Book about fictional birds

[persona22]

Hello

I'm trying to find a book I read years ago which I don't remember the author.
The book is about fictional birds, but it is written as if the birds were real, with tips about where to find them across the United States, along with illustrations of each bird and a full description of their biology and other things of that nature.
Some of the entries feature a bird that is red, white and blue and it sings the national anthem, vulture that grows a colorful crest but only for a few days each year, and a white normal looking bird that changes the colors of their feathers to blue or pink depending of the bird being male or female for just a few weeks each year, along with the shells of their eggs also changing color for that time according to the gender of the unborn bird still inside.

It is an old book, I read it for the first time in 1996.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

That sounds fascinating, and I've love to read it -- I love that kind of stuff. I've one called 'Parallel Botany" (Leo Lionni) so I started with some searches based on that in Goodreads and LibraryThing, which led me to 'cryptozoology'. I did a librarything tag mash with that and birds, and the only thing I got was
"Live Pterosaurs in America: Sightings of Apparent Pterosaurs in the United States"by Jonathan David Whitcomb.

I'm going to keep poking and see what else I find.

[fred_mouse]

Nothing else that looks to be just about birds. A small handful of books that have a range of animals, but nothing they've said twigs like it might be the book you are looking for.

[persona22]

Thank your for your efforts, I wish I could provide more information but what I've written is truly the only things I remember of the book.

[fred_mouse]

No worries -- I had a lovely time looking at books!

[archangelbeth]

Hmmm. https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/02/08/fearsome-critters/ might be useful?

https://abookofcreatures.com/category/birds/
If any of those match, they all have citations, so one of those might work out.

[kk1raven]

This sounds like A Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America by Ben, Cathryn,and John Sill.

[kaylee66]

I looked this up, and found that they also published a second volume called Another Field Guide to Little-Known and Seldom-Seen Birds of North America, which you can read online here: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2204532M/Another_field_guide_to_little-known_seldom-seen_birds_of_North_America

[persona22]

Yes! That's the one!
Thank you so very much for this.