The Backyard Birdsong Guide ─ Eastern and Central North America: A Guide to Listening

Building on the tremendous success of Bird Songs (250,000 copies sold),The Backyard Birdsong Guides are regional, interactive handbooks of birds and their songs for beginning bird-watchers. With a touch-button electronic module housing common vocalizations of 75 species from across Eastern and Central North America, this volume offers a truly sensory way to identify and get to know local birds. Crisply detailed and scientifically accurate illustrations accompany each entry, and up-to-date range maps from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provide clear geographical reference points. Complete with an introduction to birdsong that will inspire readers to look out their kitchen windows and venture out in the field, this unique book provides an exciting entryway into the subtle art of birding.

Donald Kroodsma is professor emeritus of ornithology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a world-renowned authority on birdsongs. He is the author ofThe Singing Life of Birds (winner of the 2006 John Burroughs Medal Award and the American Birding Association's Robert Ridgway Distinguished Service Award for excellence in publications pertaining to field ornithology),The Backyard Birdsong Guides, and Birdsong by the Seasons.

Donald's work on bird song is legendary. In 2003 the American Ornithologists' Union called him the "reigning authority on the biology of avian vocal behavior." Kroodsma received his Ph.D. at Oregon State University and has traveled all over North and South America researching bird song. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union and the Animal Behavior Society and has published hundreds of academic and popular articles. He lives in Hatfield, MA.