Birds of North America: A Birder's Year

A continent of birds, watched through one year.Sixty-nine large plates run from the spring warblers to the winter finches: a great blue heron mirrored in a marsh at dawn, snow geese lifting in a blizzard of wings, a hummingbird's gorget turning from black to red as it faces the light, a wood duck on still black water. Raptors on basalt, a kestrel reading a field from a fence wire, a pileated woodpecker cutting its long rectangular hole.Each plate carries a short note on what the bird is doing and why - how a great grey owl places a vole under a foot of snow by ear alone, why a chickadee's memory grows in autumn and shrinks in spring, why the gorget is not pigment at all. Field-guide attention at gallery scale.Every picture runs to the edge of the page, and the wide frames open across the gutter. A large full-colour volume for a table, a cabin, or a gift to anyone who keeps a list.