Birds Books

This is a large beautiful edition of Michigan birds written by many of Michigan's ornithologists and most knowledgable birders. The illustrations and artwork are superb and I wish I could have them as artwork in my home without tearing them out of the book.

This is not a field guide or identification book but a resource of most of the knowledge about each species of bird seen in Michigan up to the publication date of the book.

I refer to this often when I wish to get more information on a birds history of occurance in the state or its population status or biology.

More recent information on species status and sightings can be found on the Michigan Bird Records Committee website.

Anyone that is interested in the birds of Michigan would treasure this book.

The Natural History of Michigan avifauna presented includes population fluctuation, habitat changes, current status; historical records verified from as far back as the 19th c. in some cases. Reasons for decline or increase in numbers and range are usually well known or theorized by ornithologists (there are a few unsolved mysteries) A less pedestrian look at these details: " Maurice Gibbs in 1879 reports the Cardinal or 'Red Bird' as an "accidental visitor"

Artwork: Full sized color plates = full page layouts featuring the male and female set amongst their preferred habitats or a vegetaional sample. A Bobolink chortles in his mellow hay field, The Towhees scratch leaves under the brambles and the Great Gray Owl is caught in the act of enchanting his Northern starlit forest.

Includes species extinct and extirpated as well as all species that have visited the State at least once on record. As an example, a McCown's Longspur is listed as a Michigan bird, a species that rarely if ever seen anywhere beyond it's breeding range in the Upper Midwest, (Colorado to Alberta), yet a verified record exists at Whitefish Point - Chippewa County in May, 1981.

What else? If anything it manages to capture the great beauty found in the details of a birds life. (The Great Horned owl female sits through yet another snowstorm on an old heron nest to keep her two eggs warm in the late winter incubation period.)

SB

"The Birds of Michigan" is more than an oversize picture book. It's a treasure. The 200 species of birds that nest in Michigan are depicted in original, full color paintings by Michigan artists, and the detailed text on over 400 birds that have been seen in the state is compulsive reading. The species accounts were written by some of the state's leading ornithologist-naturalists, including their own field observations, and I learned something new about my favorite birds on almost every page. Originally, I'd checked "The Birds of Michigan" out of the library, but once I'd read it, I had to buy a copy of my own.

The careful observations and the level of detail about each species sets a standard none of the field guides can match:

* The earliest published spring arrival date for Chimney Swifts in Detroit is 04/05/1981.
* Belted Kingfishers excavate nesting burrows in river banks, usually taking a week to dig a tunnel three to six feet long.
* Forest regeneration and winter feeding stations have extended the range of the Red-Bellied Woodpecker to the Northern Lower Peninsula.
* I'm glad I'm not the only birder in Michigan who misidentifies the Pine Warbler for a Chipping or Swamp Sparrow!

My heart-felt thanks to the artists, ornithologists, editors, and sponsors of this book: Sarett Nature Center; Kalamazoo Nature Center; and First of America Bank. It must have very expensive to produce, but the results are worth every penny spent. My only suggestion for the next edition would be the inclusion of a CD of Michigan birdsongs.

In case you're not aware, Tom Vezo is one of the best bird photographers in the United States, and most likely the world. Right off the bat, that should set your expectations when you flip through this book. Quite simply, some of the images are truly amazing and you'll be wondering how Tom was able to "pull off" some of these shots.

If you have an interest in bird photography, more toward the serious side, I would strongly recommend that you purchase this book and study the pictures carefully. You'll immediately get a feel for what it takes to capture a wonderful image, although most people will probably never get even a quarter of the amazing shots contained in the book, and that's okay since Tom has dedicated his life to this stuff.

If you enjoy looking at amazing pictures of some of the birds of prey, like Bald Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, etc., then I'd also highly recommend this book. It will serve as a wonderful coffee table book given its oversized nature (roughly 9 inches X 10 inches).

Not only will the book delight you with wonderful photographs, but the accompanying text that describes the particular bird is very educational and easy to read.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stunning images of birds of prey.

This is a great book of bird photographs. There are many spectacular, and some astounding, pictures of the raptors. That Vezo was able to get so close to birds catching their prey; eating their prey; with their young; and feeding their prey to their young, is beyond my imagination. The title page shows a kestrel perched atop a cactus with a lizard in its claw; the next page a prairie falcon crying defiance over a just-killed dove in an arid western landscape, and the book goes on from there. Two to four pages are devoted to each bird. But this is not a birding guide. This is a book of photographs.

This is not to suggest that every photograph is a wonderful shot. There are many record shots of hawks gliding against a blue sky. While these are not as impressive as most of the pictures, I suppose they were necessary for a book dedicated to presenting views of all of the avian raptors of the American West.

One of the questions that this book raised for me is whether these photographs were art. There is certainly not the well-developed sense of line and color that the great bird photographer Arthur Morris presents in his pictures. But looking at Morris' work, I also notice that none of his raptor pictures are as arty (no pun intended) as his other work. Vezo has set himself a difficult task. These birds are handsome, not pretty, and their chicks are sometimes downright ugly. Most of them seem to be glaring at us with hostility. They don't have long sinuous necks whose curves can be emphasized. And yet as I looked at a picture of a perched zone-tailed hawk, against the blue western sky, with its tail feathers displayed, I certainly felt a sense of admiration for these birds, which appear to be so much more in control of their world than we mere human beings.

A brief narrative by Glinski accompanies each set of pictures of a particular species. The writing is romanticized and filled with varying amounts of information on the birds. No one would ever buy this book for the text, although it seems customary to provide this sort of thing. Instead what they would want is the striking pictures, and anyone looking at them will not be disappointed.

Vezo does it again. No one captures the essence of the bird on film as does Tom Vezo. If you've never seen a bird in the wild, look at Vezo's pictures and you'll feel like you're there.

No more sifting through field guides containing hundreds of birds you will never see around here. The authors of this book have limited their scope to the birds of this region. Many helpful illustrations and charts help a beginner with identification. I plan to use this book to assist Boy Scouts with their Bird Studies Merit Badge

This in an excellent book for the birds in this area. My 5 year old can identify all the birds in our backyard and can easily look up the new birds that come around. A must for parents who have children and birdfeeders.

Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound is our most used identification source. We are beginners, and get confused with tomes which identify every bird in North America. This little book brings us the instant joy of identifying our flying guests while they are still at the feeder or bath. We appear to be "experts" to our house guests who marvel at the variety of birds visiting our yard.

I recommend this book to everyone going to see birds in my country. It provides accurate information on distribution, status and densities of the 394 species recorded in the Czech Republic. It describes in detail all of the important bird areas and best birdwatching sites in the country. According to a recent catalogue (April-September 2001) it is one of the best-selling titles at NHBS (UK). Jan, zoologist

Although I am not traveling to the Czech Republic, I purchased Kren's book Birds of the Czech Republic. This book provides vast amount of data on breeding and winter densities previously unavailable from this central European country. Also valuable data on numbers of breeding birds during the past 20 years. Juan, ornithologists

This is a wonderful book on birds of my country. It summarizes the most current information on status and distribution of 394 species recorded in the Czech Republic. Everyone who plans a trip to the Czech Republic should have a copy.

Josef Chytil Chairman Czech Rarities Committee

Steve Hilty does a wonderful job of translating the results of published scientific papers into the language of the curious layman without compromising the fidelity of the original research. With a strong academic background, coupled with many years of field experience and a formidable talent for communication, he successfully transmits the joy of the natural historian and the excitement of the pioneering ornithologist.

The book consists of twenty essays on the ecology, behavioural ecology, biogeography and evolution of Neotropical birds, each based on three or four seminal scientific papers. The topics covered include flocking behaviour, species diversity, intra-tropical migration, seasonality, song, hummingbird foraging ecology, seed dispersal and much more. Many of the topics arose as answers to the questions posed to the author by fellow travellers, so they address a host of the main questions the curious naturalist will ask. The examples and original research come from all parts of the New World tropics making this book of direct relevance to those travelling anywhere in Latin America. Specific sites mentioned range from La Selva in northeastern Costa Rica to Manu in Amazonian Peru, and from Panama's Barro Colorado Island to the Oilbird Cave in eastern Venezuela. Species like the Yellow-rumped Cacique and Oilbird and key Neotropical groups like the Vultures, Hummingbirds, Antbirds, Tyrant Flycatchers, Manakins and Cotingas are treated in detail.

In sum, a great introduction to the biology and natural history of American tropical birds for those who are new to the region and a fascinating companion for tropical veterans. Whether your interest is birding, natural history or simply enriching your tropical travels, this book should be on your shelves - or, better still, in your backpack.

It is a shame that this book is out of print, because as more birders discover the wealth and happy confusion of birding in the tropics this book would find a ready audience. Birders who take their first trips to Central or South America step into an alien world, where the rules of the temperate zone do not apply.

Hilty's essays draw upon many years as a birding tour guide, kind of a "frequently asked questions" collection. He discusses answers to questions such as: Why do birds in the tropics migrate? Why are tropical birds often so colorful yet so hard to see? Why are tropical mixed flocks so large and varied (up to 50 or more species in a single foraging flock), and how can so many birds forage together? In the course of the essays, Hilty also provides a great deal of insight into tropical ecology. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the tropics in general, and tropical birding in particular.

One might guess by the title of Steven Hilty's book _Birds of Tropical America_ that he has written an informative though dry field guide, one that lists a number of birds of Central and South America but is not really a book to sit down and read. In fact, Hilty has written an engaging and extremely interesting natural history work covering many aspects of neotropical bird behavior, breeding, and evolution and is one of the finest popular science books I have read in a while.

The book is organized into twenty different chapters, several illustrated with black and white drawings by artist Mimi Hoppe Wolf, and includes an extensive bibliography. Roughly half of the chapters deal with aspects of neotropical avian behavior and physiology that are applicable to most if not all of the region's birds, while the remainder deals with specific types of birds, such as antbirds, hummingbirds, and vultures. The focus is largely on birds of rainforests but Hilty also discusses birds of mountains, grasslands, and in one interesting chapter, islands of the Amazon River.

The first few chapters tackle common questions asked about tropical American birds, questions Hilty has encountered over his years as not only a researcher but as a leader of birding tours in Central and South America. For instance, why are so many tropical rainforest birds so spottily distributed when there appears to be many hundreds of square miles of suitable habitat? Hitly wrote that distribution patchiness is a basic structural component of tropical rainforests; in an area that might contain up to 500 bird species, a particular acre or so of forest will only contain 100 to 200 species. One answer to this question is the existence of microhabitats, areas perhaps not obvious to naturalists recently arrived from temperate latitudes, but quite obvious to the local fauna. Some birds are found only along the edges of tree fall openings, while others that live in the canopy avoid areas where the canopy is discontinuous with tree fall openings. Birds might be rare because of their place on the food chain (harpy eagles occur generally at low densities though might be widespread throughout neotropical rainforests), of the lower population densities of tropical birds (the populations of the most common Peruvian rainforests birds are one-tenth that of those in temperate forests), the secretive nature of many understory rainforest birds (making them appear rare), and the large territories of birds (when compared to temperate species). A later chapter adds additional information; Hilty noted the work of Jurgen Haffer, who proposed that during the Pleistocene epoch the rainforests of South America at times contracted into isolated units he called refugia and that this repeated forest breakup increased speciation and helped produce many often small and localized ranges of birds in South America. Another theory, proposed by among others biologist Angelo Capparella, noted the importance of the major rivers of the Amazon Basin, which fragment the ranges of many widespread species and can act as barriers to gene flow; in a later chapter, Hilty noted how big a barrier the river can be, at one spot in Colombia, nearly 2,000 miles from the mouth of the Amazon River, the river banks are nearly five miles apart, a huge barrier to many tropical species that scarcely like crossing even forest trails.

Interestingly, many tropical birds migrate. No, not the famous temperate-to-tropics-and-back-again migrations, but migrations within the tropics, often quiet migrations that only involve some species and an aspect of the neotropics that took researchers many years to discover. These are short-distance migrations, perhaps a few miles or a few hundred miles. The quetzal and the bellbird for instance are fruit-eaters that breed in mountain cloud forests during the drier months of the year, but migrate downslope during the rainy season in search of drier conditions and more fruit. Even lowland forest species migrate to seek concentrations of fruiting trees, while others migrate to take advantage of the short-lived and unpredictable seed crops of bamboo, or in areas south of the Amazon Basin, are fire-followers, seeking out recently burned grasslands for breeding.

In a chapter on why there are so many more species in the tropics than in temperate areas Hilty noted the many niches unique to the tropics, for example antbirds, follow the swarms of raiding army ants, which flush small prey for them to eat, while other birds follow monkeys or the large peccary herds for the same reason (the latter of which are followed by the nimble, roadrunner-like ground-cuckoos).

Hilty discussed hummingbirds in two chapters, noting not only the many different hummingbird niches (some are nectar thieves, poking holes on the outside of flowers to get nectar, not aiding the plant in pollination one bit, others are territorial, while still others forage over large areas) but that they even have different niches at different altitudes (wing length and body weight have a huge influence in the type of flight and behavior a hummingbird is capable of and as higher altitudes have less dense air and produce less lift, some species have different ecological niches at different altitudes).

A number of chapters focused or dealt with breeding behavior. One interesting discussion analyzed why males might cluster together in lek assemblages when they are so extremely competitive. The "hotspot" theory of Jack Bradbury argued that leks form in areas where females forage widely for food and the males have a good opportunity to catch the attention of these wide-ranging females, while the "hotshot" theory of Bruce Beeler and Mercedes Foster argues that the success of a few dominant males attracts the attention of less successful males, who bide their time and try to move up the hierarchy.

Other interesting topics include the flycatchers (part of a group of birds called suboscines) which have been among the few animal groups to colonize northwards with the appearance of the Panamanian landbridge and the influence of environment on song (different terrains affect song propagation in different ways).

Hundreds of color photos, illustrations, and diagrams pack BIRDS: A VISUAL GUIDE, making it an eye-catching encyclopedic reference for any interested in birds of the world. Almost 10,000 species are featured in a survey written by a professor of biology. Chapters cover all the natural history basics, from flight and nesting habits to biology and behavior. Any interested in birds - particularly the general-interest lending library seeking suitable display books with eye-catching covers and presentations - will want this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is a beautiful book that transcends a great coffee table book by virtue of its clear and detailed text. The charts and descriptions are ultimately as engrossing as the photographs, and the photographs are among the best I've ever seen. This makes a great gift for anyone you know who loves birds and birding.

This is a delightful book just published in time for the Holiday Season. My first impression was that the enormous collection of beautiful, well-chosen pictures might make it a candidate for a "coffee table" picture book for guests but on reading, it was apparent that it also could be used as a textbook for "Birds-101" offering a very broad range of information carefully selected from thoughtful data collected and evaluated over a lifetime of first-hand scientific research on birds by a true professional that loves her subject. (It shines through!) This book will make a great Holiday gift for my bird-loving friends!

I met Anne at a CT Authors and Publishers meeting where she was the guest speaker. She kept us enthralled with her tales and adventures in her journey to be published after she had written this book. The journey never stops. I found it very inspiring to see someone have both the courage and support to take off on a cross country journey and then write about it. My ownself, I have fictionalized my experiences in "Forever Retro Blues." I am in awe of anyone who can put themselves out there like Anne did. It's a spiritual quest in addition to the physical one of finding herself in mid-life. Well done, Anne, well done.

As an international skydiving champion, Anne Batterson was someone I admired when I began jumping in 1962. She went on to become a flight instructor and charter pilot. She understands flight and is fascinated by all who fly.

Batterson describes her following of a fall bird migration with flashbacks to her earlier adventures. I loved reading about her skydiving in the early days.

She relates the need to be alone from time to time.

A good writer with a large and varied vocabulary, she crafts a good read.

As an author, publisher and skydiver, I found this book fascinating and fun to read.

Dan Poynter, ParaPublishing.com

This book chronicles Anne Batterson's solo road trip at the age of 56 to confront midlife while following the fall bird migration. Overall the book is well written but just never seems to go anywhere. There are moments of soul baring but for the most part this reader found the book superficial. With so many adventures to her credit entailing more risk than most of us dare, it is sad that this author didn't risk sharing more of herself.

A beautiful, subtle, completely absorbing story that will stir the reader's own internal wild bird. It was such a privilege to share Ms. Batterson's journey. Hard to believe this is her first book and can't wait to read more from her.

My two year old daughter loves to be read to and this book is one of her new favorites. Its very short so it was easy for her to memorize and now she reads it to herself, but its also good for short attention spans. I like it because it is a little different. Its about a blue bird building its nest and with each turn of the page a new piece of yarn comes through the pages until the nest is built. On the last page there is a big pop up revealing the new baby birdlings. This book is truely adorable.

My son & I love this book!! It's a sweet story with wonderful illustrations, but the best part is seeing the nest building with each turn of the page...enough to intrigue any small child!! The surprise at the end really seals the deal...this is a must have for any child's book collection!

The book is about building a nest. Each page has a fuzzy brown string that appears. One string for the first page, 2 strings, 3 strings and so on, until the bird has built her nest. A lot like The Rainbow book, which adds a colored ribbon at each turn of the page. It is fun for the kids to see the progress of the nest. Cute!

A very pretty book, wonderful illustrations and a very charming tale. I would say for any age. And learning about Chinese traditions is a big plus.

A really fine fairytale set in Hong Kong in which children of the land learn to accept children who are different from them. This is a very readable tale for children, probably from 7 to 12, depending on which country, etc., and the moral is excellent. The author's details on the boat people "fisherfolk" are often excellent and really bring the story to life. Both the writing and the theme are excellent.

Well written and beautifully illustrated tale for children set in southern China. The tale ends on a poignant note but along the way we learn about the ways of the Chinese fishing community and how they have to adapt to present conditions. A very well done fairytale.

Amy Lin

These sets contain 10 books that each tell a very short story with a funny ending through repetition. Illustrations are done well, characters are memorable. Child feels a sense of accomplishment as the set contains a chart with stickers for each book completed, a certificate of completion and a "BLANK" book for the child to author/illustrate their own book. Set also contains a parent guide. Our son loves these books... highly motivated him into a reader. He is the top reader in his kindergarten class and now has the love of books/reading that will pull him along through his education at a heightened pace.

I bought these books for my grandson who is in Kindergarten. After changing schools mid-year he was slow to grasp reading. I thought these books might be just his level and because the adult reads a summery of the story first he has found books he can read. The confidence these books gave him to continue was amazing. He now has gone one to slightly harder books but he still loves these.

We have purchased other Brand New Readers sets, and have never been disappointed yet. Our kids (5 1/2 year old son and almost 3 year old daughter) love the simple stories and illustrations, and while our son is sounding out the words, his little sister is enthusiastically shouting out the story based on the picture clues and memorization. They both feel a huge sense of accomplishement when they read to us, and we all love the humor used in the stories. Move over Dick and Jane; Brand New Readers make learning how to read fun!