I recently purchased THE AUDUBON BACKYARD BIRDWATCHER, as well as WHERE THE BIRDS ARE published by the National Wildlife Federation and BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA from the Smithsonian. All three books have something to recommend them, and if you are an avid bird watcher or want to become one you will want all three. The Audubon book will have the greatest appeal to the backyard bird watcher who has neither the time nor inclination to travel to the wonderful sites listed in the NWF publication. The Audubon book is not exhaustive or even nearly so. For a more complete listing of birds, turn to another Audubon publication or the Smithsonian publication I mentioned above. Audubon offers complete listings of birds by geographic regions in other publications. You'll find only birds adapted to areas inhabited by humans in the AUDUBON BACKYARD BIRDWATCHER -- familiar friends like Robins and Finches, Pine Siskins and Chickadees. Each bird entry contains a photograph of the bird under discussion, sometimes in flight, sometimes posing and sometimes feeding itself or it's young. This book is wonderful for kids and I am using it to teach my grandchildren about birds just as my grandparents taught me!! The book contains sections on bathing, bird calls (including call notes and mimicry), and baby raising, and all are illustrated with many wonderful photos including some amazing shots of babies hatching, babies being fed, and babies launching into independence. Sections on bird pests, bird deaths, and bird rescues explain foiling predators, warning birds about glass windows, and banding and tracking birds. The child exposed to this book will learn someting about birds and life. Probably one of the most informative sections for the new birder or even old birders like me includes suggestions about what to grow in your own backyard to attract the birds. It's not enough to put out seed in a birdfeeder if you want diversity, though the book covers what to use in bird feeders. If you want to see anything other than seed eaters however, you'll have to provide other types of foods including bugs and berries. Usually where you grow berries, you'll have bugs. The book contians sections on hedging, vegetation variety, leaf litter (for cover, food, and nest-building), dust for baths, and water requirements. While the Audubon book isn't a gardening book per se, you'll find more information about building a bird friendly garden in this book than in most gardening books. I recommend the Audubon book as a teaching and instuction tool for the new birders and old birders alike. Oh--my favorite baby picture? -- the short-eared owls. If you don't think owls can come to your back yard guess again. I've had them in my backyard and I live 10 minutes from the White House. I won't tell you want owls eat. You just go right on thinking it's mice.

Before I purchased this book, I struggled to find something that I could refer to quickly when I spotted a bird at my feeder. Not only did this book provide me with basic features such as nesting habits, song descriptions, and typical diets of each bird, it also gave vital information on how to attract these fascinating little guys into your yard through the use of water, food, shelter, & shrubs and flowers. The photos are fantastic as well. I find myself referring to this book constantly, and keep it right by my binoculars.

Bird profiles, behavior guide, nesting, eggs, curious behavior, songs, displays. Ways to attract birds to your backyard no matter what kind of area you live in... landscaping, supplemental feeding, water. The photos are fantastic and are very valuable to the backyard birder. Great book.

If you've ever thought that an endangered species was impossible to save, this book will prove you wrong. Saving Birds is a wonderful book, not only for children, but also for ADULTS. How inspiring to read about such motivated individuals and their creative ways to save endangered birds! Every story takes place in a different country around the world giving us a geography lesson on every page. I hope this book gets passed along not only to bird lovers, but to all nature lovers, and world explorers.

Steve Kress is a great ornithologist and I greatly admire the work he's done in wildlife species and habitat preservation--but this book is not one of his best achievements. Basic and sketchy, at best it might give you a few ideas, but you won't be able to really implement them from this book--you'll have to get much better and more complete references. Look on the audabon web site or other birdwatchers web sites for ideas, and donate the money you save from not buying this book to audabon.

As an avid gardener with an extensive collection of gardening and reference books, this is the most cherished and most consulted of any book in the house. It brings the garden to an interactive level and a site of much learning for adults and children! Inspiring and informative, The Bird Garden also carries the endearing beauty of presentation one would expect with an Audubon Society publication. Wonderful gift for gardener or birder alike. I keep a few copies on hand for birthdays and house-presents. Finally, with enough inspired souls...the birds and butterflies will stand a better chance in the world. Read all about it!

I have used this book in the winter and the spring of 2002, and the results have been more than I could have expected. The book is well written, nicely illustrated, and well organized. If you want to have one reference book on hand, then you would be wise to consider this one.

Although small in size, this book covers all the aspects of the lives of birds. Everything from nesting to migration. There's more to birding than just identification, and this book is a good start for that step beyond. Also has good illustrations. Recommended.

Bird Life was the first book about birds that I bought when I began seriously observing the birds in my neighborhood. I have more sophisticated guides to birds now, but I still refer to Bird Life for interesting bits of information that I just wouldn't find in any field guide. At only 4x6 inches in size and 160 pages, Bird Life looks like it was made to put in a pocket and take into the field. But it isn't really a field guide. It is simply the largest collection of information on the most different aspects of bird behavior in the smallest space. A list of the topics the book addresses will show you what I mean by that: bird behavior, preening, how birds sleep, feeding, food storage, social displays, family life, songs and calls, hearing, flight, navigation, longevity, conservation, attracting birds, feeding birds, and making bird feeders from common household items. None of these topics is covered in an exhaustive manner. Bird Life provides an introduction to each of these subjects. It doesn't help much in identifying birds, but helps you to understand their daily lives. The information is general but includes examples of species that engage in specific behaviors. And there are illustrations of bird behaviors and anatomy. As an introduction to birds, this book is tops!

Highly recommended for anyone who has ever encountered a bird! Really. It is easy to read and full of fascinating facts. You don't have to be a "bird person" to enjoy this book. You only risk discovering that your avian neighbors might be more interesting than you realized. Casual birders will find some intriguing info that they may not have read before. Makes a fun and inexpensive stocking stuffer too!

Not only do I own this book, but also his book True Maine Woodland stories. He was my mother's cousin and both my books are autographed. What most people don't know is Al Martin was also a wonderful artist painting with oils on canvas.

HAND-TAMING WILD BIRDS AT THE FEEDER. By Alfred G. Martin with Photographs and Illustrations by the Author and with Cover Art and Illustrations by John Still. 144 pages. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Alan C. Hood & Company, Inc., 1991 [1963]. ISBN 0-911469-07-9 (pbk).

Alfred Martin was something of an oddity. When he was ten years old he learned how to tame wild birds by trapping songbirds for the English bird trade. Later he found his way to Maine, built a house in the woods, fished, hunted, practised taxidermy, and cultivated the friendship of wild birds. Although he possessed a great fund of knowledge about birds, we learn that no great knowledge is required to teach a wild bird to feed out of our hand. The method Martin employed, and which
will work with many though not all birds, is simplicity itself and is clearly described in his book. What is required, then, is not knowledge but something far more difficult for us moderns - what is required is a shift of attitude, and a great deal of patience.

The intelligence, skills, and abilities of wild creatures are vastly underrated in our modern world. So puffed up are we with arrogance, so obsessed with the illusion that we are at the tip of a mythical 'evolutionary tree', so proud of our technical achievements and contemptuous of life forms which seem to get along without the aid of technology, it has become almost impossible for the average person to accept the fact that wild creatures, far from being wholly other than us, are our fellows. But for Martin birds were not so much animals as persons, and he emphasizes that without a genuine respect for their intelligence and talents, without fully accepting them as our fellows and equals, they in turn will never come to respect and trust us enough to come to our hand.

Martin's book is written in a rather rambling style and contains much else besides his method of hand-taming wild birds. His book is rich in personal anecdote, and in addition to the many good stories about his experiences with numerous species of birds and other animals there is also a great deal of information and practical advice for anyone who may be thinking of setting up a bird-feeding station to attract birds to their backyard. Among the many topics he covers are how to build a birdbath, how to build houses and feeders, how to select appropriate foods, how to care for injured birds, and so on.

Given modern society's strict insistence on the otherness of nature, however, Martin's most important lesson for us is his seemingly outrageous notion that birds are every bit as worthy and deserving of our respect and compassion as are our fellow humans. He assures us that once we begin to see wild birds, not so much as 'animals' but as little people in their own right, it won't be long before we experience the thrill of them landing on our hands to receive the gift of food. But before this can happen it is absolutely essential that we drop all feelings of superiority.

The prevailing ideology insists on our separateness from nature. But the idea that we are essentially different, being false, runs contrary to our nature and leads to
real suffering, the suffering of an alienation that issues in boredom. Martin points out that birds rightly consider man as their worst enemy. Terror is the form their suffering takes. Martin's achievement is to have given us a book which demonstrates how easily both the bird's terror and man's boredom can be replaced with real joy.

I am originally from the state of Maine where Mr. Martin hailed from. This book is terrific and not only gives insight on how to hand-feed wild birds, but also gives helpful information about them. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in birds.
And don't let Karen Seichevilch's review get you down; she just didn't have the patience to go through all the steps to get birds to feed from her hand. It took me 6 months to get a bird - a chickadee - to feed from my hand.

this was one of my favorite books when i was little. i checked it out at the library almost every week. the photographs are beautiful and lucid and the writing is informative (but tells a compelling story). this is a really great book for kids who like to learn about rare animals. another book, slightly longer but on a similar subject, is _The Wheel on the School_. It's about storks and has pencil illustrations rather than great photographs, but i think people who like this book would also like that one.

Hello. My name is Anna and I'm 8 years old. I think that Project Puffin is a very inspiring book and that the baby puffins are the cutest thing in the world. I am glad they got the puffins and other sea birds back to Egg Rock and other places. If you are cruel enough to think that wearing feathers on hats is a good idea, you will not like this book. People, like myself, who are concerned about nature will like this book a lot.

I was very interested in this book and its account of the project since I was involved in its 3 year attempt to bring the puffins back Easter Egg Rock while attending the Audubon Camp on Hogs' Island. I'm so pleased that Stephen Kress has recorded his enthusiasm and experiment so that it can be shared with others. It will be a birthday gift to my great-niece. Alexandra de Grandpré

Bird Gardens begins with 12 ways to design a bird garden. Some suggestions are pretty obvious (supply a source of water) while others are more subtle (avoid invasive non-native plants). There is a very good section on designing nest boxes. There is a diagram and instructions for how to build a nest box (read: bird house), and a chart with the proper dimensions for a nest box for specific birds (22 to be exact, including species of ducks, owls, swallows, woodpeckers, wrens and others).

The rest of the books content is sorted into 6 regions: Northeast, Southeast, South Florida, Prairies and Plains, Western Mountains and Deserts, and Pacific Coast. This means that you will probably use only 1/6th of pages 25-97. Each region has 12 garden plants listed, with pictures, native habitat, USDA hardiness zones (there's a USDA hardiness map in the back of the book), Flowers and fruit, how to grow and birds attracted. Many of the plants are really trees or large bushes (e.g. sugar maple, hackle berry) and may not be what people had in mind for their bird garden. The book focuses on suggesting native plants. There is also an extensive recommendation list for each region. The book concludes with a list of nursery sources and further reading.

I was disappointed with how little of this book applied to my specific region. However, equal treatment is given to all the regions. Perhaps a better investment would be a book of bird attracting plants specific to your region. For complete information on building birdhouses try Beastly Abodes: Homes for Birds, Bats, Butterflies & Other Backyard Wildlife.