Now available in paperback with a new foreword by Marcia Myers Bonta, Birds of an Iowa Dooryard contains Althea Sherman's often caustic, always careful studies of the phoebes, wrens, cuckoos, rails, catbirds, owls, flickers, and many other species that inhabited her Acre of Birds in northern Iowa. Birds of an Iowa Dooryard, first published in 1952, is full of Sherman's meticulous observations of species both avian and human. Her paintings, her notebooks and publications, and her innovative chimney swift tower form a remarkably rich legacy to be valued by naturalists and researchers alike.

"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.

Pinpoints the best places to view more than four hundred species of birds, utilizing color photographs and maps to identify bird sanctuaries, national and state parks, wildlife refuges, nature trails, and other birding locales.

Get the guide to bird-watching in the Midwest that’s part how-to book, part field guide, and part journal. Peaceful, relaxing, and inspiring—birding can yield a lifetime of satisfaction. For some, simple observation of birds is enough to fill them with joy. Others prefer to make it more interactive, striving to see a variety of species and learning to identify them. If you’re among the latter, the Midwest Birding Companion is just for you. Written by award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela (known throughout the country for his best-selling bird identification guides), the Midwest Birding Companion is part how-to book, part field guide, and part journal. Read Stan’s tips for identifying birds, and learn about everything from reporting a rare bird to dealing with injured birds. The field guide section organizes nearly 150 species by color. When you see a yellow bird, go to the yellow section to discover what it is. There, you can also find range maps, as well as such information as nest descriptions, migration habits, and tips for attracting the species to your feeder. At the bottom of every page, there’s room to log information about when and where you saw that species. You can also keep track of your birding life list on the book’s closing pages—so you’ll always have a running total of the different birds you’ve seen. The Midwest Birding Companion is ideal for birding in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Use your birding companion on its own, or pair it with Stan’s bird identification guides. It will enhance your birding experience and bring even more enjoyment to the hobby that you love.

Before modern binoculars and cameras made it possible to observe birds closely in the wild, many people collected eggs as a way of learning about birds. Serious collectors called their avocation “oology” and kept meticulous records for each set of eggs: the bird’s name, the species reference number, the quantity of eggs in the clutch, the date and location where the eggs were collected, and the collector’s name. These documented egg collections, which typically date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, now provide an important baseline from which to measure changes in the numbers, distribution, and nesting patterns of many species of birds. In Oology and Ralph’s Talking Eggs, Carrol L. Henderson uses the vast egg collection of Ralph Handsaker, an Iowa farmer, as the starting point for a fascinating account of oology and its role in the origins of modern birdwatching, scientific ornithology, and bird conservation in North America. Henderson describes Handsaker’s and other oologists’ collecting activities, which included not only gathering bird eggs in the wild but also trading and purchasing eggs from collectors around the world. Henderson then spotlights sixty of the nearly five hundred bird species represented in the Handsaker collection, using them to tell the story of how birds such as the Snowy Egret, Greater Prairie Chicken, Atlantic Puffin, and Wood Duck have fared over the past hundred years or so since their eggs were gathered. Photos of the eggs and historical drawings and photos of the birds illustrate each species account. Henderson also links these bird histories to major milestones in bird conservation and bird protection laws in North America from 1875 to the present.