the sibley guide to bird life & behavior

This is not a linear book as Sibley explains, “… it is designed to be browsed casually, so that different topics will spark connections and perhaps even a sense of discovery” (p. The book is divided into nine sections: Preface, How To Use This Book, Introduction, Portfolio of Birds (the main section), Birds in this Book, What to Do If…, Becoming a Birder, Acknowledgments, and Sources.

Over the past 15 years the idea morphed into something different he retained the large format and bird portraits, but focused on bird behavior, anatomy, and biology, the exceptional things about birds not covered in identification guides, the things that make us think and look and look around again with renewed appreciation and even awe. As Sibley tells us in the Preface, he originally intended to write a children’s book. This is a delightful book, large (8-1/2 by 11 inches), filled with Sibley’s distinctive artwork and an organized potpourri of research-based stories about the science behind bird’s lives. Fortunately, with a prescience that’s a little scary, David Allen Sibley has created a book perfect for beginning birders (and the rest of us): What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing–What Birds Are Doing, and Why. And they were intrigued and they had questions, lots of questions, more questions than could be answered by a field guide or a social media group.

They looked out their windows and across their patios and up from their apartment terraces and saw–birds. Listening to them, I thought the words could also be applied to one of the more positive phenomena of the past few months, though in a very different context. “Look around, look around…” The refrain is from Hamilton, a demand and a plea to look with the brain and the heart and then to look again.

The sibley guide to bird life & behavior