Excerpted from a longer article:

Timely Take-aways for Life-long Learning: Bird Species
From eagles and hawks to pelicans and owls, several new works of nonfiction for adults examine the lives of specific bird species. Along the way, they discuss the importance of conservation and strategies being use to save these beloved species.

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A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save our Vanishing Birds.
Anders Gyllenhaal & Beverly Gyllenhaal, 2023, Simon & Schuster
Themes: Nature, Animals, Birds
This fast-paced nonfiction narrative examines the quest to stop the collapse of bird species. The journalists share stories of rescue missions from mountains and plains to coastal areas across America.
Take-aways: The book demonstrates a wide range of strategies for addressing birds on the brink of extinction. Use these examples to inspire young scientists.

Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb

I live in a suburb on a Great Lake and my sister lives on a farm in south central Wisconsin, so we both were of the opinion that the most major cause of the drastic reduction in songbirds that we observed was due to deadly chemical pollution by farmers and those who want weed-free lawns. We're not birders, so we have no documentation, but we are each observant septuagenarians who love birdsong. But what these dedicated and committed people from various NGOs as well as government Fish and Wildlife service are doing to identify causes and in some cases bring nearly extinct species back to life is beyond impressive. Habitat often cannot be restored, but it's destruction can be halted, and sometimes the species might be relocated to a comparable habitat in some small way that helps to improve their numbers. This book details their efforts in a very personal way and should serve as a call to action for each and every one of us. Very impressive!
I requested and received an EARC from Simon & Schuster Publishers via NetGalley. Thank you!
#BringBirdsBack ( )

A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal is a fascinating look at both the big picture and the very specific aspects of just how great the loss of bird population is.

I think what makes this particularly effective is the very personal nature of the book while also being about the larger problem(s). So often, when numbers are staggeringly large, it is easy to be moved but also paralyzed by the very enormity of the number. While the Gyllenhaal's give us those numbers, they are delivered with their personal journey to observe people taking very real action to try to reverse this trend. Coupled with additional cases where situations have been at least stalled and possibly reversed, we learn both the enormity as well as how we can do something.

The last chapter about things we can do offer the reader very workable ideas, which may well generate additional ideas in the reader, so this is valuable beyond simply being some casual "we can do it" pep talk.

I would recommend this to anyone concerned with what is happening to the environment in which we live, well, at least until we either finish destroying it or reverse course. Those coming primarily for the science read may well be motivated to find ways to help, even if that mostly consists of spreading the word.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss. ( )