The Stokes bird books major in the sheer delight of discovering the bird in question. The 1991 Stokes Bluebird Book carries this tradition forward without missing a step.
The book’s three sections explore ‘The Birds’, ‘Attracting Bluebirds’, and ‘Bluebird Behavior’. The first section introduces this captivating bird by way of poetry and observations made about it, mostly when the species was more plentiful than it is today. The Stokes then present the ‘Eastern’, ‘Mountain’, and ‘Western Bluebird’ varieties.
The second section details what we’ve learned about compensating for the habit destruction that has made Bluebird numbers drop precipitously in recent times. I bought my copy after undertaking the Quijote’s quest of adding a bluebird house to my Indiana front yard. It was immediately fitted out by a male house wren whose spouse chose other digs.
A final section, comprising nearly half the book’s pages, follows these birds through their life stages.
Through 96 pages, the authors’ prose cannot veil their admiration for these birds and their sheer delight in sympathetic proximity to them.
It all adds up to a winner.
Canter Bridge 
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