If you’re reading this column, you probably don’t need any convincing that interest in birds and birding is skyrocketing. Take, for example, the seemingly increasing use of bird-related clues in the popular game-show, Jeopardy, in recent years (they misidentified a bird at least once). And just this weekend we got a little rush during a rerun (from May, 2024) when one of the quizzes on the popular National Public Radio show, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” was all about birds.

You know something’s hit the big time when it cracks into pop culture, even the slightly nerd version of it.

That also means that there are likely many people in your life that would really love to have a birding-related gift this holiday season. We’ve got two gift ideas that we know they’d love. How do we know? Because they’re two books that we wrote!

We produced “Maine’s Favorite Birds” as the perfect book for the person (young or old) who has a passing interest in birds, has a curious mind and loves to learn, or who loves beautiful and artful illustrations. The book was intentionally kept to the just-over-a-hundred species of birds that a person is most likely to see in Maine. Beginners and people with a mild interest in birds sometimes glaze over when confronted with thick field guides illustrating hundreds of species. Our book was tailored to allow that beginner to quickly narrow the bird they saw down to the most likely species.

Putting a name to something you’ve just noticed for the first time can be the magical hook that opens a person’s eyes to the incredible mysteries and beauty of the natural world. People who go on to have an abiding and sometimes overwhelming interest in birds sometimes call the bird that first opened their eyes to what was to them a previously hidden world, their “spark bird.” “Maine’s Favorite Birds” is a perfect gift to help someone find their “spark bird” and go on to have a lifetime of satisfaction through their growing interest in birds.

“Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide” is, as the title suggests, a book about birds and birding hotspots a long way from Maine. The islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao lie just off the coast of Venezuela but have long been part of the Netherlands, although today each island has its own unique political status. All three islands are exceedingly popular tourist destinations including for a great many people from Maine, New England, and other parts of the U.S.  We are regularly bumping into people who have traveled there or will soon be doing so, including many people interested in birds.

“Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide” is the essential guide for anyone traveling to those islands. It showcases the more than 280 species seen on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao and provides descriptions of and directions to the best places to bird, from the famous white sand beaches to hidden watering holes to the majestic national parks.

Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao—the "ABCs"—located in the southwestern Caribbean, not far from Venezuela, share fascinating ecological features with the West Indies as well as the South American mainland, making birding on the islands unique. The identification portion of the book features endemic subspecies such as the brown-throated parakeet; a wide variety of wintering North American migrants; spectacular restricted-range northern South American species such as the yellow-shouldered parrot, bare-eyed pigeon, troupial, ruby-topaz hummingbird, and yellow oriole; and West Indian species including the pearly-eyed thrasher and Caribbean elaenia.

Both books make fabulous gifts and are available online and through your local bookstore!

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Tilbury House) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).