The Backyard Bird-Lover's Guide

Makes bird watching a delight. I've learned fascinating facts about my backyard species and have given this book to many of my bird loving friends.

This is one of those books that you pick up intending to find a quick answer to a specific question and, before you know what's happened, you've become wrapped up in reading several pages. The book is beautifully done, useful, and very pleasant to read. The first section provides general information about feeding, housing and gardening for the birds. In the second section, we learn about courtship, baby birds, territory, and migration. The third section gives specific data on individual bird species, and finally, a small appendix provides lists of favorite foods, egg identification, and habitat requirements.Here are a few bird facts that I thought were particularly interesting: Mourning Doves mate for life and are excellent parents. - The Kildeer is very unusual because they often make their nests on unpaved driveways which is confusing because the eggs look like small pieces of gravel. - The beautiful Indigo Bunting frequently uses the same nest by just making yearly repairs. - One very unpopular bird is the Brown-Headed Cowbird. They like to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and leave all of the work and rearing to another mother. - The Winter Wren builds several nests which he shows to a possible mate for approval. The female then picks her favorite nest. Unwilling to let the other nests go to waste, he shows the remaining nests to a second female and ends up with two families.If you enjoy feeding the birds, you'll love this book.

This book is a great guide to backyard birding. It's 320 pages long and the last 100 or so pages is an extensive identification chapter featuring full color drawings of each bird, a description of its range and a lengthy description of its eating habits, courtship, housing and habitat preferences. The Appendix is one of the most useful parts of the book - it includes charts listing each bird's egg color and size, housing each bird will accept, migration patterns and food preferences for the birds. This book ensures you will get the birds you want, when you want - it even tells which birds may interbreed and how to avoid quarreling among feisty songbirds. It includes low-budget solutions to most of the "high-cost" bird expenses, and explains in great detail the proper storage of food. This book is undoubtedly the best resource birders have for attracting yard birds. Although the females in each species could be shown in better detail - only in the cases in which the sexes are drastically different are the females shown, - it is still an excellent resource from experienced "backyard birders". If you plan on attracting, feeding and nesting birds, get this book. Your success is assured.

Fun and exciting - this book will show you the 3 essentials your yard needs to become a favorite with as wide a variety of birds that is possible for your area. I especially liked it's format, simple and easy to follow, it takes you through planning/planting, feeding stations, the best food for each bird - and you're ready to sit back and enjoy your backyard habitat! An updated replacement for my old standby book, The Backyard Bird Watcher by George Harrison.