What the Robin Knows
What the Robin Knows by Jon Young
Reviewed by L. Bennett
As a kid Jon Young, author of this book, learned tracking and bird watching. He honed his skills as he grew up and traveled to other places. He now teaches what he learned to others. Along the way Young decided that birds are the key to understanding the natural world and can provide clues to unseen activity if one knows how to listen and watch. For him, the American robin is the best bird to teach humans the critical lessons of nature and is also a stand-in for birds everywhere. In this book Young uses examples from his personal experiences and stories about people in his classes to illustrate how to pay attention and learn about nature. He breaks the process into steps for the human and categorizes the behaviors of birds. Put his lessons together and you can gain a new perspective for your wanders through your backyard, forests, swamps, or wherever. It took me a while to get into this book and to stick with it, but in the end I liked what he had to say but not so much how he expressed himself. Good stuff, nonetheless.
