A summer of Audubon The world does not lack for books about the work and travels of John James Audubon. There are plenty of books about him. Even his own journals have been published. But if you don't want to work your way through his entire life, a slim new book titled "Summer of Birds" (Louisiana State University, $26.95) offers a snapshot.
Author Danny Heitman has limited his book to the summer of 1821, when Audubon hired on as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana. His only pupil was the daughter of the plantation owners, which left Audubon time to begin 23 of his famous bird paintings.
The recounting of that summer -- and the beautiful illustrations -- makes this book a gem.
Urban birding Do you remember Pale Male and his mate, the red-tailed hawks made famous when they nested in midtown Manhattan? That's due, in part, to Marie Winn's book about the hawks ("Red-tails in Love"), which helped propel the threatened hawks to fame.
Winn's latest book, "Central Park in the Dark" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25), is also set in Manhattan. But Winn manages to forge a connection between us and the very urban wildlife she watches at night.
Winn is one of us, a curious citizen wildlife-watcher. She weaves fact, observation and adventure into a book that celebrates wildlife after dark in the park -- or in your back yard.
Ivory-billed believers Finally, a book about the search for ivory-billed woodpeckers that points out that everyone can't be crazy. Everyone, in this case, is anyone who has ever mentioned seeing this supposedly extinct bird species.
In his new book, "Stalking the Ghost Bird" (Louisiana State University Press, $24.95), author Michael Steinberg just doesn't accept that hundreds of citizen sightings can be wrong.
