Capsule Reviews of Books about Birds and the Environment

Reading Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations compelled me to share some of the nonfiction books about birds and the environment that I've been reading in recent times. Chief among these is Nature's Best Hope which can guide you to improve the quality of your own backyard for the cycle of nature that includes plants, insects, and birds.

Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For those of us who look around at our wilderness and environment and want to broker change, Nature's Best Hope offers information about how to make mindful changes to our environment in order to sustain animal and plant life. Tallamy offers a path for cultural transformation of how we approach conservation and sustainability. If you consider your yard at home, how much is a yard and non-native plants? If you garden, how much of what you grow really serves the best interests of wildlife (insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) in your area? For instance, you may love butterflies but did you know that Butterfly bush (buddleia spp.), considered an invasive species that competes with native wildflowers of your region, supports only a single butterfly species of the seven hundred twenty-five species of butterfly native to the US? If you plant a butterfly garden, what are the other species going to eat? Supporting a monoculture of butterflies does not adequately support species diversity- of butterflies or the birds who eat their caterpillars. Better stewardship of our land is something any homeowner can work on.

Nature's Best Hope offers you the chance to change how you look at your surroundings. Do you really need a lawn that endlessly requires water that is a precious commodity? Do you really have to remove native shrubs that keep trying to come back? Do you really have to get rid of that patch of weeds at the back corner, filled with its buzzing bees and looking ragged because of caterpillar damage? (Let's remember that caterpillars yield butterflies, moths, and flower flies...) If you care about the environment, you can take a stand in your own backyard. Tallamy will help show you how.

Readers should be sure to check out the National Wildlife Federation's link for identifying the native plants in your particular zip code and what species they support. It will help guide your planting at home and around your workplace.

(I received a paper review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)




If you have children, one way to engage them in the work of improving the environment around your home is to engage them in learning about nature. Understanding more about birds (I'll tackle more about insects in a later post) is a great way to go about that goal. Here are two books I can strongly recommend for their excellent visuals:

What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing—What Birds Are Doing, and Why by David Allen Sibley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While perhaps not fulfilling the lofty goals of its title, renowned author and illustrator David Allen Sibley's latest release is a coffee table-sized book with information about more than 200 species of birds in a visual format. Gorgeous illustrations offer a life-size look at common birds, their habits, behavior, and lives. This is a great book for interesting your child in birding, with short capsulized information that captures the imagination, and easy visual appeal. Sibley's stated intent was the accessibility of information about North American birds and the book excels at it.

How Birds Work: An Illustrated Guide to the Wonders of Form and Function—from Bones to Beak by Marianne Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A beautifully illustrated and information-rich book on everything from bird flight to appearance, and all the relevant anatomy of birds, from the perspective of how form relates to function. This is an excellent resource for middle-grade students to adults.

Readers should note there is a companion book, How Insects Work: An Illustrated Guide, which I'll review soon.









For adult readers looking for more in-depth reading about birds, behavior, and bird intelligence, I can recommend The Genius of Birds:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Updated August 2020:

Ackerman's The Genius of Birds continues to be a treasure trove of interesting details about bird behavior, information processing, and the structural and organizational differences between avian and mammalian brains.

This time around I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Margaret Strom. This book makes looking at bird behavior and thought processes quite accessible and is filled with both anecdotes and synthesis of published works by researchers into animal behavior and intelligence. An engaging read, and a marvelous selection for car trips.

From July 2016 (pre-blog):

I'm a lifelong bird-lover and needed no convincing that birds are clever animals with prodigious thinking skills for the size of their brains. This book increased my respect for both their problem solving and resilience, and for the convergent evolutionary differences in their brain organization in comparison to higher mammals. A wonderful, engaging book. Strongly recommend for anyone who loves birds.

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