What the Robin Knows

By Jon Young,

Book cover of What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World

Book description

Award-winning naturalist and author Jon Young's What the Robin Knows reveals how understanding bird language and behavior can help us to see more wildlife.

A lifelong birder, tracker, and naturalist, Jon Young is guided by three basic premises: the robin, junco, and other songbirds know everything important about their environment,…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked What the Robin Knows as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book taught me how to watch birds. 

Many bird books aim to teach about birds and how they live, conveying factual information while ignoring (or lamenting) our human interactions with them. There are also books about birding, telling picaresque stories of extreme birdwatching adventures, or delving into technical minutiae aimed at maximizing one’s skill at bird identification. This book doesn’t fall into either of those categories; instead, it focuses on the rich and positive rewards of paying attention to birds. 

What was that sound? Why did those birds all fly up into the tree? What will I discover if…

I first encountered this book while taking a wildlife tracking class that Jon Young had a hand in creating. I was awe-struck by the stories Young tells in What the Robin Knows. He has learned from years of patience and still observation to find animals in the forest and to know how each animal like an owl, hawk, coyote, or the neighborhood cat, is moving on the landscape by listening to the vocalizations and watching the behavior of local birds, like the ubiquitous Robin. This is a perfect book to read if you are longing to re-create your connection with…

From Leigh's list on encounters with wild animals.

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