Small & Feisty
My sister is always on the lookout for hummingbirds, and her musician’s ear catches even the tiniest snatch of their song. She’s not alone in her admiration for this tiny, fierce bird.
The Hummingbirds’ Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings by Sy Montgomery is a personal account of helping to care for an orphaned baby hummingbird. The babies are so small! I’ve read a great many of Sy Montgomery’s books. Two of my favorites are The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig.
In The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds, Jon Dunn describes his journey over the full length of the hummingbirds’ range, from close to the Arctic Circle south to the near-Antarctic. Canada is home to such a limited number of hummingbirds, so the variety portrayed in this book is stunning - the diversity of colours and sizes, the elaborate headdress on the Rufous-crested Coquette, the fancy earrings on the Sparkling Violetear, and the amazing tail on the Marvellous Spatuletail have to be seen to be believed. And then there's the beak almost as long as the body on the Sword-billed Hummingbird. Dunn delves into the history, mythology, and commerce surrounding hummingbirds to provide a rounded picture of these birds’ place in our universe.
Bird Brains
Humans, perhaps in an attempt to shore up their own sense of superiority, fail to give birds credit for their vast intelligence, both in terms of street smarts and intricate thought patterns.
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman disrupts many of our traditional beliefs about birds – their intelligence, how they communicate, and how they interact. Birds are talkative, playful, and gifted liars. I published an in-depth review of this book a year ago on EcoFriendly Sask (now EcoFriendly West).
Close to Birds: An Intimate Look at our Feathered Friends by Mats Ottosson, Ã…sa Ottosson, Roine Magnusson is a collection of outstanding photographs accompanied by short essays.
Further Recommendations
The Gift of Birds: True Encounters with Avian Spirits, eds. Larry Habegger & Amy Greimann Carlson – a collection of articles about people’s encounters with birds
One Wild Bird at a Time, Bernd Heinrich – a book that encouraged me to observe and question bird behaviour much more closely
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, Nicholas Drayson – a fictional account of an unassuming man who is in love with the leader of the local Tuesday-morning bird walk; an absolute delight