Listen to birds sing as you've never listened before, as the world-renowned birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma takes you on personal journeys of discovery and intrigue.

Read stories of wrens and robins, thrushes and thrashers, warblers and whip-poor-wills, bluebirds and cardinals, and many more birds. Learn how each acquires its songs, how songs vary from bird to bird and place to place, how some birds' singing is especially beautiful or ceaseless or complex, how some do not sing at all, how the often quiet female has the last word, and why.

Hear a baby wren and the author's own daughter babble as each learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself.

Feel the extraordinary energy in the songs just before sunrise as dawn's first light sweeps across this singing planet. Hear firsthand the unmistakable evidence that there are not one but two species of marsh wrens and two species of winter wrens in North America. Learn not only to hear but to see birds sing in the form of sonagrams, as these visual images dance across the pages while you listen to the accompanying CD.

Using your trained ears and eyes, you can begin your own journeys of discovery. Listen anew to birds in your backyard and beyond, exploring the singing minds of birds as they tell all that they know. Join Kroodsma not only in identifying but in identifying with singing birds, connecting with nature's musicians in a whole new way.

Kroodsma has written a fascinating and entertaining book for anyone who yearns to understand the hidden dramas unfolding in his or her own backyard. Using highly personal stories, Kroodsma explores how and why birds sing.

'Don Kroodsma has a rare ability to make science entertaining. Tens of thousands of readers have already gone behind the music of birdsong. From the New York Times to Entertainment Weekly, the book was universally acclaimed for encouraging the reader to listen to birdsong with an inquisitive mind.The Singing Life of Birds is a fascinating read for anyone who yearns to understand the hidden dramas unfolding in his or her own backyard. Using highly personal stories, Kroodsma puts the reader inside the mind of a research scientist to explore how and why birds sing and how we can better understand them through their songs. He deals with questions such as How does an individualacquire its songs—are they innate and encoded in the DNA, or are they learned? How and why do songs of individuals differ from place to place? Why do birds expend so much effort in singing?'

'DONALD KROODSMA, winner of the 2006 John Burroughs Medal Award and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, has studied birdsong for more than thirty years. He was recognized as the \"reigning authority on the biology of avian vocal behavior\"in the citation for his 2003 Elliot Coues Award from the American Ornithologists\'Union.'