Birdtalk: Conversations with Birds

by Alan W. Powers and Dashka Slater

For the last 20 years, Alan Powers, who lives near Cape Cod, has experimented with birdcalls--mimicking and answering the calls he hears around his country home, in cities, and abroad in France and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583940650
• ISBN13: 9781583940655
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Frog in Well
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A strange and wonderful book

It really is about talking to birds--and how! Powers, in perfectly paced prose, writes a series of engaging and delightfully idiosyncratic essays about what it means to 'talk' to birds; ultimately, though, this is a book about listening, watching, appreciating the world around us. Let me sum up the power of my reaction by saying that this is a birder I'd like to bird with.

A musical score of nature

Birdtalk is really an amazing book--literate, amusing, and indispensible to bird lovers. But it is more than a bird book. Alan Powers, along with possessing an affinity for words, is a master whistler, an accomplished pianist, and a patient listener--and, oh yeah, a very early riser. Powers uses his keen ear and musical ability to "translate" the songs of bird into notes on his piano, a musical score of nature, if you will. More than that, he translates these notes into a narrative language that humans can (hope to) understand. This is a nature book and a bird book, but it is also a human book, and a very astute one to boot.