For Readers: Blog

Birds of a feather

As the season changes the sweet sound of birds chirping is a delight to our ears. Here is a collection of birds of all sorts: fiction stories involving birds, nonfiction with fascinating information about birds, a character named Bird, Bird in the title (but not about a bird), and an author named Bird. For good measure there are also a couple of DVDs, one about birds and the other about a girl named Lady Bird.

Nonfiction

The Ravenmaster by Christopher Skaife

Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife describes his years of service to the Queen, which include caring for the infamous ravens of the Tower of London, painting a vivid and intimate portrait of these intelligent, unusual, and often misunderstood birds. [print | audiobook | large type]

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery. [e-book | audiobook]

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

An award-winning science, nature, and human biology writer explores recent research indicating that birds are much more intelligent than previously thought and are capable of deceiving and manipulating, eavesdropping, gift-giving, playing, sharing, and much more. [print | audiobook | large type]
 

What It’s Like to Be a Bird by David Sibley

A preeminent bird guide and bird behavior expert answers the most frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often, in this large-format volume that is perfect for nonbirders and birders alike and covers more than 200 species. [e-book | print]

The Birds at My Table by Darryl N. Jones

Darryl Jones is fascinated by bird feeders. Not the containers supplying food to our winged friends, but the people who fill the containers.Why do people do this? Jones asks in The Birds at My Table. Does the food even benefit the birds? What are the unintended consequences of providing additional food to our winged friends?Jones takes us on a wild flight through the history of bird feeding. [print]

The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer

The true story of Irish national Jeffrey Lendrum and his globetrotting adventures as a smuggler of rare birds, detailing the efforts of British wildlife detective Andy McWilliam to protect the world’s endangered birds of prey. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Fiction

The Boy With a Bird In His Chest by Emme Lund

Fleeing to Washington to hide in plain sight with his family, Owen Tanner, who was born with a bird in his chest, feels joy and acceptance, despite living in a constant state of fear, in a community that embraces him for who he is. [print | audiobook]

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

A woman who has dedicated her life to protecting the environment convinces a fishing captain and his salty crew to follow the world's last flock of Arctic terns on a migration of dark revelations. [e-book | print | audiobook | large type]

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

A tale inspired by the tragic first-century massacre of hundreds of Jewish people at Masada presents the stories of a hated daughter, a baker's wife, a girl disguised as a warrior, and a medicine woman who keep doves and secrets while Roman soldiers draw near. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Death of a Kingfisher by M.C. Beaton

The quaint village of Braikie doesn't have much to offer, other than a place of rare beauty called Buchan's Wood, which was bequeathed to the town. The savvy local tourist director renames the woods "The Fairy Glen," and has brochures printed with a beautiful photograph of a kingfisher rising from a pond on the cover. It isn't long before coach tours begin to arrive. But just as the town's luck starts to turn, a kingfisher is found hanging from a branch in the woods with a noose around its neck. As a wave of vandalism threatens to ruin Braikie forever, the town turns to Hamish Macbeth. And when violence strikes again, the lawman's investigation quickly turns from animal cruelty to murder. [audiobook | large type]

The Cat Who Sang for the Birds by Lillian Jackson Braun

In this novel featuring Jim Qwilleran and his lovable cats, Koko and Yum Yum, the rites of spring are celebrated with the fine art of birdcalling....and a fateful act of murder. It seems that this spring, a cat's fancy may turn to crime-solving. [print]

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

Set in a beautifully rendered alternate-universe Trinidad and Tobago, this novel details the relationship between two young Trinidadians, Yejide and Darwin. The couple meet at Fidelis, a cemetery in the bustling city of Port Angeles where Yejide has come to inquire about specific burial rites for her mother. Darwin has reluctantly taken a job there as a gravedigger, which is in conflict with his Rastafarian upbringing and has also introduced him to a criminal enterprise involving his coworkers' use of the Fidelis grounds for ill-gotten gains. Banwo enriches the story of the couple's romance by introducing a magic realist element: Yejide's calling, inherited from her mother, is to escort the dead toward the afterlife, assisted by corbeaux, or black vultures. It is not a destiny that Yejide has accepted readily. [e-book | print]

Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

A recently widowed father of two has difficulty dealing with his grief and the overwhelming sadness of his children, until they are visited by Crow, an actual crow, who serves as an antagonist, protector, therapist, and babysitter and helps them heal. [print]

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, begins her adventure when a dead bird is found on the doorstep of her family's mansion in the summer of 1950, thus propelling her into a mystery that involves an investigation into a man's murder where her father is the main suspect. [e-book | print | audiobook | large type]

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

Killing a bird with his slingshot as a boy, William Bellman grows up a wealthy family man unaware of how his act of childhood cruelty will have terrible consequences until a wrenching tragedy compels him to enter into a macabre bargain with a stranger in black. [print]

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

Mistaken for a girl on account of his curly hair, delicate features, and sackcloth smock, 12-year-old slave Henry Shackleford realizes that his accidental disguise affords him greater safety and decides to remain female. Dubbed "Little Onion" by his liberator, abolitionist John Brown, Henry accompanies the increasingly fanatical Brown on his crusade to end slavery -- a picaresque journey that takes them from Bloody Kansas to Rochester, New York, where they attempt to enlist the support of such notables as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman before embarking on the infamous, ill-fated 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. [print | audiobook]

The Night She Went Missing by Kristen Bird

Emily, a prep school senior, goes missing after a night out with friends. She was last seen leaving a party with a football player with a dubious reputation. Three mothers have their lives turned upside down as they look to their own children, and each other's, for answers to questions they don't want to ask. [print]

Film

The Life of Birds
Naturalist David Attenborough journeys across seven continents filming thousands of species of birds, in order to reveal their patterns of behavior. [DVD]

Lady Bird 
A coming-of-age film about a young woman living in Northern California for a year. [DVD, Blu-ray]

⏤Lillian