BUSY BIRDIES

Spectacular photographs combine with tight participle couplets to present a variety of bird behaviors. Some are obvious—“birdy sipping” captures a hummingbird with its beak plunged into a narrow tubular flower—others less so—“birdy nipping” depicts one seagull chomping on another’s head. Holt’s images are the stars here, but Schindel’s text presents some chewy vocabulary surprises, in keeping with the series’s standard (Busy Chickens, 2009, etc.). One bird is caught “dribbling,” a pair of owls is seen “eyeing” and a couple of mallards enjoy “dunking.” A variety of species is presented, from songbirds to raptors to water birds and more. The heron “catching” a fish is worth the price of admission alone, and the “birdy jumping” is just fantastic. A list of species pictured is available on the publisher’s website. (Board book. 1-2)