If you can see Mt. Baker, you are part of The Experience
Amy Tan
Alfred A. Knopf 2024
We start our five-year sojourn in Amy Tan’s backyard with an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with a hummingbird who eats from a tiny feeder she holds in her hand. Tan is love struck.
Every entry is a miniature story with the strong characters we expect from Tan the novelist, mingled with drawings and notes from Tan the developing naturalist.
When she took up nature journaling in her mid-sixties it was at first limited to her “very birdy” backyard by Tan’s inability to drive and later by the COVID shutdown. This limited field of exploration combined with Tan’s mix of science, humor and strong emotion makes her stories alive and personal. There are the Windowsill Wars, initially dominated by a golden-crowned sparrow with a mean “jump-stomp” move who is eventually unseated by Family Quail. A murder of crows decamp when they suspect the murder of a crow (“It was Squawky, Jr.!”) after investigating a fake crow Tan hung upside down to discourage them from taking over the yard.
While most of the characters are the birds that visit her backyard, some of them are the people, most notably a “formerly annoying teenage girl,” Fiona Gillogly, who becomes Tan’s mentor and companion on explorations both in and beyond the backyard, and their nature journaling teacher John Muir “Jack” Laws.
A self-described obsessive, Tan includes in-depth information about both nature-journaling and caring for wild birds in your yard: How to avoid window-strike fatalities, the best power food for hungry migrants (“just like the stuff Mom used to throw up for you!”), or what to do with an injured or ill bird.
Sneed B. Collard III
Mountaineers Books 2024
Sneed Collard dove into birding in his fifties, propelled by a young son with “serious avian interests” with whom he embarked on a Big Year adventure, seeing how many species they could identify in the U.S. and Canada in twelve months. A prolific author of science books for young readers, he had always figured it was something he’d do “later.” When he started suffering from hearing loss a year later, he had to choose between an activity he loved and loved sharing with his son, or hearing aids. The hearing aids won.
“Birding for Boomers” is a manifesto for birding despite barriers, and an exhortation to get out of your comfortable rut, no matter your age or ability, and reconnect with nature. It is also a compendium of all the odds and ends it’s helpful to know when getting started.
Beginning with basic gear and bird identification strategies, it takes you all the way to spotting scopes, bird photography, birding travel and conservation work. There are sections for adaptations to help birders with hearing loss, vision loss, physical impairment, as well as social barriers to birding and the importance of making sure everyone is welcomed and supported in the birding community. From apps and podcasts to social media groups and advocacy associations, the book pulls together a wealth of information to make birding accessible to anyone, and give everyone their own way to enjoy the birds and protect their habitats.
Stan Tekiela
AdventureKEEN 2024
Kids are natural observers and questioners, and this nifty and intuitive bird guide for young naturalists gives them answers to a whole lot of “what?” and “why?” questions about birds they’ll see on their explorations.
The meat of the guide is 88 birds, including ducks and raptors, organized by their “mostly” color. Each bird gets two pages, the first with a “look for…” clue and a picture and the second with information about where to find them, what they eat, how they nest and what sounds they make, as well as a “Stan’s Cool Stuff” section at the bottom.
The beginning of the guide also has basic information for a birder just starting out, and the book wraps up with family-friendly birding activities.
