Our Extraordinary North American Birds Spoon-at-the-Ready Stalker: Spoonbill Ancient Visage for 10,000 Years: Wood Stork Diver, Dipper, Bobber, Blinker: American Dipper Watch Out—Sprinter Approaching!: Greater Roadrunner Rare, but Too Huge to Miss: California Condor Master Carpenter, Building with Sticks: Bald Eagle Rushing and Weed Dancing on the Water: Western and Clark’s Grebes The Fastest Animal, Bar None: Peregrine Falcon Meat-Eating Songbirds That Don’t Sing: Loggerhead and Northern Shrikes Tiny Champion of Flight: Ruby-throated Hummingbird The Best Show on the Lek: Greater Sage-Grouse A Raptor Smaller Than a Sparrow: Elf Owl Incredibly Funny-Looking Seabirds: Atlantic, Horned and Tufted Puffins Timberdoodle Sky Dancing: American Woodcock Apartment Nester with a Landlord: Purple Martin Lays a Quick Egg—Then Leaves!: Brown-headed Cowbird An Owl in a Burrow?: Burrowing Owl Scavenger Falcon, Hunting on Foot: Crested Caracara Apple Snail Aficionado: Snail Kite Percussion Performance on Logs: Ruffed Grouse Skimming Along the Coast: Black Skimmer A Panoply of Color: Painted Bunting Camouflaging at Its Finest: American Bittern Smart, Sociable and Popular: Harris’s Hawk The Embodiment of Diversity About the Author

OUR EXTRAORDINARY NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS Plain and simple, birds are amazing! When you think about it, many birds are brightly colored and sing marvelous songs. Most build incredibly intricate nests. Some swim to deep depths, while others fly high above our tallest mountains. Birds occupy nearly every habitat on the face of the earth, from the hot tropics to the frozen poles. And if that is not enough, let’s not forget the obvious—most birds have the ability to fly. There are over 10,000 species of birds in the world. This is more than double the number of mammals on the planet. North America has its own highly diverse group of birds, with more than 900 species in the United States and Canada alone. From the tiny hummingbirds, which are often mistaken for large insects, to the giant eagles and condors, with their huge wings spanning 7–10 feet across, the variety is mind-boggling. North America is also home to the smallest of all owls, the Elf Owl, and the fastest of all animals, the Peregrine Falcon. Just about every part of a bird’s anatomy is specialized and unique. Nearly all species have super-strong flight muscles and an extraordinarily strong heart, both of which are needed to fly. Their lungs and air sacs are nothing like a mammal’s and allow some birds to fly as high as 30,000 feet! At that altitude, a mammal would lose consciousness. A bird’s vision is greater than that of most mammals, and they see in a wider spectrum of light. This means they can see things that mammals, and certainly people, cannot. In addition, many bird species can hear way beyond the capability of people. Their navigational senses are unmatched in the mammalian world. The bills of birds are unique to the avian world. Birds use them for everything from building highly structured nests to procuring food. Some fight with their bills. Others use them to kill prey for meals. Birds also utilize these same bills to gently feed their babies. Birds communicate both visually and with sound. Bright feathers and bold patterns say much about a bird’s health and social status, and probably even more than we realize. Birds sing songs to express emotions, attract a mate, and communicate the ownership of a territory. Think of this as a complex song and dance show. Wild Birds celebrates some of our most outstanding wild birds in their richness and diversity. I have carefully selected 28 North American species to showcase in this book. They include unique birds that are the most unusual or entertaining, and those with fascinating behaviors. Some of these species have also set records as the fastest, slowest, largest or smallest bird in North America.

The Wildlife Appreciation series is an elegantly designed line of books about specific kinds of North American animals. Written and photographed by award-winning author and naturalist Stan Tekiela, each book features hundreds of large, full-color photographs paired with short headings and small blocks of informative text. With a trim size of 9" x 7.5" and around 130 pages, each book guides readers through important aspects of the animals’ lives, such as mating, hunting, and raising their young. The rigid softcover-with-flaps format gives the books coffee-table appeal at a retail price of just $14.95.