Bird Life & Behavior new cover design for the flexibound edition in 2009
Bird Life & Behavior original cover design for hardcover edition in 2000
info from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Info and sales at your local independent bookstore or Amazon.com
Published 2001, new cover in Sep 2009 (but no editorial changes)
A leatherbound edition published by Easton Press
Updates and corrections are here
Related information:
A list of reference sources and further reading, listed by chapter, is here
The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, published in October 2001, was conceived as the companion to the Guide to Birds. This book provides a wealth of detail about the nesting, mating, and other behavior. Even though these things do not have direct application to identification, and are not included in the identification guide, these behaviors are truly fascinating, and birders enjoy knowing about them. The plan for this book was to provide a layperson’s introduction to the most intriguing and interesting facets of the birds’ lives – emphasizing things that birders are likely to see and ask about, and things that add to a larger picture of the natural world.
Excellent books such as The Birder’s Handbook and Lives of North American Birds already provide detailed data on each species individually. If you want to know the incubation period of the Lewis’ Woodpecker you can find it there. My goal in Bird Life and Behavior was to offer a synthesis, presenting the information and also interpreting it to describe patterns and the reasons behind them. This book will tell you that the incubation period for all species of woodpeckers is about the same at 11 to 14 days.
I envisioned it as a book that would function the way a good field trip leader does – pointing out the things that make the birds more interesting and that relate the birds to other species and to their environment, enriching the whole birding experience. I drew on my 11 years experience as a professional bird tour leader to set the style and to choose the types of information that would be presented in the guide.
David,
I wanted to give a friend of mine the link to the long list of corrections and updates you once had posted for “Bird Life and Behavior,” but the link on this page now leads to a 404 not found page:
http://www.sibleyguides.com/about/the-sibley-guide-to-bird-life-behavior/
Is the list gone forever or could you please fix the link to it?
Thanks,
Betsy
Hi Betsy, The link should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.