American Birds: A Literary Companion

Naturalist and activist Williams (When Women Were Birds) and Rubenfeld, a former Linnaean Society of New York president, present a rich literary aviary. After three undated Ojibwa, Tigua, and Pima songs about, respectively, hawks, mockingbirds, and road runners, the editors proceed chronologically, from J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s 1782 essay “On Snakes, and on the Humming Bird,” to W.S. Merwin’s 2001 poem, “Unknown Bird,” which ends the collection on a timely note of ecological concern. Between these two entries, the anthology samples precisely detailed 19th-century ornithological descriptions from Audubon, Lewis and Clark, and Thoreau’s journals, and represents 19th-century bird-themed poetry with works from both Emily Dickinson and the now less-read William Cullen Bryant. Twentieth-century prose selections include familiar names like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, who laments that “the cheery quail, alas! are rarely found near us now” at his Sagamore Hill summer house on Long Island. Among the 20th-century poets, Robert Frost writes about the oven bird; Marianne Moore, about the frigate pelican; and Elizabeth Bishop, the sandpiper. Birders will be relieved to find favorite Roger Tory Peterson here, and general readers may especially enjoy Ogden Nash’s punny confession of birder inadequacy: “I sometimes visualize in my gin/ The Audubon that I audubin.” Williams and Rubenfeld’s assemblage will satisfy anyone helplessly twitterpated by birds. (Mar.)