The private lives of public birds Learning to listen to the birds where we live

Upon stepping outside their homes, nearly everyone in the world will be met with chirps, peeps, tweets, and twitters--some sweet, some shrill--indicating, of course, the presence of birds; bird sounds are so ubiquitous that they often go unnoticed by people. Nature writer Gedney (Trees of the San Francisco Bay Area) aims to correct course with this book illuminating the sounds of the most common Western U.S. birds (mourning doves; turkey vultures; American crows) in 15 simple yet beautifully crafted essays. Each essay contains descriptive inspired writing, with numerous poetic references as well as beautiful illustrations by Park. Although written specifically to the experience of Californians, Gedney's essays shed light on bird communication in a way that will engage readers everywhere; his book has the potential to create a bird lover out of anyone who picks it up. VERDICT A book that will leave readers enthralled and yearning for more. It belongs in and is recommended for all libraries, both public and academic.--Steve Dixon

Chapter 14 : The View from Above Red-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis   Some birds I love to listen to. Red-tails I love to watch. It starts with looking at the sky. It's always up there, the biggest thing in my life, an inexhaustible immensity that puts the little objects of quotidian existence into proper perspective. And often when I look at that huge expanse of blue, feeling a visceral release as I no longer confine my vision to books and screens and what fits within these tiny walls, I'll spot someone up above, some being soaring effortlessly through that sea without a shore or bottom. The red-tailed hawk is that spirit of the sky. I look with my naked eye, as birders sometimes forget to do, and see the red-tail not in the artificial, claustrophobic framing of binoculars, but set within the vast unbounded space that is her truer context. I can't go anywhere without running into buildings and fences and prohibitory signs that trammel me in, but the red-tail has no borders. She flies to any distance, until she chooses to turn around. She rises and never meets a ceiling, just a thinning of the air as it continues toward the sun. I look with binoculars and catch a glimpse of life far from this plodding earth. You can't really look at just the sky alone in binoculars, the big blue with nothing to focus on. But when I find a hawk, then I can see someone a thousand feet above the ground. My binoculars divide the distance by ten--now I am a hundred feet away, and so nine hundred feet from where I started. My feet are no longer on the ground and my head is in the clouds. It's generally considered amateurish or old-fashioned to speak of the majesty and nobility of hawks in unqualified generalities. They are birds like other birds and not higher spiritual beings. Most modern nature writers aim for scientific respectability. I aim for scientific respectability! But sometimes I regret how we've become too grown up for eagle dreams and squelch our natural impulse toward admiration in a self-censorship of sensibleness. The coat of sensibleness can get quite stifling and burdensome, and I hope I never forget how to throw it off. Sometimes I think my only difference from people who find nothing grand in birds or trees is that I have a more weakly developed sense of personal naïveté or embarrassed foolishness to hold me back from natural enthusiasm. But I'll take a little embarrassment any day rather than give up my world of splendor, and so I let my thoughts of hawks follow where my instincts take me first: I think a soaring red-tailed hawk is one of our most powerful images of freedom and rising above the trivial. I think to see a hawk at closer quarters is to see the strength that makes one fearless inscribed in beak and talon. And to return a red-tail's gaze is to meet something that is hard to find in the eyes of finch or sparrow: the immoveable intention of the wild and untamed. Excerpted from The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live by Jack Gedney All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.