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Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America
by Rick Wright

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Sparrows are as complicated as they are common. This is an essential guide to identifying 76 kinds, along with a fascinating history of human interactions with them.

What exactly is a sparrow? All birders, and many non-birders, have essentially the same mental image of a pelican, a duck, or a flamingo, and a guide dedicated to waxwings or kingfishers would need nothing more than a sketch and a single sentence to satisfactorily identify its subject. Sparrows are harder to pin down. This book covers the birds of the family Passerellidae, which includes towhees, juncos, and dozens of other not necessarily small and not necessarily brown birds.

Birds have a human history, too, beginning with their significance to native cultures and continuing through their discovery by science, their taxonomic fortunes and misfortunes, and their prospects for survival in a world with ever less space for wild creatures. This book includes not just facts and measurements, but stories of the birds’ entanglement with human history.

Despite the publisher’s claim above, this isn’t an identification guide (though it does have some information on ID), but rather a family natural history guide. However much this may look like the previous entries in this excellent series, though, once you start reading it you will find that it is unlike any other family reference guide. Instead of sticking with just the birds’ natural history, it deals greatly with their history with people.

Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America
by Rick Wright
Hardcover; 448 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; March 19, 2019
ISBN: 9780547973166
$35.00

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

Taking Flight (The Nature Club Book 1)
by Rachel Mazur

From Wild Bear Press:

Izzy’s family is moving to a big city at the end of the summer, and she is filled with anxiety. She’ll start fifth grade at a new school where she doesn’t know anyone. Meanwhile, a bird Izzy names “Señor Wilson” also faces a big move. He’ll soon migrate south for the winter—a journey full of peril. As Izzy’s adventure unfolds in parallel with Señor Wilson’s, it seems Izzy’s worst fears may come true. It’s only by finding her inner confidence—with a little help from her friends in The Nature Club—that Izzy can find her wings and fly.

I just found the next book for my daughter.

Taking Flight (The Nature Club Book 1)
by Rachel Mazur
Paperback; 136 pages
Wild Bear Press; January 27, 2019
ISBN: 9781732915602
$6.99

Common & Spotted Sandpipers
by Phil Holland

From Whittles Publishing:

This wonderful book describes the fascinating lives of the two most ubiquitous shorebirds in the world. Between them the Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) and Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularia) make use of a large part of the world’s terrestrial habitat and they exhibit many of the exciting features of shorebirds.

As the birds arrive on the breeding ground, their displays are spectacular and their sounds are an exciting announcement of springtime. Unusually, the Spotted Sandpiper appears to be the only bird where the female is the territory holder, laying successive clutches of eggs for different males to care for, while the male of the Common Sandpiper holds the territory, has one mate, and shares most duties.

They stay on the breeding grounds only as long as is essential to reproduce before making a migration southwards to a broad range of non-breeding homes in Central and South America, Africa, India, and eastwards to Australia with vagrants reaching as far as Tristan da Cunha and New Zealand. The Common Sandpiper has also been recorded breeding in East Africa and wintering in Scotland so their flexibility is amazing.

The author has spent over 40 years studying the lives of these fantastic birds and provides a wealth of information including their breeding behaviour, migrations, distribution, food sources, habitats and their history from the present back to 36 million years ago.

This beautiful book will hopefully stimulate others to watch these worldwide birds more appreciatively and add to our knowledge.

A good introduction to Common and Spotted Sandpipers, with the former getting a little bit more attention. In-depth, yet readable, this would be perfect for anyone wanting to know these birds better than the usual accounts, like The Birds of the Western Palearctic or Birds of North America, allow.

Common & Spotted Sandpipers
by Phil Holland
Paperback; 176 pages
Whittles Publishing; November 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781849953610
$24.95

A quick perusal through the upcoming books for 2019 yielded some very interesting titles. Here are the ones that I’m looking forward to the most. But first, a couple quick observations:

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is killing it this year!
• It seems there’s always one day on which several good books are coming. That day this year is April 2.

• How to Know the Birds: The Art and Adventure of Birding
  by Ted Floyd
  March 12, 2019; National Geographic

  I can’t think of anyone better to write a “friendly, relatable book [that] is a celebration of the art, science, and delights of bird-watching.”

• Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America
  by Rick Wright
  March 19, 2019; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  This guide has everything going for it: a wonderful subject, part of a so-far impressive series, and a great author. I can’t wait to see what Wright has for us.

• Neighborhood Hawks: A Year Following Wild Birds
  by John Lane
  April 1, 2019; University of Georgia Press

  I don’t know if it’s because we have them in our neighborhood, but a year following Red-shouldered Hawks sounds really interesting.

• Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Western North America
  by Nathan Pieplow
  April 2, 2019; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Westerners will now have their own edition of this innovative guide.

• A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration
  by Kenn Kaufman
  April 2, 2019; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  A new book from Kenn Kaufman!!!!!!

• The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America
  by Matt Kracht
  April 2, 2019; Chronicle Books

  Well, this certainly looks like an interesting field guide :).

• Bringing Back the Birds: Exploring Migration and Preserving Birdscapes throughout the Americas
  by American Bird Conservancy, photographs by Owen Deutsch
  May 1, 2019; Braided River

  The American Bird Conservancy does some great work. Looks like that will be celebrated in this volume, along with, hopefully, some impressive pictures.

• Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay
  by Julie Zickefoose
  September 10, 2019; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  If you’ve ever read a book by Julie Zickefoose, you know what a treat this book is bound to be. And if not, you have no idea what you’re missing.

This list is always hard to come up with. What to include? 2018 saw the publication of several field guides and family ID guides, but only one of the ones I saw really stood out enough for me to include here. (I haven’t spent enough time with Pete Dunne and Keven Karlson’s Gulls Simplified yet to get a good feel for it.) But I had no trouble at all in picking out my absolute favorite book of the year:

• The Ascent of Birds: How Modern Science is Revealing their Story
  by John Reilly

  If you would have told me that a book on bird evolution – dealing extensively with concepts such as neoteny, palaeognaths, and vicariance – would make a fascinating, engaging – entertaining, even – read, I would have wondered just how many code 6 birds you had on your list. But Reilly pulls it off. The key is the last word in the subtitle – story. This is more narrative than textbook. He tells the stories of selected bird families, using each to highlight key concepts, building up an understanding of the origin of birds. It’s so well done that I have no problem recommending it to anyone who enjoys learning about birds, as well as putting it on the top of this list.

• The Splendor of Birds: Art and Photographs From National Geographic
  by Catherine Herbert Howell and National Geographic

  A visual feast. This large, coffee-table book presents photographs and artwork from National Geographic’s magazine and books from their beginning until now. I’ve seen many collections of bird art, and this is one of the best. These images are technically sound and aesthetically beautiful, as you would expect. But they are also interesting – they tell a story, make you think, or simply present a perspective that you’ve never seen before.

• The Wall of Birds: One Planet, 243 Families, 375 Million Years
  by Jane Kim, with Thayer Walker

  The Wall of Birds is a huge, ambitious mural adorning some interior walls at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This book presents, both in detail and in whole, the artwork by Jane Kim. But it is much more than that. The artist provides insight into the process, from ideation and species selection through the practicalities of putting them on the wall. The mural is a celebration of the diversity and evolution of birds, so we also get some notes on a few of the more interesting family representatives. Surprisingly, I was much more impressed by the words here than the images. The artwork in the book is nice, but I have a feeling that needs to be seen in person. The text, however, whether it’s discussing the artistic process, a particular bird, or the ideas behind the mural, is fascinating. Whether you’ve seen this mural in person or not (I’m in the latter category, but after reading this book I plan on rectifying that some day), this book is highly recommended to fans of art, birds, or, especially, both.

• Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rican, and Panama
  by Andrew C. Vallely and Dale Dyer

  This is just a really well-done field guide. The format is just right – a book slightly larger than could be comfortably carried in the field, but allowing for larger illustrations on less-crowded plates. The artwork is also really nice. There are many other guides that cover portions of this territory, and you may also want one of them with you. But I can’t imagine anyone birding this area that wouldn’t want want this guide with them.

• Warblers & Woodpeckers: A Father-Son Big Year of Birding
  by Sneed B. Collard III

  I can’t resist a good big year book, and this is a good one, if different from most such books. This duo doesn’t see a record number of species, actually not a great many at all by big year narrative standards, but that wasn’t the point. This is a warm, amusing, feel-good story.

If I didn’t include your favorite(s), I would love to hear about it in the comments. Finally, here are a few other best-of lists:

• GrrlScientest for Forbes
• Birdbooker
• Donna Schulman on the American Birding podcast

Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rican, and Panama
by Andrew C. Vallely and Dale Dyer

From Princeton University Press:

Birds of Central America is the first comprehensive field guide to the avifauna of the entire region, including Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Handy and compact, the book presents text and illustrations for nearly 1,200 resident and migrant species, and information on all rare vagrants. Two hundred sixty detailed plates on convenient facing-page spreads depict differing ages and sexes for each species, with a special focus on geographic variation. The guide also contains up-to-date range maps and concise notes on distribution, habitat, behavior, and voice. An introduction provides a brief overview of the region’s landscape, climate, and biogeography.

The culmination of more than a decade of research and field experience, Birds of Central America is an indispensable resource for all those interested in the bird life of this part of the world.

• Detailed information on the entire avifauna of Central America
• 260 beautiful color plates
• Range maps, text, and illustrations presented on convenient facing-page spreads
• Up-to-date notes on distribution supported by an extensive bibliography
• Special focus on geographic variation of bird species

Covering the entirety of Central America, this field guide isn’t small or light (think Sibley size, roughly). But wow, this is some sort of guide and reference. It may not be a guide to take into the field, but it’s definitely one to make room for in your carry-on. The art is wonderful (although some plates seem a little light, or washed out), it shows a great amount of variation, and has tons of information.

Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rican, and Panama
by Andrew C. Vallely and Dale Dyer
Flexicover; 584 pages
Princeton University Press; October 16, 2018
ISBN: 9780691138022
$49.50

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

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