The Bird House offers a variety of birding books. We highly recommend Birds of the Lehigh Valley and Vicinity, the premier guidebook for bird-watching in the region. It contains a wealth of information for backyard birding enthusiasts and serious birders who enjoy walking through the many parks, trails and woodlands of our area.
The book was written by three acknowledged birding experts and was published by the Lehigh Valley Audubon Society. The guide lists not only the species found in our area but also their relative abundance. Color photographs of commonly seen species are included for easy identification.
More than 50 excellent birding locations are listed in the guidebook, along with driving information (including GPS coordinates) and the kinds of species you are likely to see at a given time of the year.
For instance, if you plan to visit Jacobsburg State Park in Northampton County, the book suggests the species to watch for. Pause in the brushy woods near the bird blind to look for flycatchers, redstarts and tanagers. A stand of hemlocks and oaks, located at an outcropping of slate, is a good place to see woodpeckers and thrushes. Walk down a nearby trail for the best place for migrating warblers in the spring. A bit farther is a tranquil area where hawks soar above and vireos and orioles flit among evergreens.
Even if you confine your bird-watching to the backyard or neighborhood, the book illustrates which species you are most likely to see during each season of the year. For instance, if you enjoy the many different kinds of sparrows in our area, you'll know when to expect the arrival of American Tree Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows in the winter and when Chipping Sparrows are bound to arrive in the spring. When do catbirds arrive and juncos arrive and depart? That's in the book.
For the novice, Birds of Pennsylvania and Stokes Field Guide to Birds provides page after page of locally seen species, with each page color-coded. Let's suppose you are walking along Lehigh Canal and you see a medium-sized duck with a green head. Check the green color pages. You'll be able to determine whether you saw a Mallard or a Northern Shoveler.
Another option is merging sight and sound. Birds of Pennsylvania also offers an audio CD to accompany the field guide. Think of how much you'll appreciate the advantage of hearing birds that are not immediately visible! Warblers and thrushes are often heard and not seen. By taking your hand-carry CD player with you into the woods or fields, you can use the two senses to enjoy your bird-watching trip.
Lovers of owls might enjoy a book by naturalist Scott Weidensaul, an internationally recognized author who began his writing career at a newspaper in nearby Pottsville and is now a contributing editor of Audubon magazine. Weidensaul's specialty is owls, having written the Peterson Reference Guide to Owls of North America and the Caribbean and directed Project Owlnet, a bird-banding operation meant to learn more about these secretive nocturnal lives of these amazing creatures.
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