A beloved pet bird of mine died today, plus February is National Feed the Birds month, so I’m going to write on my favorite books on birds.
Flyaway: How a Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings by Suzie Gilbert was exhilarating and sometimes sad. Gilbert rehabs injured wild birds; it’s a memoir of some of her time doing so.
It’s grueling, never-ending work, and guess who’s to blame? We are: 95% of the injuries suffered by wildlife are the direct result of human activity: pesticides, poisons, outdoor cats, cars, etc. Due to her love of birds and some naivete (as she is the first to admit), she decided she could rehab wild birds at home and maintain a decent work/life balance (i.e, not neglect her young children). She looks back laughing on her original “decision” to take only adult songbirds who needed a little extra rehabbing before they were released. It’s like opening an Emergency Room in a hospital and saying you’ll only take people with light sprains.
Gilbert found that the reality of bird rehabbing was blood, sweat, and tears: her sweat, and lots of it. She had flight cages built at her home, and she got the proper licensing (state and federal). This involved a lot of studying and heavy reliance on the wisdom and patience of other rehabbers. She quickly learned that chaos theory is the one ongoing constant of wildlife rehabilitation. Her dream of taking “just adult songbirds” fell to the wayside quickly, and she found that raptors (hawks, etc.) needed her, as did baby songbirds (feed them every hour, and don’t stop), a duck, a herring gull … you get the picture. I loved this memoir and I now look at certain species of birds in a new light.
Jane Yolen’s Birds of a Feather (photographs by Jason Stemple) is a gorgeous, thoughtful book of poems about birds. My son has read it several times and really likes it, esp the “Haiku for Cool Kingfisher,” accompanied by a stunning (and kinda funny) photograph of a belted kingfisher. I appreciate how the poem, the photo, and the informational blurb (on the bird) all work in harmony.
Imagine you’re on a busy street in Manhattan and you see a helpless baby bird: what do you do? 
Holly Pericoli, in The True Story of Stellina by Matteo Pericoli, watched the bird for quite a while to see if the mother would return. Sadly, the mother never came back, and so Holly took her home and cared for her and raised her. Stellina (the bird) became a beloved member of the family: well loved and well cared for. Now that I’ve read Suzie GIlbert’s book, I realize that there may have been a violation of certain wildlife protection laws going on here (did they have a permit?), but basically they gave an orphaned bird a good life (and saved her life, too). If you read enough about the plight of birds today, you’re going to need a bunch of “feel good” stories as backup. This is one of them.
For the Birds: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson by Peggy Thomas, illustrated by Laura Jacques is equally cool. It’s a children’s biography, but as an adult, I enjoyed reading it, too. Roger Peterson is most known for his field guides to birds and his writings and illustrations on birds and wildlife. This book explores his childhood: his love of being outdoors, his sense of awe and wonder in the natural world, and the encouragement he received from adults on following his interests. Even at the age of 14, he had the patience and wisdom to wait and wait for just the right time to take a bird’s photograph using his camera and tripod. The illustrations in this are beautiful and it’s a fun read.
To steal Audubon’s slogan: Birds matter.
