What a charming book, and with paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. I was given this (and the Burgess Animal Book for Children) when I was quite young. Recently picked it up to read again. What fun.

Peter Rabbit meets all the birds in his neighborhood and learns their habits, where they nest, what they eat, how to identify them. A lot of information and you barely see it go by.

Love Thorton W. Burgess books. A great living book for natural science studies. We would read the chapter, view images and videos at www.allaboutbirds.org or on YouTube, then color as life like as possible images from Fifty Favorite Birds Dover Coloring Book. The kids and I learned so much which fostered a joy for bird watching.

It took us over a year to read this, but what sweet and fun adventures were had in the “Old Orchard”. We definitely learned a lot about birds, but more so, gained a deeper love and appreciation for our feathered friends

Another old curio, aimed at helping children identify birds by their appearance, behavior, and nesting habits. Ostensibly Burgess achieves this in narrative form, but very few plotlike events actually take place, and the "action" mainly consists of dialogue between the inquisitive Peter Cottontail and Jenny Wren. (For most of the book, these are the only two characters who get "real" names; others are baldly monikered things like Yellow Wing the Flicker or Longlegs the Great Blue Heron. Glory the Cardinal is not bad, but Dear Me the Phoebe is not even pretending to be a name).

The descriptions themselves are superb. My edition includes black-and-white, low-contrast photo plates of each bird, but these are really not needed; one would be better served by using an actual birding guide as a companion book. Too, most bird guides do not include the nesting habits; this book does.

As there's not much of a story, I am not sure this would really engage children; perhaps around ages 4-6 it could work as an episodic read-aloud if the adult reader were, themselves, a good theatrical narrator enthusiastic about birdwatching who hopes to pass on that love to their audience. One caution is that Burgess lived and wrote for the Northeastern U.S. Outside that region, connecting the species in this book with the those outside the window will be difficult.

Peter Rabbit*, with his insatiable curiosity, learns about birds, first as they arrive in the spring, then more as he notices that some do not leave in the fall, then still more as some who summer further north stop by on their way south. The appearance and behavior of 86 birds are described. 58 birds are illustrated with paintings on 32 full-color plates (B&W in later editions).

This book is written from the perspective of the author's home in Massachusetts. I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it covers some birds not seen around here and does not cover some others not seen there. No Steller's Jay, for example. Even so, it includes birds I do see a lot here, including juncos, chickadees, flickers, robins, crows, starlings, doves, geese, and hummingbirds. From the perspective of someone living much further north or south, the migration described would be different than what you see in your area.

The birds can be looked up alphabetically in an index, so this book serves as a reference book as well as one to be read cover to cover.

The illustrations are beautiful paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, a master of naturalistic bird and animal paintings and a game-changer in that field. The first edition, with the illustrations in color, is well worth having for those illustrations alone. But in 1919 it was not practical to illustrate every bird mentioned, so it's helpful to supplement this book with a modern bird guide to get illustrations of those birds not illustrated in here.

Chapter 5 says that robins find worms by hearing them, which was widely believed at the time. 47 years later a scientist discovered that robins find worms by seeing them, not by hearing them.

Try to get the Little, Brown first edition, a hardcover, published in 1919 and with many reprints in later years. As far as I know it is the only edition with color illustrations. Best source is Abebooks.com. Try to get a first printing, as it was difficult in those days to get the three colors of the illustrations to all line up exactly and they were not always as careful in later printings. First printings say 1919 not only on the copyright page (where they all do) but also on the title page, where later printings show the year of the printing.

I have a somewhat battered 1919 first printing, and it has a beautifully penned inscription -- in fountain pen, as this was before ballpoint pens -- to a girl from her mother. The inscription had enough information in it to google the eulogy of the original owner, who was given the book at age 12 and had an impressive career.

*Not Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit of course. Long story there, but in a nutshell, when the author first started making up stories for his 4yo son, the boy, who already loved Potter's book, insisted that the rabbit character must be named Peter Rabbit. Potter's publisher didn't copyright her book in America, so there were a lot of Peter Rabbits in America in those days, including shameless copies of Potter's book. Burgess' Peter Rabbit borrows absolutely nothing from Potter but the name.

Just couldn't get into this one, despite it's beloved reputation. Switched to Storybook of Science, which we are greatly enjoying.
Will try the Burgess book of Animals after that, and see if that one goes over better.

Wonderful short stories to introduce a great many birds to children through descriptions, nesting and feeding habits, and pictures.

Excellent read aloud that I know we will return to again and again. My boys loved it and it was so fun learning about birds and then immediately using what we learned in nature.

This was such a great book to read aloud with my 7-year-old animal lover. We both learned so much as we followed the inquisitive Peter Rabbit around the Old Orchard and surrounding areas, meeting old and new bird friends and even some enemies. We especially loved looking each bird up on The Cornell Lab’s Merlin Bird ID app so we could see pictures of the various birds, hear their songs and calls, and see a map of where they are likely to be found.

Still love this book! So do the kids. :)

The Burgess Bird book is a great way to introduce kids to different birds. The fictional format keeps things more interesting, and Burgess' style is generally entertaining. But this one was a little too long for our preferences--it seemed to drag on a bit in the last quarter of the book, to the point that we were all looking forward to it being over.

Definitely not a reading fail, but also not a family favorite. I'm still probably going to read The Burgess Animal Book and the Burgess Flower book with them.

Bird textbook in written in story form in 1919 for children.