The Owl and the Woodpecker (Paul Bannick)

Bird books seem to my biggest new indulgence this year. No fewer than seven of them have followed me home (so far) in the last 12 months. [I've reviewed several here; search my blog for "birds" to retrieve them.] As a group, these books have been a delight. Birders and the [...]

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Charles Harper’s Birds & Words (Charley Harper)

Charles Harper’s Birds & Words [LibraryThing / WorldCat] is a collection of about five dozen bird prints originally published by the Ford Motor Company in the 1950s and reprinted in a very limited edition twenty years later. Now, a year after Harper’s death, his paintings are gathered together again.
Working in a self-described “minimal realism” [...]

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To See Every Bird on Earth (Dan Koeppel)

Black-capped chickadees own the feeders in my back yard this time of year, but nuthatches, finches, and siskins stop by, too. Through the kitchen window over the course of the year, I’ve seen four kinds of woodpeckers, sapsuckers and flickers [below], as well as robins, hummingbirds, starlings, and others. The back yard is a diverse [...]

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Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Headaches? (Mike O’Connor)

Taking my cue from the title, I imagined Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get Headaches? [LibraryThing / WorldCat] to be on of those 1001 questions answered sorts of books. You know the type: modestly informative but sleep-inducing. Mike O’Connor’s book was nothing of the sort. It is a collection of questions and answers, but O’Connor’s informal personality [...]

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Good Birders Don’t Wear White (Lisa White)

Editor Lisa White has compiled a decent collection of short essays by leading birders on a wide range of topics. These are articles that will overwhelm a casual birder with extreme detail. They are simple, often humorous takes on making the best of whatever birding experiences you choose to have, starting with the mix of [...]

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