Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds

What a wondrous book! My husband loved it, and passed it on to me, even though I'm not a birder as he is. Rare Encounters is a seamless blend of biology, memoir, humor, and truly elegant writing, a book that awakens and deepens your relationship to the natural world (not just birds!) in everyday life. I bought several copies to keep on hand as gifts. This is a book to keep on your bedside table, to read and re-read.

A slim volume of essays on the author's experiences with various common bird species. Personable writing and a surprising amount of information, some of which is saddening (people lynch owls??) but most of which is intriguing and perhaps of more interest to readers, at least in North America, because it focuses on common species that many people encounter regularly. The essays are generally personal memoirs, and the type and amount of information on the birds varies -- this isn't a scientific study or a guide to identification but an engaging nature writing read.

In the final chapter of this sincere work, Lyanda Lynn Haupt slips in a quotation from Stephen Kellert that suggests her own aim in writing: "People will need to rekindle their capacity for experiencing wonder, inspiration, and joy from contact with the natural world". Such delighted sentiment permeates the work as a whole. Haupt celebrates the varied reactions she and her friends and family have to a set of birds which are not the celebrities of the avian world: starlings, crows, cormorants. Her vignettes combine her knowledge of birds, of the birdwatching community, and her personal experiences. Her first chapter ends by saying, "Birds will give you a window, if you allow them", and this book looks at the moment when the shutters swing open. Her emphasis on human reaction to birds plays to her strengths as a writer. Some of her finest lines encapsulate the meaning of a visual impression while partially eliding the image itself: she writes of the snowy owl, after referring to the way every feature of its design is taken to an extreme (e.g., "impossibly sharp talons"), "They are all we can imagine them to be." Haupt's power and interest is less in physical description (although there are some vividly amusing analogies: the "scrunched" face of a Vaux's Swift makes the species "a little avian Pekinese"). Instead, she concentrates on the kinds of emotion and thought which any individual bird encounter can touch off for a watcher. The limits of human understanding-and the charms of those limits-plays into a larger theme of the book. Haupt declares her intent to steer a course between the Scylla of scientific arcana and cold observation and the Charybdis of "response-ists" who attempt to experience and enjoy a world untainted by human names and knowledge. At times she can drift to one side or the other-either in the form of occasionally rote descriptions of nesting habits or overly fanciful evocations of fairies-and the relative success of the passages where the two impulses are balanced prove her own point. She conveys her delight in the way the Varied Thrush produces its distinct song as gracefully as she does her experience of the song itself. Ultimately, this book depends on an audience looking to evoke a joy previously experienced, to explore a familiar enchantment and comprehend it better. Haupt, as one who has worked to induce that joy in others, has an intelligent grasp of its workings and vagaries. Her book warmly invites others to share in her insights and, through them, re-experience their own delights.

As an amateur birder, I will never look at birds (ordinary and otherwise) in the same way again. Wonderfully written. Can't wait for the next one.I checked this book out of the library - but will be purchasing it for myself and my darling daughter who got me into birding.

As someone who enjoys watching and identifying birds, this book naturally caught my interest. Once reading, I couldn't wait to get to the next essay! The book gives more meaning to my encounters with ALL birds. And just when one might be tempted to say or think "It's only a silly Starling (or Crow, or Sparrow, etc.)," amazing and wondrously described details about these birds' history, biology, taxonomy, behavior, or physiology will not only prompt one to seek out ordinary birds, but experience them on a different level. It has been similar to studying music, and subsequently gaining an appreciation for it that only those who "know" can understand. It's funny, incredibly informative, and a perfect read for anyone interested in the feathered creatures that are right out in the open with us every day. Enthusiastically recommended!