Strange Birds

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

The excitement of discovering the unusual, the funny, and the weird
vibrates through this six-book series. The books are bold and bright,
alive with vivid color and in-your-face photos of some of the strangest
creatures to be found on Mother Earth. There are the multihued
cassowaries (which can kill a man), the snake-eating secretary bird,
vulgar vultures, birds with long beaks and birds with long toes, birds
that swim and birds that eat upside down, birds that throw stones and
birds that can carry 60 fish at a time—and dozens more specimens. The
generous selection includes species selected for unusual appearance,
behaviors or coping mechanisms.

The books will captivate 8- to 12-year-olds. The reading level and
vocabulary provide just the stretch this age group craves, and the
emphasis on facts feeds the young naturalist’s insatiable appetite for
information. Texts, photos, illustrations, and sidebars combine to
introduce individual bird species in considerable detail. Presenting
birds up close is an objective shared by all six books. At the same
time, the series introduces basic ornithological themes such as
migration, habitat destruction, extinction, importing and poaching, and
the implications of environmental issues for species survival. The
reader is also introduced to the principles of flight, bird feather
structure and physiology, courtship, nesting, eggs and hatchlings, food,
adaptation to specialized habitat, field markings, flocking behaviors,
bird banding, and symbiosis.

Raptors introduces eagles, owls, vultures, osprey, and the secretary
bird. There’s a good but brief section on training falcons. Rainforest
Birds is structured around the three layers in the forest—canopy,
understory, and forest floor and features many perching birds and
brilliantly colored birds such as those found in the parrot family. An
unexpected add-on is a section on river and coastal birds.

Birds That Don’t Fly roams the globe for examples and touches on
penguins, ratites (e.g., rheas, emus, kiwis), flightless ducks, the rare
takahes, and extinct species. Ostrich farming is featured. How Birds Fly
looks at feather structure, bone density, lift, thrust, wing shape and
movement, and other aspects of aerodynamics. Migration receives special
note.

Marine Birds covers gulls, boobies, puffins, gannets, pelicans,
albatrosses, shore birds, and penguins. The subject gives the author an
opportunity to discuss environmental issues such as pollution of the
oceans by oil spills and trash. In contrast, Strange Birds is pure fun.
Here the selection is based strictly on unusual features/behaviors or
strange nesting arrangements.

The words-to-know list included in each book isn’t watered down. Such
terms as predator, barbules, undulating, nomadic, raptor, and carcass
are among the book’s vocabulary-builders. The slick presentation,
attention to detail, and interesting selection of species will make this
series among the most popular on the young naturalist’s bookshelf.
Highly recommended.