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

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.

This book needs an audio version redo!

This book would be an excellent listen if the editors and narrator could understand that constantly referring to related chapters while reading is highly annoying. As a listener, I can’t just flip to the related chapter to refresh my memory on what was (or will be) said about the related subject. This is a thoughtful feature ONLY if you have a book in your hands and are the reader. When you are a listener, this only serves to disrupt the flow of the narrative and become VERY ANNOYING.

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!

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.

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.

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.