Book Birding and A Cautionary Tale
When I was three or four years of age my first birding books were coloring books of birds. I envied the older girls who colored the forms so neatly within the lines. My colors roamed freely and carelessly across the bodies of the birds often streaking the trees with the colors of orioles and cardinals. My favorite bird of them all was the ivory billed woodpecker. Grandly colored in red, white and black my coloring book ivory billed stired my young imagination more than any other bird. So disappointed was I to learn in later years that the ivory billed was thought to be extinct. And so happy to hear this last spring the news of new sightings of it in Arkansas.
There are many books for birders who have grown beyond the coloring book phase of birding. I want to recommend highly you read the books of Alexander F. Skutch and Bernd Heinrich; not field guides, but beautifully written books about the lives of birds and other aspects of nature written by two men who combine their scientific inquiries with an abiding love of nature. I am especially fond of Skutch's writting style. Skutch's Birds Asleep, The Mind of Birds, Origins Natures Beauty and A Naturalist in Costa Rica are gems. A prolific writer he has written many other worthy
books. Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven is an award winning book. As we slip into fall I see a light cover of new snow on the volcanic Cascade peaks here. Heinrich' book Winter World the ingenuity of animal survival is an absolute must have for your nature library. Put any of these books on your Christmas list.
And now for a cautionary lesson. Many garden stores and gardening mail order catalogs sell plastic netting to keep birds off of berry plants and to keep deer away from garden plants. The netting becomes a death trap for our bird friends as they get tangled in the netting. We put up some netting to keep the deer away from plants the deer were especially fond of eating. A neighbor walking along the logging road by our property found a sharp shinned hawk tangled in our netting. He released it unharmed. My wife found several small birds, not so lucky, injured or dead in the netting. Our netting came down. If you see such plastic netting sold in stores you might mention the danger to birds the netting poses.
Bill@birdingguide.com
