluff reveals how our own actions affect the birds and animals that live in our cities and towns, and he provides ten specific strategies everyone can use to make human environments friendlier for our natural neighbors. 
Over many years of research and fieldwork, Marzluff and student assistants have closely followed the lives of thousands of tagged birds seeking food, mates, and shelter in cities and surrounding areas. From tiny Pacific wrens to grand pileated woodpeckers, diverse species now compatibly share human surroundings. By practicing careful stewardship with the biological riches in our cities and towns, Marzluff explains, we can foster a new relationship between humans and other living creatures—one that honors and enhances our mutual destiny. 

​April 19, 2016
THE LIFE OF BIRDS, by David Attenborough
Over 9,000 species, the most widespread of all animals: on icebergs, in the Sahara or under the sea, at home in our gardens or flying for over a year at a time. Earthbound, we can only look and listen, enjoying their lightness, freedom and richness of plumage and song. 
David Attenborough has been watching and learning all his life. His new book, with its accompanying series of films for BBC TV, 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. 
Sir David has no equal in helping others to learn and making it exciting. His curiosity and enjoyment are infectious. He shows the lifelong pleasure that birds around us offer, and how much we miss if unaware of them. 

May 17, 2016 
SUMMER WORLD: A SEASON OF BOUNTY, by Bernd Heinrich
As the snow melts and the spring approaches, the animal kingdom awakens. In Summer World, Bernd Heinrich, the best-selling author of Winter World, brings us an up-close and personal view of that awakening and rebirth. Almost all life on the surface of the earth derives its energy from the sun, either directly through photosynthesis or indirectly by consuming plants, making summer the time when nature is most active - feeding, fighting, mating, and nesting. From frogs, wasps, and caterpillars to hummingbirds and woodpeckers, Heinrich explores these animals' adaptations for surviving and procreating during the short window of summer, and he delights in the seemingly infinite feats of animal inventiveness he discovers there. Infused with his inexhaustible enchantment with nature, Summer World encourages a sense of wonder and discovery for the natural world and its busiest season. 

​August 16, 2016
THE HOUSE OF OWLS, by Tony Angell
For a quarter of a century, Tony Angell and his family shared the remarkable experience of closely observing pairs of western screech owls that occupied a nesting box outside the window of their forest home. The journals in which the author recorded his observations form the heart of this compelling book - a personal account of an artist-naturalist's life with owls. Angell discusses the unique characteristics that distinguish owls from other bird species and provides a fascinating overview of the impact owls have had on human culture and thought. He also offers detailed scientific descriptions of the 19 species of owls found in North America as well as their close relatives elsewhere. Always emphasizing the interaction of humans and owls, the author affirms by his own example the power of these birds both to beguile and to inspire. 

September 20, 2016
BEYOND WORDS, by Carl Safina
Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insights into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy calls us to reevaluate how we interact with animals. Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world. 

​October 18, 2016 
PILGRIM ON THE GREAT BIRD CONTINENT: THE IMPORTANCE OF EVERYTHING AND OTHER LESSONS FROM DARWIN’S LOST NOTEBOOKS, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
When Charles Darwin set out on his voyage of discovery aboard the Beagle in 1831, he was a naïve naturalist. Upon his return to England five years later, he was a polished, philosophical student of nature. In fluid, lovely prose, Haupt documents this dramatic transformation, focusing on the notebooks Darwin kept during the journey. It is enjoyable to picture the young Darwin spending hours watching Andean condors soar and anthropomorphizing many South American birds (not just the famous finches of the Galápagos). Haupt uses Darwin personal journey to remind us "that we too are animals, connected to life, past and present.... 

2015 BIRDS AND BOOKS 
 
January 28, 2015

THE MONKEY’S VOYAGE: HOW IMPROBABLE JOURNEYS SHAPED THE HISTORY OF LIFE, by Alan de Queiroz

In The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz describes the radical new view of how fragmented distributions came into being: frogs and mammals rode on rafts and icebergs, tiny spiders drifted on storm winds, and plant seeds were carried in the plumage of sea-going birds to create the map of life we see today. In other words, these organisms were not simply constrained by continental fate; they were the makers of their own geographic destiny. And as de Queiroz shows, the effects of oceanic dispersal have been crucial in generating the diversity of life on Earth, from monkeys and guinea pigs in South America to beech trees and kiwi birds in New Zealand. By toppling the idea that the slow process of continental drift is the main force behind the odd distributions of organisms, this theory highlights the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the history of life. 
 
February 25, 2015

ATLAS OF RARE BIRDS, by Dominic Couzens

This book offers a guide to some of the rarest birds in existence, with maps that show where to find them. Focusing on 50 captivating stories of the very rare, it describes remarkable discoveries of species not seen for centuries and brought back from the brink of extinction, successes like the Seychelles Magpie-Robin and the California Condor. The book is organized around key groups of species, with each species the subject of its own mini-chapter; we learn about the five most amazing tales of island endemics, the five most bizarre cases of birds becoming threatened, and other astonishing tales of bird life. Atlas of Rare Birds is an accessible, readable, and visually appealing take on the serious subject of threatened birds and possible extinctions—a timely topic because of increasing concerns about climate change and habitat destruction. The atlas format—featuring 200 color photographs and 61 color maps—shows the global nature of the problem and brings together the many strands of the concerted bird conservation effort taking place on every continent. Atlas of Rare Birds is published in association with BirdLife International, the world's largest global alliance of bird conservation organizations. 
 
March 25, 2015

THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, by E.O. Wilson

National Book Award Finalist.
How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, “Why?” In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. 
 
April 22, 2015

TEN THOUSAND BIRDS: ORNITHOLOGY SINCE DARWIN, by Tim Birkhead

This beautifully illustrated book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century when ornithology was a museum-based discipline focused almost exclusively on the anatomy, taxonomy, and classification of dead birds. It describes how in the early 1900s pioneering individuals such as Erwin Stresemann, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley recognized the importance of studying live birds in the field, and how this shift thrust ornithology into the mainstream of the biological sciences. The book tells the stories of eccentrics like Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a pathological liar who stole specimens from museums and quite likely murdered his wife, and describes the breathtaking insights and discoveries of ambitious and influential figures such as David Lack, Niko Tinbergen, Robert MacArthur, and others who through their studies of birds transformed entire fields of biology. 
 
May 27, 2015

THE ARDENT BIRDER, by Todd Newberry and Gene Holtan

If you wash dishes with binoculars around your neck, own more spotting scopes than shoes, and read the Bird Chat listerv before and after your first cup of coffee, then you can only be one thing: an ardent birder. Biology professor and lifelong devotee of our fine-feathered friends, Todd Newberry has written 50 short essays that range from meditations on bird-watchers' daily events to philosophies of why they do what they so ardently love to do. The Ardent Birder is the first book in the vast field of popular birding literature to focus on the birder, not just the bird. It includes 75 whimsical drawings and suggestions for how intermediate-level birders can hone and share their skills in the field. 
 
August 26, 2015

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORYby Elizabeth Kolbert

Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. 
 
September 23, 2015

THE BIRDS OF PANDEMONIUMby Michele Raffin

Pandemonium, the home and bird sanctuary that Michele Raffin shares with some of the world’a most remarkable birds, is a conservation organization dedicated to saving and breeding birds on the edge of extinction, with the goal of eventually releasing them into the wild. In The Birds of Pandemonium she lets us into her world— and theirs. Birds fall in love, mourn, rejoice, and sacrifice; they have a sense of humor, invent, plot, and cope. They can teach us volumes about the interrelationships of humans and animals. 
 
October 28, 2015 
GIFTS OF THE CROW: HOW PERCEPTION, EMOTION, AND THOUGHT ALLOW SMART BIRDS TO BEHAVE LIKE HUMANS by John M. Marzluff, PhD and Tony Angell 
With an abundance of funny, awe-inspiring and poignant stories, Gifts of the Crow portrays creatures who are nothing short of amazing.  A testament to years of painstaking research and careful observation, this fully illustrated, riveting work is a look at one of nature’s most wondrous creatures whose marvelous brains allow them to think, plan and reconsider their actions. Crows gather around their dead, recognize people, commit murder of other crows, lure fish and birds to their death, swill coffee, drink beer and work in tandem to spray soft cheese out of a can. And because they live near us, they are keenly aware of our own peculiarities.