by Sy Montgomery. Nature books can be downers, but this book is different. The people we meet-the researchers, rehabbers, enthusiasts, and fanciers with whom the author, in Plimptonesque fashion, immerses herself in order to get closer to her avian subjects-are all well-intentioned, compassionate folks. A "birdologist" seeks the divinity of creation revealed in birds, and it is this faith that drives Montgomery (The Good Good Pig) to restore her readers' "awe and connection to these winged aliens.." She writes of just seven species (ranging from the exotic New Zealand cassowary to the common crow), but her clever chapter arrangement gives a sense of their marvelous diversity. But Montgomery's impressionistic account is as much about humans as it is birds, as much about the author's own transformative experience as it is about the feathered vehicles of her change; indeed, some readers may well wish for less author and more bird. Verdict This volume will appeal to backyard birders and animal lovers as the author has a knack for making abstruse science palatable. Hers is a poetic sensibility expressed in prose; readers looking for bird poetry may want to consider Billy Collins and David Allen Sibley's Bright Wings. --Library Journal.
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