The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live

by Jack Gedney Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

Overview

A book to help the ordinary birdwatcher appreciate the fascinating songs, stories, and science of common birds.



Jack Gedney's studies of birds provide resonant, affirming answers to the questions: Who is this bird? In what way is it beautiful? Why does it matter? Masterfully linking an abundance of poetic references with up-to-date biological science, Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna's hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture's and red-tailed hawk's roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay's work planting acorns. Knowing that we hear birds much more often than we see them, Gedney offers his expert's ear to help us not only identify bird songs and calls but also understand what the birds are saying. The crowd at the suet feeder will never look quite the same again. Join Gedney in the enchanted world of these not-so-ordinary birds.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"In this magical study, Gedney gathers 15 essays on 15 unique species of western birds. Bird-watchers, nature lovers, and anyone curious about avian life will find joy in this blend of poetry and biological writing, complete with illustrations of each bird by Anna Kus Park." —Alta

"Gedney’s essays shed light on bird communication in a way that will engage readers everywhere; his book has the potential to create a bird lover out of anyone who picks it up." —Library Journal

“I’m a serious backyard birder with a library of over a hundred bird books. Gedney’s is now one of my top favorites. His lyrical and deeply felt insights, in particular about bird language, enable us to see that common birds are anything but and deserve not just our love but our gratitude."—Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club"

The Private Lives of Public Birds is an affectionate love song to our most familiar feathered neighbors. Grounded in science but watered by the heart of a poet, this intimate and personal look at the lives of the birds we see every day invites us to slow down and look again." —John Muir Laws, author of The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds

"Gedney has opened wide a portal for any and all, novice or expert, to enter a world of immediate avian wonder. With the help of ornithologists and poets and authors from the past—be they William Leon Dawson, Henry David Thoreau or creation stories of the Western Mono—Gedney gathers together nuggets of Goldfinch and treasures in feathers to be enjoyed whether we are gazing out our office window, stuck in traffic, or actively seeking."—Keith Hansen, author of Hansen’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Sierra Nevada

"What an eloquent reminder that we don’t need to seek rarities to experience the wonder of birds. Jack Gedney’s book mingles science, story, and poetry, inviting readers to become immersed in the world of close-to-home birdlife—not to just look at birds, but to look again with attention, stillness, study, and curiosity. This book awakens all of our senses, making every step outside the door an opportunity for joy and belonging.”—Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Rooted and Mozart’s Starling

"What fun to follow Jack’s curiosity as he bikes and birds and reads, bringing together dozens of human voices to deepen his essays, from Miwok and Yokut stories, to a range of writers such as Li Bai, Kurt Vonnegut, Mary Austin, Bernd Heinrich, and even Joanna Newson."—Allen Fish, director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

"I can't remember the last time I started smiling during a preface, couldn't put the book down, continued smiling through chapter one (on the brown scratcher), two (the blue squawker), and beyond. What a delight! This book is filled with such wonderful perspectives on the supposedly ordinary birds all around us." —Donald Kroodsma, author of The Singing Life of Birds

"With lyrical prose and joy-filled stories, this wise and generous book invites us to see better, listen better, and to celebrate the miracles happening around us in every yard and garden. If birds could read, they would say, This book gets it exactly right."—Charles Hood, author of A Californian’s Guide to the Birds Among Us

Library Journal

★ 05/01/2022

Upon stepping outside their homes, nearly everyone in the world will be met with chirps, peeps, tweets, and twitters—some sweet, some shrill—indicating, of course, the presence of birds; bird sounds are so ubiquitous that they often go unnoticed by people. Nature writer Gedney (Trees of the San Francisco Bay Area) aims to correct course with this book illuminating the sounds of the most common Western U.S. birds (mourning doves; turkey vultures; American crows) in 15 simple yet beautifully crafted essays. Each essay contains descriptive inspired writing, with numerous poetic references as well as beautiful illustrations by Park. Although written specifically to the experience of Californians, Gedney's essays shed light on bird communication in a way that will engage readers everywhere; his book has the potential to create a bird lover out of anyone who picks it up. VERDICT A book that will leave readers enthralled and yearning for more. It belongs in and is recommended for all libraries, both public and academic.—Steve Dixon

APRIL 2024 - AudioFile

This audiobook is a paean to birds. It's almost poetry, and author Jack Gedney's lyrical style is exactly suited to listening, perhaps even more so than reading. The text is peppered with images like this, referring to Golden-crowned Sparrows: "Their crowns shine in the fading afternoon light." Narrator Jonathan Todd Ross captures the author's style; Ross's smooth voice and easy pace make listening pleasurable, and his conversational tone renders the text easy to follow. The content is California-centric, so listeners shouldn't expect a field guide to American birds. But the author's observations are generalizable, so listeners can expect to learn a lot about our backyard visitors. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160126746
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Buteo jamaicensis

 

Some birds I love to listen to. Red-tails I love to watch.

It starts with looking at the sky. It’s always up there, the biggest thing in my life, an inexhaustible immensity that puts the little objects of quotidian existence into proper perspective. And often when I look at that huge expanse of blue, feeling a visceral release as I no longer confine my vision to books and screens and what fits within these tiny walls, I’ll spot someone up above, some being soaring effortlessly through that sea without a shore or bottom. The red-tailed hawk is that spirit of the sky.

I look with my naked eye, as birders sometimes forget to do, and see the red-tail not in the artificial, claustrophobic framing of binoculars, but set within the vast unbounded space that is her truer context. I can’t go anywhere without running into buildings and fences and prohibitory signs that trammel me in, but the red-tail has no borders. She flies to any distance, until she chooses to turn around. She rises and never meets a ceiling, just a thinning of the air as it continues toward the sun.

I look with binoculars and catch a glimpse of life far from this plodding earth. You can’t really look at just the sky alone in binoculars, the big blue with nothing to focus on. But when I find a hawk, then I can see someone a thousand feet above the ground. My binoculars divide the distance by ten—now I am a hundred feet away, and so nine hundred feet from where I started. My feet are no longer on the ground and my head is in the clouds.

It’s generally considered amateurish or old-fashioned to speak of the majesty and nobility of hawks in unqualified generalities. They are birds like other birds and not higher spiritual beings. Most modern nature writers aim for scientific respectability. I aim for scientific respectability! But sometimes I regret how we’ve become too grown up for eagle dreams and squelch our natural impulse toward admiration in a self-censorship of sensibleness. The coat of sensibleness can get quite stifling and burdensome, and I hope I never forget how to throw it off. Sometimes I think my only difference from people who find nothing grand in birds or trees is that I have a more weakly developed sense of personal naïveté or embarrassed foolishness to hold me back from natural enthusiasm. But I’ll take a little embarrassment any day rather than give up my world of splendor, and so I let my thoughts of hawks follow where my instincts take me first:

I think a soaring red-tailed hawk is one of our most powerful images of freedom and rising above the trivial. I think to see a hawk at closer quarters is to see the strength that makes one fearless inscribed in beak and talon. And to return a red-tail’s gaze is to meet something that is hard to find in the eyes of finch or sparrow: the immoveable intention of the wild and untamed.

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