The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Backyard Bird Chronicles - Tan
5 stars

I’m a birder. I’ve been actively bird watching with bird guides and binoculars for more than 30 years. I keep lists. I’ve rarely traveled specifically to look for birds, but I fit my bird walks in where I can. Southern California is a great place for birding. There’s always my backyard.

Amy Tan lives in the San Francisco Bay area. I’m sure her backyard is in a higher rent zone than mine. We look out on different habitats. Still, I recognized all of the species that she reported seeing in her backyard. She has some that don’t visit my feeders, and I have a few that will never grace her yard. I propped her book in my kitchen table book stand, drank my coffee, and interspersed my own show more backyard identification with pages of her nature journal. I shared her backyard observations and it felt like I was sharing mine.

Her observations delighted and inspired me. I added hot pepper suet to discourage marauding squirrels on her recommendation. (It works!). I added another bird bath and varied the food a bit. I do give the birds dried mealworms sometimes, but I haven't quite the dedication that Tan has. I haven’t bought live mealworms for the backyard buffet. Yet.

I keep lists. I note species, numbers of birds, weather and occasionally interesting behavior. I cannot draw. Amy Tan isn’t only a writer, she’s an artist. This book is derived from her nature journal. She draws her backyard bird activity. Her sketches are annotated. Her drawings have speech captions as she imagines exactly what might be going on in those little bird brains. Her drawings are both comical and informative. Her finished portraits are beautiful. This is a book that needs to be read in its paperbound edition. The e-book doesn’t reproduce the drawings adequately and the audiobook misses out on them altogether. show less

The first thing I want to say is that this author is a great artist. I loved all of her delightful artwork. It’s mostly of the birds she sees but she covers various subjects. The art definitely helps make the book special.

I was excited because the author is local to me so the birds she observes are also mostly my local birds. While a body of water separates our dwellings we are only several miles apart as the crow flies. I’m envious of her backyard and of her views. I can understand why she’s so fascinated by the birds and the habitat she can view from her house and from her backyard.

There were times when reading that things dragged a bit for me and times when I was riveted by her story and by the accounts of the birds and other show more wildlife about which she writes. At times I was bored but most of the time I remained interested.

I will say though that reading these journal entries of someone else made me want to see the birds for myself, made me want to get outside and see the birds and other wildlife and plants and nature firsthand. I often just wanted to be outside and seeing birds for myself.

The knowledge she’s accumulated is truly impressive and so viewing the birds through her eyes had its advantages. I wouldn’t know what I was looking at most of the time were I bird watching on my own.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised but I was shocked at how few of the birds were unfamiliar to me. I grew up mostly with robins and hummingbirds near to where I lived at the time, a few miles further away and many decades away from where I am now and from the author’s current location.

She can be very funny. There is lots of humor in the book. Her life and the lives of the birds make for a worthy narrative.

I started reading the eBook and audio book simultaneously but quickly gave up the audiobook. I’m glad I listened to it for a while. I enjoyed being able to hear what the author’s voice sounded like so I also listened to her acknowledgments at the end. The audiobook didn’t work for a couple of reasons. One is that it was read way too slowly, even when I listened in 1.45 time, but the main reason is that for all her drawings there is a note to go to a different page to read about them and that meant having to stop the audio anyway to go do that.

The book also wasn’t conducive to reading as a story. These are daily dairy entries and read as such. Yes, they tell a story but it was easy to read one bit at a time and there was not much flow to the narrative.

I immensely enjoyed reading about her younger years in the Forword. I enjoyed reading about how the covid lockdown period was for her and think that she was really lucky to have spent that time as she did.

I love bird watching online. My favorite birds are Jackie and Shadow, the resident eagles of Bear Valley/Lake and their eaglets when they have them. This book has me yearning to do a better job of noticing the local birds I can see in person.

3-1/2 stars show less

Summary: Four years of journals on the birds visiting Amy Tan’s backyard, with sketches and detailed drawings.

At age 64, Amy Tan took art lessons from Jack Muir Laws, a nature illustrator. This led to walks viewing birds, sketchbook and drawing pencils in hand. She learned to make quick, rough sketches capturing essential features of the birds that she saw. Then she realized that her own backyard was a haven for birds, and her house, with extensive windows looking out on that yard, the ideal ‘blind” {except for the birds trying to fly through the windows, remedied with various decals).

She filled journal after journal with her observations, accompanied by sketches with captions, and sometimes the imagined thoughts or conversations show more of the birds. Her observations range from elation and love when a hummingbird feeds from a feeder in her hand and she can feel the brush of its wings, to profound sadness when she sees a bird that looks puffed up and realizes it is ill and probably dying. That leads to the practical action of emptying and cleaning her feeders so that she doesn’t spread the infection to other birds.

The book offers a selection of her entries, each accompanied with her sketches. She identifies species, telling us distinguishing marks. She makes detailed observations of their behavior, often accompanied by questions. For example, on May 22,2020, she watches baby titmice feeding. She identifies the leader, notes how the birds eat, sometimes attempting to eat things too big for them, sometimes taking and rejecting items like sun chips. All this is captured in a drawing on the facing page.

Along the way, Tan unashamedly displays her obsession with backyard bird, describing at length various types of feeders, efforts to discourage squirrels, and the variety and prodigious amounts of bird food she buys, including the mealworms she stores in their refrigerator. Needless to say, she has a supportive husband!

In addition to the journal sketches, Tan includes detailed drawings of various birds in fine detail. These approach the quality of an Audubon work. Tan’s skills of observation and description are evident in these drawings and throughout the text.

Tan’s enthusiasm about birds makes one think differently about the birds in one’s own backyard and surroundings. While not heavy-handed, we sense her awareness of these precious lives to be preserved. She sees the effects of nearby wildfires. She rescues injured birds, and grieves when they don’t make it. And if she has inspired you, she offers a list of the books, apps, and other resources she found helpful. All in all, this book is a delight to the eyes and food for the spirit.

Don’t be surprised if this book makes at least a backyard birder out of you! show less

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan was even more enjoyable than I expected. A glimpse into both the life of a wonderful writer and the world of relatively common birds.

I am not a birder. I love when I can watch them close-up, maybe when they don't know I'm just a couple of feet away on the other side of a window or when I am at a park and I notice their activity. But I don't go out specifically to watch birds. So no matter what some may think, this does not require some grounding in birdwatching or even a particularly strong interest in them (outside of loving our fellow creatures).

I found the diary/journal entries to be much more engaging than I expected. I knew the writing would be good I just didn't realize how contagious Tan's show more curiosity would be. Some entries made me want to pay closer attention to birds I see regularly but more than that I gained a better appreciation for viewing the world around me with a more compassionate type of curiosity.

The drawings are wonderful, even the ones she claims aren't very good. I found that they managed, when coupled with the entries, to make me feel I was looking at a bird with a distinct personality rather than a drawing of a "type."

Recommended for readers who simply enjoy going on a curiosity-fueled journey with a talented writer and artist. You don't have to be an avid birdwatcher as long as you're capable of feeling compassion for both the human and the many birds you take this journey with.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Actually I'd give this book 3.5 stars. I liked it, I just didn't like it a lot.

The book is exactly what the title says. Amy Tan shares with us her journal of bird events that have taken place in her backyard. There was humor and also some heart wrenching moments along with just plain good facts about birds.

I didn't expect two gifts this book gave me. First, Tan is a great artist and all the illustrations were done by her. The best part is that it appears that the illustration pages are literal copies from her journal along with hand written notes. Her illustrations tell a story and her notes on each page are the best part. Amy Tan is funny. It might take a while to appreciate her humor but it's there for the taking. Her notes are also show more very caring.

That brings up the second gift this book offers. I like Amy Tan. I have read only one of her books but my wife has enjoyed many. I have also heard her in interviews and also a podcast and she is truly enjoyable. This book offers a different look into Tan's personality and now I also like her for the caring person she is. Well, caring of birds at least. But it was honestly fun to get to know her a little better.

The reason for only 3.5 stars is that, aside from the good things I've mentioned, it was, actually, a book about someone chronicling watching birds in her backyard. Some will find that boring.

I do also want to mention that many of the negative reviews here are from people who listened to the audio book. Personally, I can't imagine enjoying this book without seeing the notes and illustrations. If you decide to "read" this book, please, actually read it. show less

This is one of the few books that I had to be convinced to pick up. I'd seen it in bookstores, thought the cover was pretty, and then put it back down and moved on. I think part of the reason was that I associated Amy Tan with Chinese-American stories, and not with nature or art. I only gave the book a second glance when my parents invited me to join them at a talk Tan was giving about the book, and then once there I enjoyed myself so much that I bought a copy of the book and stood in line to have Amy Tan sign it.

I really enjoyed it. The illustrations are gorgeous, the sketches are cute, and she makes up stories about some of the birds (or squirrels) and what they may be thinking as she watches them at the feeders. Granted, some (okay, show more okay, most or all) of the feelings that she attributes to the birds, especially in the early journal pages are pure anthropomorphism. It's not likely that we as humans can properly understand what the birds are thinking as they look around the yard. But still, having watched a bird or two myself, I understand the motivation to start telling a story about the birds.

I enjoyed seeing the growth in her drawings, though the book starts with her bird drawings already to the recognizable stage, so she'd been through a lot of practice already at that point. The full detailed portraits that she drew of some of the birds (as opposed to the sketches featured throughout most of the book) are absolutely stunning. Some of the stories in the book are ones I'd heard her relate during the talk, and reading them on my own, months later, brought my memories of how excited she was to talk about her birds and the things she learned from them. This is not my usual kind of book, but I really enjoyed it. show less

The humor, beauty, and insight the author weaves into her birding journal are truly breathtaking. I have never laughed so much while reading a birding journal. Tan has transformed the tradition of observation and nature journaling into a unique blend of comic storytelling, meditation, and joy.