101 Ways to Help Birds

Do you remember the amusing anecdote, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it!" Well, one could also say something similar about helping birds that are in trouble. Until now, that is. While the rest of us were talking, Laura Erickson went to work researching and writing a book about this topic; 101 Ways to Help Birds (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2006).

This attractive and affordable 284-page trade paperback is engaging and educational, balancing important information with relevant and interesting personal anecdotes about birds. It is well-researched with an extensive bibliography consisting of websites, books, and articles from newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. The book is divided into five main parts, entitled; helping birds at home, enhancing the natural habitat of your backyard, supplementing backyard habitat, helping birds away from home, and helping birds on a larger scale. Each part is further subdivided into several chapters filled with bulleted headings that clearly and briefly describe one action that you can take to help birds, such as "reduce paper use, choose recycled paper, and recycle the paper you use", "use weed killers and fungicides only as a last resort" and "provide nestboxes and platforms, and monitor them responsibly." These bulleted items are then followed with a descriptive essay that ranges in length from several paragraphs to several pages, presenting detailed information along with personal narratives that provide a clearer understanding of the parameters of the problem and suggestions for how to make changes in your own life.

Not only does this book provide many earth-friendly suggestions that will help protect wild birds and other animals and their homes, but it also dispenses other important lore, such as how to deal with a baby bird that has fallen from its nest, how to properly deal with an injured wild bird and who to contact so the bird can receive appropriate medical and rehab care, clearly defining ethical birding behaviors, and identifying the species of birds that are most attracted by particular types of "bird seeds".

Even though the information itself is "good enough", the book is wonderfully enhanced with 40 accurate and asthetically pleasing ink drawings by scientific illustrator, Roger Hall (ovenbird, Seiurus aurocapillus, pictured). He skillfully depicts a variety of North American birds in natural poses. One drawing did perplex me, however. Unlike the drawing of scarlet macaws, which are not endemic to North America, that species was alluded to in the accompanying essay, but I was somewhat puzzled over the inclusion of a drawing of the three-wattled bellbird, Procnias tricarunculatus. This bird, which is a rainforest species that is native from Honduras to Panama, is found nowhere in the USA, and it was never mentioned in the book, either.*

Even though I think the author's research is reasonably complete and up-to-date, I wish to add one suggestion to the author's proposals for what you can do with your pet bird's body after it dies; donate its body to a local natural history museum. Similar to a human donating his or her body to science, donating your pet bird's body to a museum will provide scientists with the opportunity to carry out research that they might not be able to do otherwise, particularly if the bird is an unusual species. If the bird was in poor feather at the time of its death, its skeleton can also yield important data. I have donated several of my birds' bodies to natural history museums throughout the years.

This unique book is the first time that anyone has collected together realistic and workable suggestions for how we all can help protect birds and their habitats. As such, it has something practical to teach absolutely everyone, regardless of whether you live in a cramped Manhattan apartment or on a spacious farm in the midwest, whether you are a casual bird feeder or a rabid lister -- or even a scientist. It gives you the knowledge you need to live your life a little more thoughtfully, a little more deliberately, even as it provides the realization that you do have the ability to truly make a difference in the world, a little bit, every day, for birds and for the environment.

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Laura Erickson is a licensed bird rehabilitator and a contributing writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Country Today, Audubon and Birder's World, and the author of BirderBlog.com. She was the winner of the 1997 National Outdoor Book Award for her book, Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids, and is Dave Barry's bird and tapeworm advisor. An avid birder, she has more than 1000 birds on her Life List. She resides in Duluth, Minnesota. This is her third book.

Roger Hall is a self-taught artist who received some formal training from Bougie Studio in Minneapolis. His favorite medium is pen and ink and he specializes in ecological and wildlife themes. He has won several art contests, including the Virginia Herpetological Society t-shirt contest (2005), Reptiles Magazine art contest (2005), and the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts (1995) and was awarded an honorable mention by the North Florida Environmental Art Show (2005). He currently resides in California.

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* Roger Hall responds; The Three-Wattled Bell-Bird was my idea. I had seen one in Costa Rica and just thought they were cool. They make a great 'bonk' noise...for some reason which was and still is unclear to me. I forget how it was proposed, but there it is. [personal communication, 1 June 2006]

Laura Erickson responds; It's my fault, not Roger Hall's, that the Three-wattled Bellbird was in there. Well, partly my fault, and partly just the weirdness of the way books are put together. I'd made a suggested list of 50 species for drawings, and included the bellbird because I did originally make reference to it in the part of the book suggesting donating optics to Birders Exchange, before I had to make major cuts before sending in the original manuscript. [personal communication, 1 June 2006]

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