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Binge Birding: Twenty Days with Binoculars
by Nancy Grant

From Nancy Grant:

Enjoy the thrill of discovery in this well-paced travel adventure that’s like going birding with a friend. When journalist and field naturalist Nancy Grant packed her SUV with a basket of maps and field guides to head south to explore the Texas Gulf Coast she had a simple plan. Look for birds everywhere. And she found them—more than 150 species—singing, soaring, hunting for food, searching for mates, and raising youngsters. Grant’s easy-going conversational style, with plenty of quirky travel anecdotes, blends in-depth natural history insights with vivid on-the-scene reporting. Grant admits with charming directness her own struggles to memorize field marks and songs, and the satisfaction of getting it right. Birders of all experience levels will enjoy coming along for the ride.

Ever wonder what it’s like to go on an extended, solo birding trip? Nancy Grant describes just such a trip she took to coastal Texas in this book. Interesting and well-written, it should appeal to newer birders.

Binge Birding: Twenty Days with Binoculars
by Nancy Grant
Paperback; 345 pages
Independently published; April 22, 2019
ISBN: 9781092878029
$15.00

Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
by Julie Zickefoose

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

For fans of Wesley the Owl and The Soul of an Octopus, the story of a sick baby bird nursed back to health and into the wild by renowned writer/artist Julie Zickefoose.

When Jemima, a young orphaned blue jay, is brought to wildlife rehabilitator Julie Zickefoose, she is a virtually tailless, palm-sized bundle of gray-blue fluff. But she is starved and very sick. Julie’s constant care brings her around, and as Jemima is raised for eventual release, she takes over the house and the rest of the author’s summer.

Shortly after release, Jemima turns up with a deadly disease. But medicating a free-flying wild bird is a challenge. When the PBS show Nature expresses interest in filming Jemima, Julie must train her to behave on camera, as the bird gets ever wilder. Jemima bonds with a wild jay, stretching her ties with the family. Throughout, Julie grapples with the fallout of Jemima’s illness, studies molt and migration, and does her best to keep Jemima strong and wild. She falls hard for this engaging, feisty and funny bird, a creative muse and source of strength through the author’s own heartbreaking changes.

Emotional and honest, Saving Jemima is a universal story of the communion between a wild creature and the human chosen to raise it.

Reading anything by Julie Zickefoose is a treat, and her new book is no exception.

Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
by Julie Zickefoose
Hardcover; 272 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; September 10, 2019
ISBN: 9781328518958
$25.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

Where to Watch Birds in France
by Jean-Yves Barnagaud, Nidal Issa, and Sebastien Dalloyau

From Pelagic Publishing:

An introduction to France for anyone visiting with birds in mind, from casual birdwatchers checking a bird that flies over the terrace during a family holiday to addict birders who would sell their souls for a dream species or a record-breaking checklist. Some may have just a few spare hours to get their binoculars out between business meetings or museum visits, others will be out in the field for two weeks or more, from sunrise to sunset. The authors wrote this book for all bird lovers, birdwatchers and birders, whatever the duration of their stay, the number of kilometres they are prepared to travel and how they enjoy birds.

With over 400 regularly occurring species, of which 357 normally breed or winter, France has arguably one of the most diverse avifaunas of the whole of Europe, spanning an incredible range from colourful Mediterranean flagship species such as roller, bee-eater or black-winged kite to secretive cold-climate or mountain specialists like three-toed woodpecker and Tengmalm’s owl. The Birdfinder section provides targeted details for 30 species which often rank in the top wish-list of birders visiting France.

Dividing the country into 14 regions, the authors highlight 312 representative sites, chosen for their bird species composition and ease of access. The selected sites enable the reader to see the widest possible species diversity and largest range of local specialities in a reasonable time, while respecting the basic ethical rules obvious to all birdwatchers. Whenever possible, sites are arranged in clusters or itineraries that can be covered in two to three days without hurrying. To supplement the use of the book in the field, all the sites described are geolocated in a file that can be downloaded from the publisher’s website and loaded onto any GPS device.

All you could want in a birdfinding guide, with lots of maps and just the right level of detail, all in a very compact package.

Where to Watch Birds in France
by Jean-Yves Barnagaud, Nidal Issa, and Sebastien Dalloyau
Paperback; 336 pages
Pelagic Publishing; June 30, 2019
ISBN: 9781784271541
$32.99

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America
by Nathan Pieplow

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

A comprehensive field guide that uses an innovative Sound Index to allow readers to quickly identify unfamiliar songs and calls of birds in western North America.

Bird songs and calls are at least as important as visual field marks in identifying birds. Yet short of memorizing each bird’s repertoire, it’s difficult to sort through them all. Now, with the western edition of this groundbreaking book, it’s possible to visually distinguish bird sounds and identify birds using a field-guide format.

At the core of this guide is the spectrogram, a visual graph of sound. With a brief introduction to five key aspects—speed, repetition, pauses, pitch pattern, and tone quality—readers can translate what they hear into visual recognition, without any musical training or auditory memorization.

The Sound Index groups similar songs together, narrowing the identification choices quickly to a brief list of birds that are likely to be confused because of the similarity of their songs. Readers can then turn to the species account for more information and/or listen to the accompanying audio tracks available online.

Identifying birds by sound is arguably the most challenging and important skill in birding. This book makes it vastly easier to master than ever before.

The western edition of this innovative guide is now available (the eastern guide was published in 2017). All of the sounds in the book – “plus thousands more bonus recordings” – are available at petersonbirdsounds.com. It’s a valuable resource even without the book, as it’s a very extensive collection with spectrograms that allow you to see the sounds. But with the book, with its much-needed analysis and ancillary details, it should prove even easier to learn and identify sounds.

Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America
by Nathan Pieplow
Flexi-bound; 648 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; April 2, 2019
ISBN: 9780547905570
$28.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)