A bird is itself. It isn't like any other living thing. You never could mistake it for a dog or a lizard or a butterfly or a boy. But what makes a bird a bird? Here's a book that tells you all the fascinating answers to that question.

Feathers with zippers; toes that work with built-in pulleys; eyes with extra eyelids like windshield wipers; bodies built like airplanes; beaks that work as nutcrackers, chisels, rakes, sieves, nets, knives and forks, spears, and vises; stomachs like grinding machines—these are only a few of the wonderful things that make a bird a bird.

How birds fly, hop, perch or swim; how they catch their food, build their many, many kinds of nests; hatch their eggs; raise their young; spend their winters, and do all the other things in their busy, busy lives—it's all here in a book just full of surprises that are true.

Written in Margaret Williamson's own easy-to-understand, lively style, with her own drawings as gay as a bird's song and as true to life as birds themselves.

*Publisher recommendation: Grades 3-6

From the dust jacket