How to Know the Birds

The Art and Adventure of Birding

By: Ted Floyd

Narrated by: Graham Winton

Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Become a better birder with brief profiles of 200 top North American birds. This friendly, relatable audiobook is a celebration of the art, science, and delights of bird-watching.

How to Know the Birds introduces a new, holistic approach to bird-watching, by noting how behaviors, settings, and seasonal cycles connect with shape, song, color, gender, age distinctions, and other features traditionally used to identify species. With short essays on 200 observable species, expert author Ted Floyd guides us through a year of becoming a better birder, each species representing another useful lesson: from explaining scientific nomenclature to noting how plumage changes with age, from chronicling migration patterns to noting hatchling habits. A pleasure for birders of all ages, this witty book promises solid lessons for the beginner and smiles of recognition for the seasoned nature lover.

©2019 Ted Floyd (P)2019 Recorded Books

Excruciating

While a lot of the content was interesting and informative, reading all of the section numbers was EXTREMELY aggravating and took me out of the narrative. There is no way this audiobook should have kept the "section numbers" -- it's not a reference!

Very Informative

Great book about birding that I have been looking for as a new border. As an academic, the book met my curiosity in learning ID without being verbose and to the point but still tells a good story. With every book, there was more I wanted to know about birds but that’s the beauty of learning. Seeking knowledge!

Excellent basics on many species and topics

So much great information. And written very well to keep you engaged. Will read it again!

Informative American bird and bird watching overview

In an easy to listen to short anecdotal chapter format, this book shares lots of little nuggets of trivia and information about the more common American bird species, it’s as much a book about birdwatching as an avocation and hobby as it is about birds.

Great book but poorly indexed

This book provides great, bite-sized vignettes on many birds that are accessible to the novice looking to learn more. However, the audible version of the book is not indexed with regards to the individual 200 birds described within, making it extremely challenging to go back and revisit specific birds of interest after the fact.

Hoping for a series

As an avid but amateur birder, I was delighted with this book and its focus on particular birds in all seasons and it will fall into the category for repeat listening. I am hoping for future books on other species. My one criticism was the excessive referencing of other chapters by number. I suppose if I had a hard copy of the book I could flip back and easily find the relevant information, but in an audiobook, it isn’t helpful at all.

Audio is not really the best format

Great and useful book, but it does refer to other parts of the book frequently. So it would be nice to have the physical book too.

will take your knowledge of birds to next level

incredibly informative, I wish that the Audible format allowed easier browsing by chapter (since there are 200) and that the bird songs were actual recordings rather than verbal descriptions

Great learning opportunity

We always enjoy Ted's witty articles in ABA's Birding magazine and this book of easy to read, entertaining lessons did not disappoint.
The narration is good too.

Wish he didn’t reference previous chapter numbers

This could be a terrific way to learn more about birds.
I enjoyed the first 20 or so, chapters , very much.
The author makes reference to birds from previous chapters, “chapter 16”, that’s fine, but I didn’t think they needed to be read aloud in an audio book. The same with reading website addresses.
I’m not going to go paging back to find them or write them down,while listening while driving.
To be honest, it grew more annoying as the chapters continued and I didn’t finish the book.