This stunning collection of art and text captures the grace, beauty, and flamboyance of the world's birds. It features more than 1,600 original paintings from 11 of the world's leading bird artists.

Birds of all imaginable sizes, shapes, colors, and patterns are nearly everywhere we might care to look, expressing a bewildering array of behaviors and strategies for successful living among all manner of challenges to survival.

"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.

A child watches a female cardinal building a nest in his backyard and decides to record what happens to the cardinal family in her diary. Readers will follow along as the young narrator observes the birds’ behavior up close, including the mother bird brooding her eggs, the chicks peeking from the nest for the first time, and the parent birds feeding and fledging their young. All the details of the birds’ lives are explored up to the time when the juvenile birds are ready to leave home. Large photos, diagrams, and clear, age-appropriate text will engage young readers as they explore the life cycle, natural habitat, physical characteristics, diet, and behavior of these colorful birds. The diary format models scientific observation and critical thinking—and encourages children to keep notebooks recording their own investigations into the natural world.

Every aspect of a species' life in the wild -- courtship, nesting, brooding, communication, foraging, flying, fighting -- is covered in text by a leading ornithologist, and photographs by top nature photographers.

The Natural World of Ivy Lane relates the story of the wildlife on one acre. Readers will become aware not only of birds but of small ground dwellers, and butterflies. They will also learn that creatures of the night, such as the red fox and opossum, sometimes appear during the day, and that squirrels can fall out of trees. A book to read for pleasure.