Easy Bird Books for Kids (or Beginners)

Our favorite books are the Birds of [state] series by Stan Tekiela. We have purchased Birds of Utah (and been through 2 copies) as well as Birds of Idaho. These books are super-easy for the beginning birder because they are color-coded. Most books categorize birds by types: shorebirds, raptors, finches, etc., but this book has birds categorized by color. So, if you see a bird with orange under its wings, you flip to the orange section. Then, the birds are listed in order of increasing size. So, the last, largest bird in the white section is the Pelican. This makes bird identification easy. I even use this book in my classroom for teaching science (to 4th graders). The other benefit to this book is that it contains only birds that you might find in Utah. More technical, wider-ranging books frustrated us as beginners because we’d think we’d found our bird, only to realize that it can only be seen in eastern Canada! We’ve also found that Stan’s books give the most thorough information about birds, and we love the “Compare to” section. This section refers you to similar birds, so if you find a bird in the book that looks sort of like the one you see, the book directs you to all the birds that are similar. It is truly a beginning birders dream.