She Treads Softly: Turning to Birds

Monday, April 14, 2025

Turning to Birds

Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor
4/29/25; 208 pages
Crown Publishing

Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor is a very highly recommended collection of twelve essays about her passion for birds and discovering a world of meaning in paying attention everywhere you go. Actress Lili Taylor is an avid birder and a board member of the National Audubon Society, the American Birding Association, and the New York City Bird Alliance. This short book was a pleasure to read.

Chapters/stories include an intro, Bird Festival, Bins (binoculars), Bedouin (birding while on location), Cedar waxwing, Swifts, Tribute in Light (9/11 memorial), Finches, Catbird, Sparrow (house sparrow vs. bluebirds), Cranes, Woodcock, and Godspeed (mass bird migration). Included are black-and-white illustrations by Anna Koska. Opening with the story of the circumstances that awakened her love of birds fifteen years ago in the introduction, Taylor goes on to list and then explains that the skills actors used are also valuable skills for birding. These include: listening, attention, investigation, observation, perception, and specificity.

The essays are delightfully personal while also being educational and interesting, especially for those who enjoy birds. Having experienced the migration of the Sandhill cranes many times while growing up, her wonder watching it is understood. I never knew that the 9/11 memorial lights in NYC are turned off for 20 minutes to help protect migrating birds when enough birds are captured in their light and found this comforting. Although perhaps an essay addressing raptors and other birds versus wind turbines would also be educational for people. Taylor's battle to protect her bluebirds was almost personal. My battle was keeping a neighbor's cat away from them.

Turning to Birds is for those who enjoy birds and beautifully crafted essays. Thanks to Crown Publishing for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.