If we were to choose the one person we’d like to give us a tour of our neighborhood park or our own backyard, it would be Laura Erickson. And if we were to choose a photographer to record the birds, behaviors, nests, and nestlings that Laura would surely show us, it would be Marie Read.
Erickson, of course, is one of our contributing editors, the writer of Attracting Birds, our popular regular column about feeding, sheltering, and understanding birds in your backyard. She’s also the author of seven good books about birds, including National Geographic Pocket Guide to Birds of North America (2013) and The Bird Watching Answer Book: Everything You Need to Know to Enjoy Birds in Your Backyard and Beyond (Storey, 2009).
Read should be just as familiar. Her writing and photographs have appeared in BirdWatching for years, and she is the author of three books, all of them beautiful. We reviewed the most recent, Sierra Wings: Birds of the Mono Lake Basin (Graphic Arts Books, 2014), in our December 2014 issue.
In this heavily illustrated new book, Erickson and Read team up to reveal the family lives of almost 50 common North American land birds. Erickson, as she does in her column, serves up copious information without ever speaking down — about courtship, mating, nest construction, egg-laying, hatching, fledging, and surviving — while Read, through her expert photos, shows not only what different birds’ nests look like, but also what sort of behaviors you should watch for near them and how to recognize the chicks that, fingers crossed, will soon fly from them.
Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting and Family Lives of Birds, by Laura Erickson and Marie Read, Storey Publishing, 208 pages, paperback, $16.95.
Attracting Birds by Laura Erickson.
Read Marie Read’s feature story about Mono Lake in California.
Read more reviews from our June 2015 issue
Author Deborah Cramer dives deep into the Red Knot’s complex story in ‘The Narrow Edge.’
New reference guide makes identifying birds as simple as recognizing family members.
New Kaufman guide essential for nature lovers.
A touching memoir from a hummingbird rehabber in Hollywood.
‘Project Puffin’ tells how a kid from Ohio brought puffins back to the coast of central Maine.
In new book, Tony Angell presents personal stories and stunning drawings of owls.
‘Feral Cities’ takes account of the wildlife right on our doorstep.
A field guide to five boroughs of feathered New Yorkers.
A new edition of the Costa Rica guide you can carry in the field.
Book tells fascinating history of the feeders, seeds, and suet in our backyards.
A guide to Minnesota’s bird-rich state parks.
Publishers and authors:
If you’ve brought out a book that we should consider reviewing, send it here:
BirdWatching Magazine
Madavor Media, LLC
25 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 404
Braintree, MA 02184
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