Here are 100 books that How to Find a Bird fans have personally recommended if you like
How to Find a Bird.
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I may not be an expert ornithologist, but I am an avid “birdologist” to borrow a term from Sy Montgomery—one who is awed and fascinated by all things bird. Bird-watching is meditative—it helps me to be present and to feel joyful. I love reading, learning, and writing about birds too! I am the author of these bird books: Hawk Rising, illustrated by Brian Floca, Whoo-Ku Haiku, illustrated by Jonathan Voss, and the forthcoming You and the Bowerbird, illustrated by Maris Wicks. I love writing about the natural world and its inhabitants as well as dogs—another love of mine!
Using a familiar cumulative format, Sonenshine makes it shine and makes it her own using pleasing poetic language to tell a story about a nesting pair of Carolina wrens. This rhythmic read-aloud is jaunty and joyful and scientifically accurate; we watch the wren pair build a nest, lay their eggs on a velvet bed of moss, and observe as chicks grow from hatchlings to nestlings to fledglings, flying off on their own. Hunter’s earth-toned art complements the coziness of the text. The book wraps up with wren facts and a glossary of bird-related terms.
Nature lovers and poetry fans alike will be drawn to this lyrical picture book depicting how Carolina wrens build a nest for their young.
This is the bark, snippets of twine, spidery rootlets, and needles of pine that shape the nest that Wren built.
In the rhyming style of “The House That Jack Built,” this poem about the care and specificity that Carolina wrens put into building a nest is at once tender and true to life. Papa and Mama Wren gather treasures of the forest, from soft moss for a lining to snakeskin for warding off predators. Randi Sonenshine’s…
I’m an artist with an analytical mind. I love art and stories but I also love systems and processes. Ever since taking a class at art school about making pop-ups, I’ve been in love with paper engineering. It’s been the perfect synthesis of all my loves. There’s something fascinating about transforming an everyday object (paper) into something unexpected. Combined that with a great story and you have a magical experience! I like focusing my work on books for young readers (board books - picture books) because it gives adults and kids an opportunity to interact with each other and build memories.
Sitting on the bookshelf horizontally (swing on top)—I was intrigued the moment I laid eyes on it and it did not disappoint.
Just about every book I own is structured the same with the spine is always on the side of the book. But this book has the spine on top! I opened the book and flipped the pages up as Mel falls down the tree. Then, through the clever illustrations and design of the text, I wound up turning the book upside and found myself flipping the pages down to make Mel fly back up the tree. What sorcery was this?
I’ve seen many illustrators try to have readers turn a book, but I have never had such a smooth and seamless experience!
3
authors picked
Mel Fell
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
A Caldecott Honor Book and ALA Notable Book of the Year! An innovative and charming tale about a plucky little bird, from the award-winning author-illustrator of Fox the Tiger.
Readers will delight in turning their book sideways and upside down to follow Mel on her journey from downward fall to triumphant flight in this tale of self-confidence and taking a leap of faith.
An especially enjoyable and satisfying read-aloud!
I may not be an expert ornithologist, but I am an avid “birdologist” to borrow a term from Sy Montgomery—one who is awed and fascinated by all things bird. Bird-watching is meditative—it helps me to be present and to feel joyful. I love reading, learning, and writing about birds too! I am the author of these bird books: Hawk Rising, illustrated by Brian Floca, Whoo-Ku Haiku, illustrated by Jonathan Voss, and the forthcoming You and the Bowerbird, illustrated by Maris Wicks. I love writing about the natural world and its inhabitants as well as dogs—another love of mine!
In mostly rhyming couplets, Sayre’s book celebrates the lowly turkey vulture, an unsung and underappreciated creature that plays a very vital role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem—scavengers are nature’s clean-up crew! View vultures as they circle, soar, and glide on thermals, up, UP! Watch them sniff, search, seek and eat things that reek, the more rotten the better. Vultures feast, then clean and preen. At night, they roost and rest in trees like families. Jenkins’ cut paper collages complete this homage to the venerable turkey vulture. Explore more turkey vulture facts in the concluding pages.
Turkey vultures soar on the balmy air, looking for their next stinky feast. These birds don't hunt―they like their food to be already dead, and their eating habits serve a very important ecological role. Vultures are part of nature's clean-up crew.
In her signature poetic, energetic style, acclaimed nature writer April Pulley Sayre introduces young readers to the world of the turkey vulture. The gorgeous illustrations by Caldecott Honor–winning artist Steve Jenkins capture these birds in all their surprising majesty.
Vulture View is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
I may not be an expert ornithologist, but I am an avid “birdologist” to borrow a term from Sy Montgomery—one who is awed and fascinated by all things bird. Bird-watching is meditative—it helps me to be present and to feel joyful. I love reading, learning, and writing about birds too! I am the author of these bird books: Hawk Rising, illustrated by Brian Floca, Whoo-Ku Haiku, illustrated by Jonathan Voss, and the forthcoming You and the Bowerbird, illustrated by Maris Wicks. I love writing about the natural world and its inhabitants as well as dogs—another love of mine!
Yolen and Stemple are a mother-daughter dream team duo and creators of many bird books including Yolen’s classic, Owl Moon. This birdy-lullaby has a soothing read-aloud rhythm as a mother tucks her tired nestling-child in bed. She recounts the places where various birds nest, from pigeons on ledges and catbirds in hedges, to owls in oak tree boles and hawks on telephone poles bound by the reassuring refrain, "You nest here with me.” Sweet’s blue-green color palette offers a calming and soporific counterpart and a nod to night-time. Learn more about the featured birds, their diet and nesting habits, and this birding family in the book’s back pages.
Now available in a board book edition, this lyrical bedtime book is an ode to baby birds everywhere and to sleepy children, safe in their beds. As a mother describes how different species of birds nest, secure and cozy with their mama birds, she tucks her own child into bed with the soothing refrain -- "you nest here with me" -- easing her little one and readers alike to slumber. Accompanied by beautiful artwork by award-winning illustrator Melissa Sweet, mother and daughter Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple have combined their poetry writing and love of birding in this board book…
I started watching animals as soon as I could walk. That eventually led to a PhD in animal behavior and a career in animal protection. I now focus my energies on writing books that seek to improve our understanding of, and most importantly our relations with, other animals. I've written four previous books:Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows (a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages). I live in Belleville, Ontario where I enjoy biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the neighborhood squirrels.
This beautifully illustrated, comprehensive book is a must-have for bird enthusiasts. It is not only a useful guide to identifying birds, but also an illuminating source on little-known aspects of bird behavior.
“Undoubtedly the finest guide to North American birds.”—Guy McCaskie, Birding
The publication of The Sibley Guide to Birds, First Edition quickly established David Allen Sibley as the author and illustrator of the nation’s supreme and most comprehensive guide to birds. Used by millions of birders from novices to the most expert, The Sibley Guide became the standard by which natural history guides are measured. The highly anticipated second edition builds on this foundation of excellence, offering massively expanded and updated information, new paintings, new and rare species, and a new, elegant design.
The second edition of this handsome, flexibound volume…
I teach people how to enjoy birds. I’ve led bird walks, taught seminars, co-owned a wild bird feeding shop, and written two books and well over a hundred newspaper columns on birds. Over the years, I’ve conveyed a fair heap of information about birds because accurate knowledge and biological understanding are valuable tools for fostering appreciation. But I consider making birds relevant and vivid in our everyday lives to be far more important than simply accumulating facts. These are a few books that get to the heart of what I am most excited about: changing how we see and hear birds and thereby enriching our experience of every single day.
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 simply sit still in the woods, patiently watching and listening? When I started asking—and being able to answer—these questions, my whole world changed.
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, be it backyard or forest; by tuning in to their vocalizations and behavior, we can acquire much of this wisdom for our own pleasure and benefit; and the birds’ companion calls and warning alarms are just as important as their songs.
Deep bird language is an ancient discipline, perfected by…
I’m an Australian zoologist, botanist, and best-selling prize-winning writer. An earlier book of mine, Feral Future, inspired the formation of the Invasive Species Council, an Australian conservation lobby group. My Where Song Began, was a best-seller that became the first nature book to win the Australian Book Industry Award for best General Non Fiction. It was republished in the US. I have co-edited Wildlife Australia magazine and written for many magazines and newspapers, including nature columns as well as features. As a teenager I discovered new lizard species, one of which was named after me.
Twitchers pursuing long lists of bird sightings can seem to be fixated rather than appreciating nature in a sensible way.
Sean Dooley achieves something unlikely by showing that a world ruled by a "near-autistic obsession for list-making" has a lot going for it, because birds are wondrous things that lure birders to amazing places, providing access to something transcending everyday life. Dooley’s quest is to break the record for the number of species seen in Australia in one year.
His parents died young of cancer leaving him at age 33 with enough money to buy a comfortable house in the outer suburbs of Melbourne but instead he blows it on a four-wheel drive and a year of bird-obsessed travel that entailed 80 000 kilometres of driving, 60 000 kilometres in the air and 2 000 kilometres by boat. (Meaning, regrettably, a large carbon footprint.)
Sean Dooley seems like a well adjusted, functioning member of society but beneath the respectable veneer he harbours a dark secret. He is a hard-core birdwatcher (aka twitcher').Sean takes a year off to try to break the Australian twitching record - he has to see more than 700 birds in twelve months. Travelling the length and breadth of Australia, he stops at nothing in search of this birdwatching Holy Grail, blowing his inheritance, his career prospects and any chance he has of finding a girlfriend.Part confessional, part travelogue, this is a true story about obsession. It's about seeking the meaning…
Having grown up on the south coast of Hampshire, I love both the countryside and the sea. After studying ancient history, archaeology, and Latin at the University of Bristol, I worked for many years as a field archaeologist and met my husband Roy on an excavation of a Roman villa at Milton Keynes. We have worked together ever since, as archaeologists and as authors of books on archaeology, ancient history, naval history, and social history. Our wide-ranging interests proved invaluable when writing our book When There Were Birds.
The author was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) to write a history of a subject using a specific number of objects. In this book, he describes the development of observing birds through the medium of 100 objects, of which a surprising selection is presented, all well illustrated, from prehistoric paintings to more recent technology. Possibly the most curious is a stuffed extinct dodo at the Horniman Museum in London. It was actually a deceptive piece made by a leading taxidermist using plaster casts, chicken wings, and swan, goose, and ostrich feathers.
This book looks at 100 items that have profoundly shaped how people watched, studied and engaged with the avian world. Each item contains around 500 words on a double-page spread and include an illustration of the object in question. The book includes the objects listed below as well as many more.The range of items is international and cross-cultural. Subjects include:
An Egyptian 'field guide' [early tomb decorations of birds, identifiable as species] Ornithologiae libri tres: the first British bird guide [a 1676 publication that attempted to itemise all British birds known at the time] The Dodo specimen held at the…
I’m the author of more than 25 award-winning books for children, including Mama Built a Little Nest, illustrated by Steve Jenkins, and I Love Birds! 52 Ways to Wonder, Wander and Explore Birds with Kids, illustrated by Alexander Vidal. When not writing, I help rehabilitate injured and orphaned songbirds, I study bird behavior, and I further my knowledge about birds through books and scholarly journals. Birds offer a constant source of discovery and wonder. I hope the books I’ve recommended offer a source of discovery and wonder for your young readers, too!
What can I say? I am an adult who’s an avid birder (I take joy in observing them daily), I work with wild bird rehabilitation (sounds like a sweet job, but it’s actually quite taxing), I photograph birds (I try!), I count the bird species in my backyard (over 100 species and know many of them personally), and I write professionally about birds - - and I learned so much about birds from this clever children’s book! It’s a must-have for any budding birder and birding family. I love the quirky design (speech bubbles!) -and most importantly, the cleverly presented facts about birding and the bird world. Check it out.
You don’t have to own binoculars and know a bunch of fancy Latin names to watch birds! No matter where you live, they’re in your neighborhood — just look up.
This conversational, humorous introduction to bird-watching encourages kids to get outdoors with a sketchbook and really look around. Quirky full-color illustrations portray dozens of birds chatting about their distinctive characteristics, including color, shape, plumage, and beak and foot types, while tongue-in-cheek cartoons feature banter between birds, characters, and the reader (“Here I am, the noble spruce grouse. In a spruce grove. Eatin’ some…
My father was a life-long falconer. When I was a child, spending time with my father meant spending time with a menagerie of winged friends like goshawks, peregrine falcons, parrots, owls, and even vultures. I didn’t know it back then, but as I went hawking with my dad and helped him care for his beautiful birds, I was gathering a nest of passion and ideas for the writer and poet I would become. Today, I enjoy sharing my love of birds, nature, and books with children (and children at heart).
Oh, how I wish I had this book when I was a child! Each brightly illustrated page is rich with close-up photos of various birds to look for, field guides, and tips to follow. It’s jam-packed with every activity bird-loving littles could hope for—games, crafts, a birding log for sightings, sticker badges, and a real magnifying glass! Bird Watch is an excellent book for school field trips, family nature adventures, and the perfect gift for young explorers.
The third book in the Backpack Explorer series from the Editors of Storey Publishing invites budding naturalists to head outside for a walk - in the woods, a park, or right in their backyard - to spot feathered friends. Backpack Explorer: Bird Watch leads kids aged 4 and up through the basics of birding, from identifying common birds to learning about habitat and migration and listening for bird songs. The pages are packed with prompts and activities, including 12 interactive field guides (for common birds, nests, eggs, tracks, and more), sensory scavenger hunts, activities such as building a bird nest,…
