Ted Floyd ’90 Recommends Three Books on Birding and Nature Study

Floyd’s latest book is a field guide to the birds of the U.S. and Canada

Photo courtesy of Ted Floyd ’90

By James Swinehart ’27

Published Nov. 17, 2025

2 min read

Ted Floyd ’90 is the longtime editor of Birding, the award-winning flagship publication of the American Birding Association, and the author of eight bird books and hundreds of popular articles and technical papers on science and nature. His most recent book is National Geographic’s Field Guide to the Birds of the United States and Canada, published in September.

Birding has exploded in popularity since Floyd’s time at Princeton. He says the ABA’s acclaimed and imaginative Young Birders Program has played an important role in the rise of birding, and he notes with pride that several distinguished program alumni have gone on to become distinguished Princetonians themselves, including Claire Wayner ’22, Kojo Baidoo ’24, and Patrick Newcombe ’25.

Floyd says his “Nat Geo” Field Guide is an authoritative reference work, suitable for anyone seeking to put a name to one or more of the thousand-plus bird species found in the U.S. and Canada. But it is also reflective of today’s “ecological” and “holistic” engagement of bird study, with ample coverage of behavior, vocalizations, and population biology.

At a time when seemingly everyone is getting into birding and nature study, PAW asked Floyd to recommend three books that get at the essence of the experience of birding and nature study.

Kingbird Highway

By Kenn Kaufman

This one is a bit older, published in 1997, but it is timeless, the story of a straight-A student who dropped out of high school to hitchhike across North America to see as many birds as possible. Kaufman never did go back to school, but he quickly established himself as one of the foremost experts on bird identification. He’s still one of the finest “field birders” I’ve ever met, but that’s nothing compared to his most enduring legacy: I consider Kaufman to be the greatest environmental educator in English-speaking North America today. As an environmental educator myself, I hesitate to recommend dropping out of high school. But I heartily recommend Kingbird Highway to any young naturalist — or to any naturalist young at heart.

The Home Place

By J. Drew Lanham

Subtitled “Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature,” this is the work of contemporary birding’s most amazing polymath. Lanham is a mechanical engineer turned Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, a prolific and lauded creative artist working in multiple styles, an activist and social critic, a gourmand and outdoorsman, and a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. The Home Place will resonate with anyone who delights in being in the outdoors, watching birds or doing anything else in nature’s realm. But it is also unsettling, inviting the reader to examine the complexities and contradictions that have shaped, for better and often for worse, the community of nature lovers in America.

The cover of "The Backyard Bird Chronicles," with illustrations of four birds.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles
By Amy Tan

Tan is of course a celebrated novelist — author of The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and others. She is also a birder. But unlike lifelong naturalists Kaufman and Lanham (and, for that matter, me), Tan has come to birding and nature study relatively late in life. Seeking refuge from the eruption of racism toward Asian Americans in 2016, Tan turned to birding — and she went all out. Read The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and you’ll come away with a full understanding of what got so many of us into birding in the first place, regardless of our age or station in life: the thrill of discovery, the intensity and sometimes insanity of it all, and, more than anything else, the joy and wonder and amazement.