Many people with a passion for birds can point to a specific event or series of circumstances which kindled that passion within them. In Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, (Crown Publishing Group, 2025) author Lili Taylor takes us with her on a personal journey as she enters into the world of birds. Through 13 essays, she shares her encounters with members of the avian world. We meet pigeons and House Sparrows on urban streets, Gray Catbirds in a city park in Manhattan, Gambel’s Quail in New Mexico, Sandhill Cranes in the Platte River Valley of Nebraska, and Eastern Bluebirds in upstate New York. 

The author is an actor who has appeared in movies, on television, and on stage for nearly four decades. Mystic Pizza, Say Anything, Dog Fight, and Rudy are some of her many movie credits. Her artistic eye and actor’s gift for storytelling draw the reader into her life and into the lives of the birds she observes. That ability is most evident as she relates the story of an experience in Ohio when an American Woodcock landed on her chest: “My world narrowed and widened simultaneously, as if I had entered a new dimension but in a sacred bubble made up of me and this living, breathing, feathery entity.”

If you are brand new to this world of birding, Taylor will open your eyes to what birds can teach us about the natural world around us. If you have been immersed in the world of birds for many years or decades, you will be reminded of a time when the world narrowed and all that mattered was that splendid, feathered creature before you with whom you shared a brief moment in time and space. For all of us, Lili Taylor provides inspiration for getting out into the world to see birds, and to do what we can to protect those little creatures who inspire us and bring us joy.