Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing by Lili Taylor

Actor Lili Taylor, who lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York, has been a birder for about fifteen years. She took a break from work and started hearing, then seeing birds all around her. Most of her observations are in New York City or on location where she’s working, with a few trips just to bird, often in company with other birders.

Each chapter is an insightful essay about her experiences with a different species of bird, beginning with pigeons. Each type of bird features an illustration by Anna Koska. The book begins with Lili as a novice birder, eager to learn about and observe more birds in their natural habitats, from Brooklyn parks to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, with birding trips to northern Ohio and the Platte River in Nebraska to see sandhill cranes. Each chapter has just the right amount of description to make me feel as if I’m sharing her birding experience. Her writing about the sandhill cranes sent me to maps and online to see just where and when the cranes spend time on their great migration, as I’ve seen them in smaller numbers in Illinois and Indiana.

I only differ from Lili in my fondness for house sparrows, for which she has a strong dislike, as they are aggressive towards eastern bluebirds. Fair, but I don’t see any bluebirds in my area. A slightly melancholy essay is set in Lombard, Illinois, featuring swifts which roost in tall chimneys. Lili has turned her newfound love of birds into a passion, and now serves on the boards of three birding organizations. I really liked how birding made her feel alive and at home in new and temporary work locations.

Brenda