How to Know the Birds by Ted Floyd How to Know the Birds by Ted FloydGreg Neise2019-12-18T12:22:47-05:00 Become a better birder with brief portraits of North American birds. These friendly, relatable essays are a celebration of the art, science, and delights of birding. How to Know the Birds—also a new hardcover, from National Geographic Books ( with a whole different collection of essays)—introduces a holistic approach to birding, by noting how behaviors, settings, and seasonal cycles connect with shape, song, color, gender, age distinctions, and other features traditionally used to identify species. Birding editor and author Ted Floyd guides us through a year of becoming a better birder, each species representing another useful lesson: from explaining scientific nomenclature to noting how plumage changes with age, from chronicling migration patterns to noting hatchling habits.