Being a fan of our feathered friends, I’ve managed to amass over the years a small collection of great bird books. Here are my top five picks for the bird loving mom (or dad, friend, or relative) in your life. They’d make a great Mother’s Day gift, or when you receive a little thank you cash from someone close to you, indulge yourself and add one, or more, of these to your collection. They range in price from $28 to $0.01 so there’s bound to be something for you whatever your budget!
#1 – Bird Songs
I’ve always wanted to be able to identify birds by their songs. Bird Songs from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is an amazing audio book which lets you hear the songs of 250 North American birds. Wow! I can’t say it’s made me an expert yet, but it’s amazing. I hear birds everywhere I go and I can actually recognize a few of them now. It’s so enjoyable to know that a black-capped chickadee or a tufted titmouse is flitting around above me in a tree. In fact I’m quite contented to hear a bird I recognize without worrying about trying to peer through the leaves and see it. This book has made my life richer. On the other hand, it’s a bit of an investment AND it’s been known to drive cats totally nuts!
#2 – All the Birds of North America
I’ve owned quite a handful of bird identification books over the years. For some reason I’ve found All the Birds of North America the easiest and most satisfying to use. I used to think that bird book photographs were better than illustrations, but that was before I got this book. The advantage to illustrations is that you can see and compare different birds side-by-side and easily pick out the identifying features, which the illustrator makes sure are obvious.
There’s just a small entry for each bird, accompanied by a map of distribution, which is really handy. Rather than search around for a bird based on it’s color and size, you can follow the icons which are based on where you’d find the bird and it’s behavior or beak shape. My only complaint is that I seem incapable of memorizing which map color is which – summer, winter and year-round distribution. However, a bookmark to the map key solves that little difficulty!
#3 – The Birder’s Handbook
Once you recognize some of the birds around you it can lead to questions. What kind of nest does a red cardinal build? What do chickadees like to eat and what color of eyes do red-tailed hawks have? Before the days of the internet, it was really hard to find this kind of information. The Birder’s Handbook is described as “…the essential companion to your identification guide”. It contains many interesting facts and details about birds.
Each bird has a half-page entry and then there are essays, written by people who know their stuff, about different bird topics. My only complaint about this book is the thickness. The binding on mine is beginning to deteriorate, which tends to happen with a paperback book of 700+ pages. Nowadays you can probably also find most of this information on the internet for free. I guess the question is, would you think to look for it?
#4 – The Bird Garden
Let’s assume that you enjoy having little, and big, feathered friends. My next book choice, The Bird Garden, is all about attracting birds to your garden. Endorsed by the National Audubon Society, this book covers just about all you need to know to plan improvements to your little corner of our beautiful Earth.
It has lists of trees, shrubs and flowers and how they benefit birds. It covers how to plan your garden, the correct planting of trees, how to build nest boxes, and when and how to feed birds. The planting recommendations are based on 5 different regions and common birds for each region are described, together with details on how to attract them. The only question is why, after owning this book for 10 years, I don’t have a garden full of bird-attracting vegetation. Some day, some day… Unfortunately the trees and bushes don’t plant themselves!
#5 – The Backyard Naturalist
If you like books with straight-forward minimal information, rather than a lot of confusing detail, The Backyard Naturalist could be the book for you. It’s only 78 pages long, with simple pen and ink illustrations, and it’s published by the National Wildlife Federation. Interestingly, the first topic covered is an easy way to reduce your lawn area. This is a book you pick up and just enjoy reading for the little stories and easy to digest information included. You’ll come away knowing not only about how to attract birds and other wildlife to your garden space, but enriched by snippets of memories from the author’s childhood – interesting stuff to share with your kids 
I hope you enjoyed reading about 5 great books for bird loving moms. Do you have a favorite bird book you’d recommend?
Book links are provided in association with Amazon.com.
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re Bird Songs: Now see, I would view driving the cats totally nuts as a good reason to get it!
Peace and Laughter!
Cristina
Actually it is a little amusing, now that you mention it, Cristina. One of my cats ignores the bird sounds from the book, the other makes a nuisance of herself trying to figure out how a bird could be inside it. Guess which cat I think is more intelligent?