100 Books Like Dawson's Avian Kingdom

This book taught me how to watch birds. 

Many bird books aim to teach about birds and how they live, conveying factual information while ignoring (or lamenting) our human interactions with them. There are also books about birding, telling picaresque stories of extreme birdwatching adventures, or delving into technical minutiae aimed at maximizing one’s skill at bird identification. This book doesn’t fall into either of those categories; instead, it focuses on the rich and positive rewards of paying attention to birds. 

What was that sound? Why did those birds all fly up into the tree? What will I discover if I simply sit still in the woods, patiently watching and listening? When I started asking—and being able to answer—these questions, my whole world changed.

This book taught me how to hear birds. 

We all see birds to some degree. But most people completely miss their sounds. That’s where this book comes in, as a guide to the vocalization of all the western birds (there is an eastern version, too) with transliterations, spectrograms, and curated online recordings. 

Here’s what I recommend you do to instantly enrich your life: sit outside, wait until a bird sings or calls, then look it up in this book. Read the description, look at the spectrogram, and play the recording if needed. Now you know a bird by ear. Now, whenever it calls, you will know what bird is present, just by the subtle patterns or qualities of tone that most people ignore. 

The thing I love about the subject of this book is that it is visible all around me. The great yearly drama of the nesting season is the most exciting part of watching birds. This is where the good stuff happens: song and courtship, battles over territory, the miracle of nest construction, the cuteness of babies, and the development of monogamy. 

Heinrich’s book opened my eyes to this story. He merges his deep scientific knowledge with personal observation, making that broader understanding applicable to what I can observe myself. He explores the different ways birds have of living their lives, constantly asking how we can explain those patterns not as random assemblages of behaviors but as comprehensible evolutionary strategies. He makes birds make sense.

This is the best book I’ve ever read on what it feels like to be a bird. It takes the form of a novel following the migration and searches for companionship of an Eskimo curlew.

But it isn’t a kid’s novel of entirely anthropomorphized animals, complete with a full complement of human thoughts. Instead, Bodsworth gives a skillfully restrained rendition of what instincts and urges birds might really feel, carefully threading the needle between boring accounts that allow no emotions to birds and fanciful accounts that erroneously attribute all kinds of complex thoughts and calculations to them. 

The migratory and nesting instincts are tremendously powerful feelings, feelings experienced by the birds I see right in my neighborhood. Bodsworth does them justice and makes the birds characters in an enormous, epic drama.

This is probably the “youngest” book on my list, but it’s one that’s very close to my heart. It is in the back of my mind every time I see a bat; I wouldn’t be the person I am today without this picture book. I grew up reading it, so it’s the only non-contemporary book on this list, but I think its story of self-discovery is an evergreen one.

It’s a love letter to bats, moms, and people who may not quite fit in. The illustrations are gorgeous and stand the test of time. It's the perfect short and sweet-rumination on the importance of being yourself, even if you’re a creepy critter.

This author’s thesis sounds radical, but it shouldn’t be. She argues persuasively for us to leave bugs in our yards and gardens be, or even to encourage them. Why? Because for every pest, there is a natural enemy. Tolerate a couple of tomato hornworms and they’ll become beautiful sphinx moths, zipping around your flowerbeds, pollinating “more than 200 plants in less than 7 minutes!” Leave nibbling aphids in your garden, and hungry ladybugs will show up and dispatch them. Stop damaging the food web by using pesticides and herbicides/weedkillers. Learn how closely plants and animals are related; indeed, they co-evolved. Such an interesting and important book!

I recommend this book because of my love of Steve Jenkins’s illustrations. I think he is one of the great illustrators of animals for kids' books, and his work is a perfect blend of accuracy and abstraction. In this book, his illustrations are paired with Jennifer Ward’s charming text that’s well suited to read aloud to the youngest children.  

This is not strictly an Australian bird book but is so rich in Australian content it might as well be.

American science writer Jennifer Ackerman takes us into the minds of birds and delivers surprises on every page. An explosion of recent research has shown birds to be far more sophisticated than was thought possible and Australian birds epitomise that. In her introduction Ackerman says that Australian birds crop up throughout her book for their extreme behaviours, intelligence, and ecological diversity.

She travelled Australia to see them and to interview experts, including me. Asking ‘Can a lyrebird lie?’ she offers evidence that they do. She tells of fairy-wrens and zebra finches communicating important information to their young while these are still inside their eggs.

We learn of brush turkey chicks, after hatching from the egg, spending more than two days digging to escape from the nest mound, then receiving no… show more.

In my living room, I have a shelf of discarded birds’ nests, and my sofa is a beachy aqua colour. It’s no wonder then, that I was initially drawn to this book’s cover. The story itself was a pleasant surprise. I can best describe this novel as a nature meditation because, when I started reading, Inga Simpson’s prose seemed to slow time. I became less interested in achieving my daily tasks and paid minute attention to the birds and trees outside my window. Although a story of loss and heartache is weaved through this Nest, it is less important than the gaps between the plot. I am convinced this delightful novel about an art teacher and her garden added a year or two to my life! 

This beautifully illustrated, comprehensive book is a must-have for bird enthusiasts. It is not only a useful guide to identifying birds, but also an illuminating source on little-known aspects of bird behavior.