Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior, Volume 2

Rating:
Summary: Good Information to Better Understand Your Feathered Friends
Review: The Stokes Guides to Bird Behavior are great little references for backyard bird-watching. You may have to wander a little further than your backyard to observe some of these species, but the birds in your neighborhood are probably in one of the three Stokes volumes. Each Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior features 25 common North American bird species. For each species, the authors explain visual displays, auditory displays, territory courtship, nest-building, breeding, plumage and seasonal movement, and provide a calendar so that you can clearly see when these behaviors occur. I wouldn't take any generalizations about bird behavior too seriously because many birds are very individual, and their behaviors and social customs vary accordingly. But these books will give you a good basis for understanding and predicting the behavior of your avian neighbors. You'll enjoy watching your littled feathered friends all the more with the added understanding the Stokes Guides provide.

My one complaint about these books is that the bird species are not in any particluar order in the books, and neither are they indexed. If you look at the table of contents you will see that the species are not in alpahbetical or any other order, and there is no sense to which birds are in which volume or where they are placed in the book. In other words, you have to read through the entire list of 25 species in the table of contents, in each book, to locate the species you want. I have no explanation for this, and I made an index for the books myself to save me from the frustration involved every time I want to look up a species. That is the reason I gave the book(s) 4 stars instead of 5.

Rating:
Summary: Detailed behavior information on 25 common birds.
Review: The Stokes have produced a book describing the behavior of 25 birds. The catagories of information include: visual displays, auditory displays, territory, courtship, nest-building, breeding, plumage, seasonal movement, and behavior at the bird feeder. The 25 birds covered in this book include: Killdeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Mourning dove, Belted Kingfisher, Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Wood Pewee, Barn Swallow, Tufted Titmouse, White-brested Nuthatch, Marsh Wren, Cedar Waxwing, Yellow Warbler, Eastern Meadowlark, Brown-headed Cowbird, Northern Oriole, Scarlet Tanager, Northern Cardinal, Rose-brested Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting, Rufous-sided Twohee, Chipping Sparrow, and Field Sparrow. This is not a bird identification book and the illustrations are not in color. Bird Behavior is a facinating book about why birds do the things they do. Donald and Lillian Stokes have provided a new way to look at birds.