When I first took up birdwatching in the mid 1990s (knowingly and intentionally, that is; I’d been watching them casually long before that) one of the first books I read on the subject in an effort to learn how to do it was Pete Dunne’s The Feather Quest. Far from being a directly instructional book, it was based on stories – a style of writing that I was to learn over the subsequent decades of reading his many books and essays, and in more conversations with him than I can now recall, is Mr. Dunne’s – no, that’s too formal – Pete’s preferred method of communication regardless of medium. In regard to its effectiveness as an instructional method, it goes to the very core of how human beings learn and remember information, and of all the authors writing about birds and birdwatching today, Pete is one of the grand-masters of it.
So when I opened the package from Chelsea Green that contained a copy of Pete’s new book The Courage of Birds; And the Often Surprising Ways They Survive Winter, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was in for a new batch of stories in which I would not only find hours of relaxing entertainment but a wealth of information about birds that I would certainly carry with me long after I turned the final page thanks to the way that Pete communicates it.
Illustrated with black and white line drawing by – who else? – David Allen Sibley, The Courage of Birds is a book well suited to the reading time of both the experienced birder and the casual backward birdwatcher alike. What Pete presents in it is not only a collection of useful and interesting information about the many ways birds have evolved to withstand the harsh conditions of winter – including migrating to get away from it – but also, interwoven around and throughout all the facts about birds and their lives, is a lovely thread of reflections, recollections, and stories that speak directly from and to the very Zeitgeist of birdwatching that is shared by all who practice it at any level of experience, intensity, or skill.
