Amy Tan started drawing birds in 2016 and kept a nature journal for six years, and this is a facsimile of it — her ink and watercolor drawings with her handwritten notes running around them. The Northern flicker, the scrub jays she named, a hummingbird nest, a hawk that clears the yard, a bird that hits the window. She’s a beginner at drawing and says so constantly, and the pleasure of the book is watching her get better and get obsessed. David Allen Sibley wrote the foreword. It’s a book about paying close attention to fifty square feet.
The Backyard Bird Chronicles