The Songs of Wild Birds.
Birds communicate with other members of their species through a wide array of sounds made both by singing and by using their feathers and other body parts to flutter, tap, and scrape out their messages. In this combination book and compact disc See CD., Elliott, a nature-sound expert, introduces readers to the songs and other sounds of 50 birds that are native to the United States. The book comprises short, detailed essays that describe Elliott's experiences in the field while collecting recordings from such birds as the great horned owl, mourning dove, green warbler warbler, name applied in the New World to members of the wood warbler family (Parulidae) and in the Old World to a large family (Sylviidae) of small, drab, active songsters, including the hedge sparrow, the kinglet, and the tailorbird of SE Asia, Orthotomus sutorius, named for its habit of sewing leaves together to make its nest. The American warblers number 119 species of small, generally insectivorous birds of mediocre singing ability., and, perhaps, the woodpecker woodpecker, common name for members of the Picidae, a large family of climbing birds found in most parts of the world. Woodpeckers typically have sharp, chisellike bills for pecking holes in tree trunks, and long, barbed, extensible tongues with which they impale their insect prey. Their spiny tail feathers act as a prop in climbing, resting, and drilling.">ivory-billed woodpecker ivory-billed woodpecker, common name for the largest of the North American woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis. Once plentiful in Southern hardwood forests, since 1952 it was believed to be extinct or nearing extinction. The last known members of this species had been reported from the deepest forests of NW Florida and central Louisiana, and there were no confirmed sightings after 1944 until 2004, when one may have been spotted in an E Arkansas swamp.. Each essay is accompanied by full-color images of the featured bird and graphical representations of its sounds. The 65-minute compact disc includes samples of each call and the author's narration. Houghton Mifflin, 2006, 128 p., color images, paperback, $19.95.
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