Book review of Slow Birding by Joan E. Strassmann

Despite filling feeders and rising native vegetation, I proceed to be upset by the birds that frequent our yard. So a lot of the identical outdated, usual: cardinals, sparrows, chickadees. I do particularly love chickadees—however the place are the goldfinches, if not the bluebirds?

Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard challenges me to keep in mind that there’s a lot to look at and study even our most quotidian avian neighbors. In a corrective to bird-watching as tally-driven aggressive hunt, right here’s an invite to understand the magic of the peculiar creatures with whom you cohabitate, moderately than rush throughout tarnation chasing glimpses of uncommon or elusive ones. Strassmann’s exploration is private and hyperlocal: In vigorous, conversational prose, she explores birds that populate an in depth radius round her own residence in St. Louis, Missouri, resembling robins, mockingbirds and blue jays. Even the oft-maligned European starling will get a chapter, and I like how Strassmann nudges us to rethink our prejudice towards this invasive species. “If I wanted you to love European Starlings,” she writes, “I would start with murmurations, those mesmerizing movements of thousands of birds soaring, turning, turning again, then weaving around a forest, only to soar as if one again. . . . It is wonderful to be close to a murmuration of starlings, those pre-roosting evening rivers of life.”