April NatureKIT: Flying Creatures

Flight has evolved four separate times in our planet's history. So this month we're reading about the birds and the bees, but also the bats and the pterosaurs!

There are of course many books about birds and birding to choose from. Here are some ideas to get you started:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
A Wing and a Prayer by Anders Gyllenhaal
Slow Birding by Joan E. Strassmann
A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Melburg
Flight Paths by Rebecca Heisman
Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper



Books on other winged creatures aren't quite so easy to find (and I can't just pull recommendations from my own reading), but if you want to explore insects--first in flight for the animal kingdom--you might try one of these:

The Lives of Butterflies by David G. James
Monarchs and Milkweed by Anurag Agrawal
A Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell
A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees by Dave Goulson
Dragonflies and Damselflies: A Natural History by Dennis Paulson



Or maybe you want to read about bats:

The Secret Lives of Bats by Merlin Tuttle
Bats: A World of Science and Mystery by M. Brock Fenton
The Bat Scientists by Mary Kay Carson
Bat Basics How to Understand and Help These Amazing Flying Mammals by Karen Krebbs



And I'm not going to leave out the one extinct group of flying animals, the pterosaurs. (And because I am both a pedant and a regular listener to the Common Descent Podcast, I must also point out that pterosaurs are NOT dinosaurs--they're another reptilian lineage from the Mesozoic Era--but that birds ARE dinosaurs, the only members of the group to survive the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact.)

Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy by Mark P. Witton
The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs by Gregory S. Paul
Pterosaurs: The Flying Reptiles by Enrique Fiesta

All of the above are nonfiction, but you're also welcome to seek out fiction that meets the theme!

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
The Amazing Adventures of Sam the Bat by Allyson Beatrice
The Bees by Laline Paull
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite

Have fun, and add your books to the wiki!

Thank you Susanna, what a great list. I'm probably going to read something bird-related. Thinking about Birds Art Life to start with.

What a lovely list of suggestions! I'm marking a bunch of these as future reads, but for now my plan is for The Birds of Heaven by Peter Matthiessen, which has been on my TBR for ages....

I have so many books in my TBR about birds! My choice will probably be one of these:

Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by ‪Bernd Heinrich
Featherhood: A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie by ‪Charlie Samson Gilmour
Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe by ‪Carl Safina
Birds, Art, Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear

BTW, I read A Most Remarkable Creature last year, and I adored it. The author, Jonathan Meiburg, is a songwriter and a biogeographer, and he has a marvelous way with words.

I haven't checked specifics yet, but I'll have plenty to fit this one!

I might actually get to read a book on this theme in April. I've put Better living through birding on request at the library.

Here are a few fiction titles I'm interested in as well.
The last beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton
Grey bees by Andrej Kurkow
The beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

I plan on reading The Hummingbirds' Gift by Sy Montgomery.

I'm planning on reading Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman.

From my TBR shelf: Effin' Birds: A Field Guide to Identification by Aaron Reynolds

Here's another title that sounds interesting: Mozart's starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt A blend of natural history, biography, and memoir, this title explores the unlikely and remarkable bond between one of history's most cherished composers and one of earth's most common birds. The intertwined stories of Mozart's beloved pet and Haupt's own starling provide an unexpected window into human-animal friendships, music, the secret world of starlings, and the nature of creative inspiration.

I was thinking of Penguin Island by Anatole France but of course penguins (or in this case great auks) don't fly.

I listened to the audiobook of Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe by Carl Safina. It was not so good.

There was a little bit less bats than I had hoped, but I also got some good bird & insect information!

Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives

This book was divided into three main sections: Sensing, Surviving, and Socializing, and discusses the different senses, abilities, and social interactions that animals have. I found this book intensely interesting. There was a large amount of information on marine animals, from catfish covered in tastebuds to dolphins creating bubble rings to play with, but the book also discussed the monogamy of prairie voles, the adaptivity of coyotes and cockroaches, parrots that deceive, honeybees that count, long-distance elephant communication, and, of course, singing bats and giggling mice.

There were quite a few times that I wished the authors had discussed a topic more, but I think this is a great book for getting bite-sized pieces of interesting animal information!

My latest ER book was a perfect fit for this prompt.

The Puffin Keeper by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Benji Davies. Five stars!

I read The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Very good! I read The Bird Way by the same author last year and enjoyed both of them.

And on a totally different note, I also read The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher, a retelling of The Snow Queen in which the raven was probably my favorite character.

>15 antqueen: The Snow Queen is probably my favoritist fairy tale ever! I must add this to my Wishlist.

I read and enjoyed Christian Cooper’s memoir, Better living through birding, for this challenge. The words just flow, charting his introduction to birding as a child, family camping trips to national parks, growing up knowing he was gay and hiding it, and his two escapes – the natural world & fantasy and science fiction. A self-described BLERD (black nerd), he’s earned a living as a science writer and a comics writer. In 2023 he hosted a show that can be streamed on Apple TV or Amazon, Extraordinary Birder. I especially liked his joys of birding, scattered throughout the book.

Next on my list is Slow birding by Joan Strassmann, about enjoying the birds in our own back yards. I don’t expect to finish it this month, but I hope to browse my way through it and some of the activities it suggests. I’ve got a robin nesting on my downspout right now.

I read SKYLARK
by Patricia MacLachlan

I read Birds Art Life Death: The Art of Noticing the Small and Significant by Kyo Maclear, which I liked very much. She spends a year learning to watch birds in Toronto, and muses on life and death as she cares for her two growing sons and her elderly, frail father. It's a good reminder that nature isn't just found on extensive treks and safaris.

A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
It took me weeks to read this - not because it was badly written or boring, just that I had so many things going on at the time. However, the length of time reading made me feel that it was too long and that the writing, although clear, could have been tightened up. Yarwood-Lovett is an ecologist who uses her expertise in this cosy mystery where the main character is an ecologist and bat specialist. Even though I’ve never been a fan of bats, Zorro, and bat-related information, gave the story a lovely boost from the natural world. I might try the next one in the series even though this one could have been better.

Despite the title, this was more about bats than birds.

I started mine, but it's a pdf I'm attempting to read on my Kobo. Teeny-tiny.... Then I had a detached retina 2 weeks ago. I am just now able to read again, but I only currently have one good eye. I want to finish the book I started, but with the text being so tiny, I'm likely going to wait to finish it when I have sight in both eyes again. That might be a month or more away.

>21 LibraryCin: Oh no! Wishing you quick and complete healing.

I just finished The Thing With Feathers by Noah Strycker. It's a quick, engaging book where each chapter looks at a particular trait of biology or behavior though a different species of bird.

>21 LibraryCin: Best wishes for a quick recovery!

Thank you both!

The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape

Only one out of this collection was about snakes, but many were about or heavily discussed birds.

This was a cosy and enjoyable collection of essays about nature, and our relationship to it, and occasionally about our relationship to each other and to religion. The essays were mostly about the animals that are generally most reviled; snakes, crows, vultures, coyotes, and the like. I didn't agree with the author on some things, but I suppose that's how essay collections go, and nonetheless I found the collection thought-provoking.

Full review on my thread.

>21 LibraryCin: Best wishes for a quick recovery.

I read a picture book, Make Way For Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. I especially admired the illustrations. They are so lifelike and so cute!

I finally finished The Birds of Heaven by Peter Matthiessen, and it was really lovely. Fully review written, but in short, if you love birds, you should read this work (or if you're like me and just want to gain a new appreciation for them). And if you enjoy nature/wildlife writing and haven't yet checked out the work of Peter Matthiessen--well, you need to!

My multiple eye surgeries interrupted this book. It was hard on my eyes to read on my little Kobo, so I finally figured out to just take a bit of time to read it on my PC. So, I finally finished my April NatureKIT! (I was half way thought before my retina detached the first time.)