Birds Books

This gives you tips for differentiating between an anhinga and a cormorant (pointed or hooked beak) or snowy egret vs American egret (black vs yellow beak). Also shows chicks, immature birds, breeding plumage and females that vary in coloration.
The photos are large (some even full page), colorful and a real help in identifying the birds. It is a good browsing book as well, to just enjoy the birds flying, eating, swimming, etc.
Only 60+ pages, but the oversize format makes it a great souvenir of a trip to Florida or a resource for bird lovers or Florida residents. Actually it is useful to anyone living in the South or the Gulf coast states where these birds can be seen.
It includes coots, ducks, egrets, flamingos, frigatebirds, gallinules, gulls, herons, ibis, kingfisher, limpkins, osprey, pelicans, sandpipers, skimmers, spoonbills, storks and terns.

This gives you tips for differentiating between an anhinga and a cormorant (pointed or hooked beak) or snowy egret vs American egret (black vs yellow beak). Also shows chicks, immature birds, breeding plumage and females that vary in coloration.
The photos are large (some even full page), colorful and a real help in identifying the birds. It is a good browsing book as well, to just enjoy the birds flying, eating, swimming, etc.
Only 60+ pages, but the oversize format makes it a great souvenir of a trip to Florida or a resource for bird lovers or Florida residents. Actually it is useful to anyone living in the South or the Gulf coast states where these birds can be seen.
It includes coots, ducks, egrets, flamingos, frigatebirds, gallinules, gulls, herons, ibis, kingfisher, limpkins, osprey, pelicans, sandpipers, skimmers, spoonbills, storks and terns.

This was a wonderful book. I had to buy it for an ecology class on the Everglades, but it was well worth it. It has beautiful large color illustrations, and descriptions of the various water birds of Florida. A great investment whether you plan to visit, like I did, or just to enjoy the book by itself. Really useful in identifying birds, especially wading, in the cypress swamps, as well as the entire Everglades water shed. A must buy.

This is an awesome book with great fun facts. The pictures are beautiful! If you are a fan of Florida and the waterbirds, you will love this book and want to display it for others to see.

NOT the book for experienced birders. Absolutely perfect for the dabbler as you will always be able to easily and quickly find your bird in this book. Though the book does provide a limited number of facts and descriptions of each bird, it should be used more as a visual guide to help you learn the name of each bird species.

Mr. White describes his experiences with training a goshawk for falconry. He has no guidance beyond an ancient manuscript and things go horribly awry. An outstanding book, a pleasure to read. Also an example of why current US regulations require a falconry apprenticeship period.

As a fan of The Once and Future King as well as falconry, I couldn't wait to start reading this book. It is an absolute gem. White's descriptions are extremely vivid. No one should be daunted by the fact that this book was penned in '51 or that it is about falconry; his story is immensely (and enjoyably) readable.

Thanks are due to New York Review Books for putting back in print this wonderful book. The edition is well produced. A quibble is that Marie Winn who writes the introduction is clearly not familiar with ,or comfortable with ,"field sports". T H White (and many modern writers and followers of fishing,falconry and related actities) would take issue with her distinction between being a natural history lover and a practioner of fishing,shooting,ferreting etc. More seriously, she writes that White "blithely snagged salmon". White fished for salmon and caught them fairly using a fly. He wrote many fine passages about his salmon fishing and the pieces are still found in anthologies of fishing literature. To "snag" a salmon means ,to those who fish ,that he took salmon illegally and unsportingly, by jerking a hook into the body of a salmon.There is no evidence that I have heard of that he would ever have done this.To suggest it does his memory a grave disservice. The introduction by Steve Bodio,himself a falconer, to the 1996 Wilder Places edition of The Goshawk is,to my mind, far better at exploring and explaining the reasons why this is a much loved book.

"'Sha-hou!' rang down the centuries for 3,000 years as the hawksman sent his bird aloft. In Arthurian times, every king had his eagles, every earl his peregrines, and even a knave might fly a kestrel. They brought pigeon and duck to the table, and sport to the afternoon." "Time", March 10, 1952.

In 1952 T. H. White was a young author of an Arthurian tale, The Sword in the Stone, and a short novel, Mistress Masham's Repose. White's researches for Sword inspired him to learn the ancient art of falconry for himself. He writes the attempt grew mostly out of an urge to pit himself against an exacting challenge, as another man might set out to climb a stubborn mountain. All that White knew about hawks to begin with he had learned from three tracts on the subject and from an exchange of letters with two of the few remaining hawk-masters left in Europe.

Gos was an untamed tiercel (male) of the largest European species of the short-winged hawks with a wing spread three inches shorter than a golden eagle. White lived in a cottage in Buckinghamshire wood, and he ordered the bird from a dealer in Germany.

On the first day, White caught Gos by the leather jesses tied to his feet, and set him on his gloved fist. "For an instant he stared upon me with a mad, marigold or dandelion eye, all his plumage flat to the body and his head crouched like a snake's in fear or hatred, then bated wildly from the fist." He hung, by his jesses, screaming with rage.

Thereafter, it is White against Gos. Gos bated for hours; each time White gently lifted Gos back to his fist, he bated again. All night long Gos bated and White lifted him back. Hawkmasters taught White that if he gave up or fell asleep, the hawk would know that it was the stronger, and could never be tamed.

"Oh, the agony of patience. At the thousandth bate in a day, on an arm that ached to the bone . . . merely to twitch him gently back to the glove . . . to reassure him with tranquillity, when one yearned ... to pound, pash, dismember!" After three days and three nights, the hawk fell asleep. The next day he was as wild as ever.

The rest of the story is thrilling, exhilarating, and finally tragic.

"Nothing is more certain than that Gos entangled his jesses in one of the myriad trees of The Ridings, and there, hanging upside down by the mildewed leathers, his bundle of green bones and ruined feathers may still be swinging in the winter wind."

Marie Winn has written the introduction to this book. She is a wonderful observer of wildlife, writes an excellent blog called "Marie Winn's Central Park Nature News", and is the author of the enchanting Red Tails In Love. I was delighted to find this new and well produced edition of White's classic book. I share other reviewers's concerns that Winn was not entirely fair to White. As an observer of wildlife I empathize with her point of view, but can "Sha-hou" ringing down the centuries be entirely wrong?

I highly recommend this book to anyone, even those with no interest at all in falconry. The author is so skilled and talented that I'd say that he could write an entertaining piece about paint drying. Enjoy!!

There are now two editions of Boyle, the older version with an orange cover and the Barred Owl, and a newer version with a photo of a Hooded Warbler on the front. You'll want to make sure you get the latter, since many things have changed over the years.

This book is just as useful for seasoned birders as it is for the beginner, or the person new to New Jersey. Beginners will appreciate its review of New Jersey's best birding destinations; seasoned pros will enjoy the depth of the information and the amount of detail on nesting species and accounts of rarities.

For us locals, "Bird Finding" is great for those days when you want to hop in the car and travel to somewhere a little different, or if you want to explore a familiar destination a little more closely. The book offers detailed directions (although some of the exit numbers and streets have changed since its publication date), including which trail to follow, which tree to investigate, etc. Its accuracy is remarkable. It's clear Bill Boyle knows each location intimately and visits them often.

This is a must-have for any birder living in the state (and there are lots), and any vacationer planning to spend more than a weekend in New Jersey.

It is one of the milder species of blasphemy, I suppose, to call any book one's "bible"; but since its appearance 17 years ago (!), Bill Boyle's NJBFG has served thousands of the birding faithful as ritual object and authoritative companion alike. My own copy of the first printing, with its ugly laminated binding in shreds and the bookblock bulging from tipped-in notes, photocopies, and clippings, is probably the single most used volume in my birding library: field guides come and go, but for nearly two decades now, Boyle has come and gone wherever I have.
Just how intensive my use of the book has been came clear to me with the arrival--"long-awaited," in the reviewer's cliche--of the second edition. As I read through the new treatments of areas long familiar to me, I discovered that (like many NJ birders) I'd actually memorized verbatim great chunks of the first edition, and that I noticed every new word and every new turn of phrase in the revised accounts. If it is true that every obsession is at its base religious, then this book truly is the birder's bible.
The birder's bible: divine in inspiration, certainly, but here and there the mortal nature of its human author peeks through. As anyone who has ever written anything knows, it is even more difficult to revise than to write, and this revised edition has some flaws that were not apparent in the first. There are far more copy-editing errors this time around, and the index--more important than ever, given the new book's rather breathless layout--is not an infallible help (just try to find the main entry for Merrill Creek!). Compared to the enjoyably expansive style of the first edition, the new entries strike me as occasionally a bit too concise, a problem that might have been eased by simply eliminating even more of the old sections treating sites that, like the Institute Woods, now offer (in Boyle's words) "the mere shadow" of their former glory; valuable space is also sacrificed to a number of new full-page illustrations.
These things having been said, the book is still an outstanding example of the bird-finding guide. The maps seem to be largely up to date and accurate (Sussex County birders: are Rockport and Blackdirt marshes really the same place?), the annotated species list is even more useful than in the first edition, and the binding isn't likely to crackle and peel. It will take only weeks, I am sure, for New Jersey birders to start quoting this new Boyle, chapter and verse.

Despite its small size and large population, New Jersey is one of the prime locations in North America for spotting birds. First, it holds a strategic position along the Atlantic flyway, which insures that a wide variety of migrating species pass through in both the spring and fall. Second, it has a wide variety of habitats within rather short distances of each other: seacoast, salt marshes, coastal plain, pine barrens, lakes, mountains, forests, etc.

By nearly any measure of interest to birders, such as typical number of species seen in an average year (over 330) and maximum found in a given day (over 250), New Jersey is surpassed only by California and Texas. A birder with average skill and energy can find over 100 species in a day during peak migration in May; the best teams of elite birders can find 200-230 on a day in May, and Bill Boyle has been a member of some of them.

The book is organized geographically, with each chapter devoted to a prime birding spot, and the chapters arranged by region. Most chapters have an excellent map, plus detailed text on how the birding differs by season, and on the relative scarcity or abundance of the various species found there. Driving directions are precise and easy to follow.

The only problem, and a growing one, is this: indispensable as this book is, it is now 15 years old, and showing its age. Roads have changed. Some birding areas have been lost to development. Others are simply no longer accessible. And birds change their habits: some old hot spots aren't so hot anymore, and new ones have arisen. This book cried out for a revised edition at least 5 years ago, but one does not seem to be in the works. No other book as comprehensive and as well-presented is available, so this is still the bible for NJ birders. Just be ready (a) to do some more homework before visiting any given site mentioned in this book or (b) risk some disappointment. All in all, I'd say that this book is still about 75% accurate.

This book covers the vast majority (something like 80) of the popular bird watching sites in New jersey. It tells you what birds you are likely to see there and where the best places (and best times) are. It has lots of detail on rare birds. There is also a great section in the back that goes species by species and tells you where you are most likely to see them and how common they are in New Jersey. You still need a good field guide, but this is a great book for actually finding the birds in the area.

I've got it and you don't! Too bad. It's outta print. I called the publisher and they are not reissuing. Go find it used. It is worth every penny ($85 I paid) if you need or desire to ID gulls.

This book is a must have for every birdwatcher! If you have problems with indentifying gulls, this is the book to have! It anwers all my questions I have about gull distribution and indentification. Now I know how to Indentify those Ring-billed Gulls that I see in the parking lot. Also I have a better outlook on where they came from as Well!

The size and massive detail in this new book on identifying the gulls of the Northern Hemisphere is likely to deter most readers from more than a cursory leafing through its lovely paintings and photographs. But if you're curious to learn more about these common but highly varied, many-shades-of-gray birds around us, and you happen to live in a coastal area as I do, with more than a few gulls that are hard to identify during the winter, this might be a book to look into more thoroughly.

A caution though: gulls can be notoriously difficult to identify accurately, since they have so much finely detailed, age-related plumage variation. But an effort to simply knuckle-down and learn more about all this, such as this book amply provides, can pay off greatly in much greater detective-fun trying to figure out all these heretofore anonymously gray gulls sailing and prowling around us here each year. It's already helped me develop better skills in figuring out nearly all the varied groups of gulls around us here more quickly than I would have heretofore thought possible. And to more quickly decide which birds you can or cannot more accurately identify...and why.

The detailed accounts and maps of the distribution and relative abundance of various gull species have also helped me better understand where the gulls that migrate through or winter in our area are likely to have come from. And, finally, as you delve more deeply into what's known about all these gull species, and their European and Asian counterparts, it becomes obvious that the series of beautiful, comparative paintings and color photographs provided in such detail for each species in its various age-plumages, subspecies, and hybrid-forms is worth the price of the book alone.

Well....maybe not easy....but, not through any fault of this book! The book starts with a lesson on the various body parts, as you will need to know many of these in order to ascertain what gull you have sitting in front of you. A comparison of the wings comes next. Then, it goes through each gull species and all of its plumages, including the months you might expect to see them in that plumage. It ends by discussing the various hybrids. If you ever hope to get beyond referring to gulls as "gull sp.," this book will do it. When you hear other birders refer to "the gull bible," this is it!!! However, don't think that this is a field guide you might want to carry in a fanny pack...it's a heavyweight!

growing up with the knowledge that there are just a few "kinds" of gulls and realising after a while that all the gulls you knew are now called somthing compleatly different (the whole herring,yellow legged,caspian,armenian,lesser black backed,sibirian etc. complex). this is the book we were all looking for, easy to use and extremly proffesional.
another good birding book to have around.

My mom bought me this book when I was little and I just loved it! In fact, I still have the copy she bought me. I will treasure it always. All the varieties of birds Barbara sculpts out of clay to illustrate the pages are just amazing! Sure to keep the attention of children as the story is being read and also keep the parent interested as well. Barbara has a wide variety of childrens books out which she illustrates with clay. Some of her books are perfect as readers for children in school and others are better for smaller children like her "Zoey" series.

This book is very fun to read and of particular interest to toddlers. I absolutely love Barbara Reid's plasticene illustrations. The poetry in the book is wonderful. The book takes about 5 minutes to read, and it is easy for a young toddler to join in. The text is repetitious without being monotanous.

It is one of my 22 month old's favorite books.

This charming little book uses alliteration, assonance, and rhyming words to describe various types of birds and how they live. The sentences are written in poetry that's cadence and structure enhances the types of birds being discussed. The claymation illustrations are playful and capture children's imagination, but without distracting from the focus of the book's lessons. A fun book to read.

My two year old adores birds, and of all of our bird books, this is one of his absolute favorites. I'm not sure how much of the text he understands, but the illustrations, done in clay art, are beautiful, and he loves to identify the various species.

I don't mind reading it over and over because the poetic text stands up to intense rereadings and I love the cadence and rhythm of the text. The author has managed to emulate the careening freedom of flight by the flitting, dipping, racing style of her poetry. This is one of those books I wish we had in hardcover.

Both of my little ones like this book. It is a simple read with plenty of rhymes and fun pictures. However, it is not too simple because within the rhymes the little ones can learn quite a bit about birds and bird behavior. My little boy saw the blackbirds on the "summer garden birds" page and said they looked like grackles and acted like them too with all of their splashing and mess-making. My littlest one likes all of the bird sounds you do while reading the book such as the quarreling-in-a-rage birds, tweeting-in-a-cage birds, squealing, squawking, screeching, talking,... Well worth the money if your little ones like to look outside for birds, or point to birds while they're in the car on a trip.

A beautiful, well written, poignant story about a boy who wants to fly and does not understand why he can't. So, understanding birds the way he does, he wants to fly like a hawk. He decides to sneak off to Santos Mountain and steal a young Red Tail Hawk from of its nest. The boy, Rudy Soto, desires to be the hawk's brother so they can learn to fly together. But he finally realizes at the end of summer after all the other young hawks have learned to fly that the bird is unhappy living in a cage with a string tied around its leg. He realizes the bird will not give up and longs for freedom. The hawk wants to fly. That's all he's ever wanted, just like Rudy.

I won't give away the ending. You'll just have to read it with your children and share with them what this remarkable story has to offer.

Byrd Baylor's books are not just for children. Grownups enjoy them too. They are simple stories about desert life that offer great insight about living and what is truly important way beyond material possessions. This book is about sky and wind and freedom and the beauty that is unique to the desert.

I loved it!

My husband and I purchased this book because we are always searching for good books to read to our nine grandchildren..they have loved the Byrd Baylor books. "Hawk, I am Your Brother" is education and sensitive to being quiet and watching to learn. It is an easy read for all ages of our grandchildren, ages 18 years old to 9 years old. No matter the age they loved being read to, especially by Grandpa. They already watch TV that does nothing for their imagination or originality. We have found the local bookstores thin on Baylor books. :(

My five-year-old son loves to think about flying with hawks and loves to think about having a hawk for a brother. He gets upset with Rudy Soto (the main character of this book) for taking a hawk chick from its nest, but enjoys the end when he sets him free and the hawk and the boy "talk" back and forth to each other. Like Rudy, my son thinks maybe there are some people out there who really do know how to fly...

The Caldecott-winning drawings are simple line drawings that evoke the idea of flight (or being grounded on occassion). The text accents the drawings--

It is
broken
into
many
short
lines,
which
draw the
eye up to
the top of
the pages.

It becomes a single free-verse poem of flight. The combination of the story, the exact words chosen, and the pictures have let to many discussions with my son already and he has only had this book for a couple of weeks. Highly recommended!

Kids really like this book, what kid hasn't dreamed of flying and keeping a wild bird as a pet. The message is powerful, that humans can gain much from kinship with free wild animals--a glimpse into a broader view of life. Peter Parnall's illustrations are hauntingly lovely. Nice gift for kids of all ages, especially those who love nature and animals.

HAWK I'M YOUR BROTHER is a touching story of how a child learns that there are some things in life which cannot be achieved by enslaving that which holds the knowledge you seek but rather to understand the secret of this special freedom is how you will treat and respect the needs of the wild creature who holds the answers to your quest.. that to be trapped and held against its will is not the best way for the creature to teach what it knows. Each time I read it I understand Rudy's need to keep the hawk and the Hawk's need to be free and how Rudy comes to undertand the simplistic belief that to really be one with any creature it cannot be enslaved, it must be set free. By learning and letting go, Rudy can truly be as the hawk. Free.

Highway Surfing is a delightful book, and although especially good for young people in that it will develop empathy and awareness of the interesting behaviour taking place in the world of birds, it is enjoyable for any age.

After reading Tim Potter's book, I have become more tuned in to the carry-on of birds on the roads, and they really do seem to be engaged in some interesting play-like activities.

I wish I could have read this book when I was a child, but it's never too late for such a charming story. When are we going to hear more about Blackie, Maggie, and all the gang?

this is a great and fun book to read
it is for the young and old.

Although I found this book appropriate for children of all ages (yes, even adults) It is an especially good read for those in grade school to jr. High. Mr. Potter brings to life characters that are fun and demonstrate positive values through action.

It is a great book to sit and read with your older children. It is an opportunity to re-engage in the wonderful moments you shared reading together when they were young.

Loved the book and had fun reading it! Great characters that any kid would love to read about. I recommend it to both young and old.

Book was quite clever. Could identify with the Authors description of his characters. Found a Message that could be understood by both young and OLD! Loved It!

This book (written by a veterinarian) is excellent! I find the practical information wonderfully straight forward!

This is the best very informative, easy read book on birds I have ever read. Every bird owner should have it.

This book is very informative and easy to understand. I would use it as a reference manual and it has some very interesting recipes for birdy treats.

I LOVE this book! I use it as a reference guide, and I find it easy to read, logical, and very very helpful! PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU OWN A BIRD!

In HOLISTIC CARE FOR BIRDS, authors McCluggage and Higdon address preventative care as well as spiritual and emotional healing. They begin with a brief overview of `bird keeping' - Different birds have different needs..Not all birds like to be petted while others may become miserable without constant affection. Sometimes the difference is species specific, other times it is related to the bird's treatment by previous owners.

Obvious physical problems may send you scrambling to the vet, but there are remedies you can keep on hand to deal with life's stresses and less serious physical injuries. For example, according to the authors, mild camomile tea in the bird's water bowl offers a soothing aperitif following a bad "out-of-cage" experience with the family dog or as a palliative for feather picking. Aloe juice used to treat human skin problems as well as Vitamin E and C can also be used to address bird wounds inflicted by cage mates.

The authors address a range of treatments for ailments as diverse as sore feet and broken feathers to heart disease. They do not eschew veterinary care, indeed McCluggage is a DVM as well as a Certified Veterinary Acupuncturist. Higdon has written a number of books on happy, healthy pets (Lovebirds, Quaker Parrots, etc.). The book includes a section on nutrition, as the best health care involves diet.

Kristine O'Connell George's poetry is beautiful as these poems lead her observations of a mother hummingbird making a nest, laying her eggs, then the eggs hatching and the young moving out. The illustrations are lovely realistic sketches that capture each stage of the hummingbirds' development. This makes a nice Mother's Day gift. I also bought a copy for a special aunt who loves nature.

If you or I were to find a tiny hummingbird nest in our backyard, we would handle such a discovery in any variety of ways. Some people would probably set up a camera and create a 24-hr live feed to their website. Others would ignore the nest or, worse still, actively remove it due to some odd hummingbird-based-delusion that the creatures were pests. When author Kristine O'Connell George found her nest, she came up with a particularly original way of marking the event. She kept a steady journal and, when all was said and done, she turned that journal into poetry. And she turned that poetry into a book. And that book was illustrated by the all-too-accomplished Barry Moser. And as a result, children's librarians everywhere have the honor of carrying "Hummingbird Nest" on their shelves, ready to be taken out by any inquisitive child with a yen for tiny birdies. Neither you nor I might go this route, but then neither you nor I would have such a fine title to our name. Such is life.

There are 26 poems in this book, all told. At the beginning a single small bird launches itself at a family eating on their patio. It appears that the creature has claimed this area as its own and immediately sets about building a nest in a potted tree. After a short amount of time two eggs appear in the nest. The family carefully checks up on them when the mama bird is away. The chicks hatch and are fed by their mother. Then they grow over the course of 18-26 days. At the end of that time, one of the babies flies away without the family ever saying goodbye. The second bird has some false starts before it finally figures out how to fly, and (after a snack from mama) fly it does. From that time on, hummingbirds sip nectar from the family's feeder and the author says to herself in the Author's Note, "Were any of the fledglings that turned up at our feeder later that spring our hummingbirds? I like to think they were".

The book has the feel of realism to it, helped along by Moser's accurate artistic renderings. The poetry, for its part, is a kind of friendly free verse. All scientifically accurate. All tiny odes to greater hummingbird-dom. I was particularly fond of a poem entitled, "Spiders, Beware!" that cautions all arachnids that the hummingbirds are around and ready to steal their webbing. These poems are rather innocent and don't go in for witty metaphors or particularly original imagery. They're just gentle little pieces that contain words like, "this rainy evening / your quiet wings / smoothly pressed / as you patiently sit / gentle captain / of your cobweb ship". There's even a small hummingbird-ish haiku at the end (though for a superior hum-haiku, check out the one in Jack Prelutsky's, "If Not For the Cat"). At the end of the book is the Author's Note that tells the true story, some quick facts about hummingbirds, and a very nice bibliography of hummingbird resources for old and young readers.

It's really Barry Moser's art that lifts this little book from obscurity, though. If you haven't perused Moser's stunning, "In the Beginning" (with words by Virginia Hamilton) then I'm afraid you've a large gap in the creation-myth department of your brain. Moser's watercolors here are wonderful. In the picture where the hummingbird dive-bombs the family, we see an older woman dropping her breakfast spoon, a coffee cup already turned on its side, and a hand covering her face in what is unmistakably the beginning of a laugh. Moser's dog is mournful and his cat full of the languid grace of the species. There are changes in perspective, in distance, and in view. In this way, Moser creates what otherwise could have been a deathly dull series of illustrations.

Come to think of it, this whole enterprise could easily (in the hands of the less adept) have ended up as some kind of boring practice in nature poetry. Instead it captures a fascinating subject, those winged little paradoxes of the avian world, and displays for us all the wonder that she, the author, experienced once. There won't be a child in the world who doesn't yearn for a hummingbird nest of their own after paging through this light little book. Seriously consider pairing it with the equally lovely and aforementioned, "If Not For the Cat", for a detailed examination of the natural world through verse. A small but strong work.

As a reading specialist I regularly review new children's books. As soon as I saw this one, I thought of my mom. She's a sharp-minded 87-year-old who loves poetry, art and hummingbirds. She gives the artistry, both words and watercolors, of this book an easy five stars.

This book is a tender treasure of hummingbird experiences through the wide-open eyes of a family entranced and the pen of a noted writer clearly in love with her subject.

Written as delightful poems, the story contains many teachable moments following "Anna" through the birth process, portraying the teetering and testing of the young ones' wings, proceeding on to the inevitable empty nest. It was hard to hold back tears as the wonder-filled story touches on the universal, relating to many cycles in our own lives.

The delicate watercolor drawings are beautiful in their own right, yet support and enhance the story in seemingly perfect harmony.

I heartily recommend this book to hummingbird lovers and children of all ages, who, caught up in the flow of the story, will absorb many hummingbird facts before they even know it.

Beth Kingsley Hawkins
Co-Editor, The Hummingbird Connection
www.hummingbird.org

One warm, February morning a tiny hummingbird began building a nest in a ficus tree on the patio of George's home in Claremont , California . For the next two months George kept a "hummingbird journal" of the daily happenings. "I still marvel," she writes, "over the surprising range of emotions one small bird and her family evoked: awe, worry about possible dangers, and laughter when the baby birds teetered on the edge of the nest for their daily flight practice."

George has expertly taken those emotions and woven them into this delightful collection of poems. In "Visitor" we are introduced to the small mother. She is nothing more than a "spark, a glint, / a glimpse of pixie tidbit." In the next poem, however, we see her bravado and determination in action. She becomes a "feathered missile streaking by," ordering the humans off her patio, out of her territory.

Soon two eggs are visible in the "cobweb ship" of a nest. Once hatched, the nestlings, "raisin black / an wrinkled," settle in. In "Flight Practice," George does a superb job at allowing the reader to visualize the drama taking place: "Four curled up feet grip / the top of the nest. / Two tiny motors / rev up for the wing test."

Moser is in top form here. His realistic, incredibly detailed watercolor paintings are small jewels in themselves.

The poems and illustrations combine wonderfully to allow readers the opportunity to vicariously witness nature up-close.

Highly Recommended.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis Staff

Both authors have produced a great 'coffee table book'. Lots of facts that help people understand these tiny birds.
I agree with another reviewer that Plain Capped star throats are not only in Costa Rica, although they some of our most diligent visitors to our garden flowers in Costa Rica.

Exelente livro, com fotos maravilhosas, em grande quantidade e perfeitas.As informações são muito adequadas.Um detalhe, o livro é também uma enciclopédia das flores da Costa Rica.A diversidade mostrada, tanto de beija-flores como das plantas é única.As imagens primam pela qualidade e senso artístico.

This book was purchased as a gift for relative traveling to southern Costa Rica. The birds are so beautifuuly photographed. The gift was greatly appreciated.

A fantastically beautiful book! Plain-capped Starthroat is readily attracted to flowers and sugarwater farther north in its range; I don't think of it as an elusive canopy species at all.

This new book on the hummingbirds of Costa Rica deals with the 44 hummingbirds native to and breeding in this Central American country. It describes physical features of hummingbirds, flight, feeding, nesting, molting, migration and more. The superb photos illustrating this book not only show all aspects of the hummingbirds' daily life, but also more than 90 species of beautiful flowers on which they feed. The scientific information presented is correct and interesting. This book is a real must for all those ornithologists and bird watchers who love these little jewels of nature !