Ornitherapy is a creative and interesting text with the goal of combining self-help style psychology, meditation, and birding into practice. Holly Merker, who is the author of most of the book, briefly discusses at the end of the text how being a breast cancer survivor led her to seeing birding as medicine. She even used her hair lost in treatment as donated nesting material for birds- a really cool way to turn a struggle into a form of participation with nature and other species.
The book is hardcover with high quality, thick paper. The first half is the book, practices, and images on high gloss and the second half is for the reader's participation and journaling on appropriate matte paper. Thus, it works as both an informative book and a workbook.
Something that stands out with this book is the great appreciation for "common" birds and a strong desire to make the practices in the book accessible to people regardless of whether or not they can afford expensive equipment and fancy vacations. She teaches the reader how to meditate on birds one may find in their yard if they have one or walking down a city street. I have page flags on quite a few practices I plan to implement next time I am out birding. The journaling section also has examples at the top of the authors contributions which I found very interesting and had not seen before. I think that's a great idea to help the reader get the ball rolling.
Some species of birds are featured specifically, most all of them common birds the reader is more likely to encounter. My absolute favorite section was on scavenger birds such as vultures. Anyone who knows me knows that scavenger animals hold a very special place in my heart (and tattooed on my arm.) Merker refers to them as the "MVPs" of the bird world, appreciating how critical they are for the ecosystem and pathogen control. She also discusses the importance and beauty in the "ugly" features of vultures like their bald heads. It's not often that I see appreciation for vultures and pigeons in these ways. I really appreciated that.
There was some language I could do without such as regularly referring to birds as "it." This is very common in discussions of birding unfortunately. But, in the case of this book where the reader is encouraged to connect in such intimate ways with birds, I wish they were referred to with different pronouns than one would use with a toaster. The reader is also asked what bird is their "spirit animal" which is also a very common thing for people to say in the sphere of appreciating animals, but has been criticized for how its use has harmed indigenous people. This only happens once, so please don't take this paragraph to mean that this book is full of harmful language.
The only thing I really did not like about this book was how most of the images were tampered with. I am sure the designer meant well, and perhaps it's a taste issue for me, but it really downgraded the book. I don't know what inspired the design choices, but the photoshopping was not only distracting, it went counter to everything taught in the texts and meditations of the book. I thought that while reading the book, the images would be sort of a meditation in and of themselves. But, all that most of them did was frustrate and irritate me. There would be a beautiful landscape sunset with a flock of birds and the designer would then copy/paste some other birds crammed together that don't fit the image or the setting. There are many instances where the way the images were designed are ways in which one would never see birds in the wild. Meditations on viewing birds in the sky are accompanied by images of 20+ birds copy/pasted into a 3 foot section of the sky that would never be there in those numbers. An image of a single common house sparrow in flight would have been more engaging. Sometimes the same bird is copy/pasted right next to another copy. I noticed a marked difference when I was reading a page with a gorgeous close up image of bird feathers or a gorgeous landscape with a single bird in their natural habitat. There were even images that already included a ton of birds, and still, more birds from another image were pasted on top of them. I was constantly wondering what the original images looked like as they all looked gorgeous underneath it all. The poor design choices made me think of why harmful and exploitative facilities like zoos and animal circuses exist- humans want to see everyone packed together for entertainment, not in their natural habitats. The text in this book is the absolute opposite of that- teaching us how to appreciate every moment in nature. So, there's just a huge clash here.
Even though I was distracted by the graphic design sometimes, this book was still very enjoyable and informative. Birding has truly changed my life and I definitely consider it to be medicine and a critical part of my healthcare. I love the idea of combining an appreciation for birds with exercises outside of merely trying to identify or "collect" as many sightings as we can (though that can be fun, too!) I will be implementing these skills for sure and anticipate much richer and more mindful experiences to come. I recommend this book to pretty much anyone who could use a break from many of our tech heavy lives as well as anyone generally interested in birding- new and veteran alike. This book opens the door for people who don't know where to start and encourages the experienced to stop and appreciate all of the birds who we have become accustomed to.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
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