Book Review: Novelist Amy Tan Shares Her Love of the Natural World in 'The Backyard Bird Chronicles'

Bird watching has become a treasured pastime for many since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people staying at home for months looked out their windows for entertainment and immersed themselves in the natural world, many for the first time.

Successful novelist Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club fame is among the estimated 45 million Americans who, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, are bird watchers, and many of them seriously invest in their passion by purchasing bird seed and accessories bird watching.

Now, with nature journal entries and stunning illustrations from bird illustration lessons, Tan has published The Backyard Bird Chronicles about an obsession that dates back to before the pandemic.

Tan's book is the latest to delve into the popularity of birdwatching.

It joins Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World,” last year’s memoir Christian Cooperwho is famous confronted with a white woman walking her dog in Central Park in New York. The confrontation took place on May 25, 2020, the same day George Floyd was killed after a knee on the neck by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Another book coming out on May 7 is sure to delight amateur naturalists: The Birds that Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness by Kenn Kaufman.

Kaufman, an avid birder since he was a child, is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including his own Kaufman Field Guides.

In his latest work, he recounts the fierce competition between naturalists and John James Audubon, who is known for his efforts in the 1800s to describe and illustrate every bird he could find.

But amid rivalries, fraud and plagiarism, 'The Birds in America, Audubon's landmark collection of 435 life-size prints, missed many winged creatures that haven't been discovered in years, including some songbirds, hawks and common sandpipers.

Tan was only able to identify three species of birds when she started birdwatching as a hobby.

The number of species she was able to identify gradually increased to 63 as she attracted more birds to the area behind her house with a view of San Francisco Bay, hung seed feeders and nectar to a stand and planted her rooftop garden with succulents sporting colorful white, yellow and pink flowers.

Her winged visitors amid the fragrant Meyer lemon trees and lavender bushes included an American Robin, Mourning Doves, Dark-eyed Juncos, a Purple Finch, and Orange-crowned Sparrows.

I spend more hours a day birding than writing,” she notes at one point. “How could I not? Just outside my office, four young scrub jays are learning survival skills.

“We have been closed due to COVID-19, forced to stay at home,” she wrote on March 19, 2020. “Almost everything seems to be a potential vector of illness and death: groceries, a doorknob , another person. But not the birds. Birds are a balm.

Like a loving mother, Tan watches with delight as the baby birds learn to get food from the feeders on her patio. She worries whether they will be affected by smoke from fires in Northern California.

Tan ends up being controlled by the birds, who feed them 700 to 800 tortuous beetle larvae a day, at a cost of about $250 a month. She leaves alpaca thread outside so that an oak titmouse can line its nest with soft down. Tan hopes the mealworms, little balls of suet and sunflower chips she leaves on the patio will help more young people reach adulthood.

Over time, Tan becomes intentionally curious, fascinated when a pair of great horned owls take up residence in her yard, depleting the rat population as they regurgitate pellets made of pieces of bone and indigestible fur.

She learns to stay still for long periods of time, even in cold weather, to observe silently.

You have to suffer for beauty, fortunately for the birds, she writes.

___

AP Book Reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Source: job