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Coloring books are beautiful, delightful fun, and they can be practical birding guides as well. Are you ready to pick up a colored pencil, marker, or crayon and discover birds in a new way?

How Coloring Books Teach Us About Birds

Coloring books have long been considered simple toys to teach children manual dexterity and color coordination, but they can be wonderful teaching tools as well. Many coloring books featuring birds not only have accurate proportions and field mark details for the species they depict, but the books often include simple information about the bird, such as its preferred habitat, scientific names, migration pattern, and typical behaviors. As birders of any age color each picture, they can learn a great deal about the birds they bring to colorful life.

Types of Bird Coloring Books

Bird-themed coloring books come in several variations. Simple, basic coloring books illustrate creative scenes and elementary details, and are a great introduction to different types of birds and familiar bird species. The birds may be stylized or could even be completely generalized and fictional, but still provide a great palette for birdy fun. These are often the most child-oriented books with fewer details and stronger, bolder lines, but can be entertaining for all ages to color.

More detailed books illustrate birds accurately and with great attention to field marks, feather patterns, and postures. These books can be colored as field guides, creating true-to-life representations of each species. More details are outlined in each illustration, and the pictures are more likely to include extensive habitat details. This allows more attention to detail in shading and coloring with different hues, creating depth and realism in each coloring page.

Creative bird-themed coloring books often feature intricate mandala-like details and extensive lines for mindfulness pattern coloring. Patterns such as paisley, swirls, geometric shapes, and other details are common and create great depth in the images. The birds may be realistic or stylized, and the illustrations are more likely to outline many more feathers and intricate details. This can allow for much more creative coloring and self-expression, or the patterns can be colored for realism with different shades and shadows.

Benefits of Coloring

Any coloring book, from the simplest to the most complex, can provide a range of benefits, especially for birders. Coloring can enhance…

• Mindfulness and concentration, essential traits for any birder
• Attention to detail and color variation, perfect for helping with bird identification
• Patience and perseverance to complete each coloring page
• Manual dexterity, which can help with focusing binoculars and other birding tasks
• Perception of proportion, habitat, and other related details to assist identification
• A sense of peace and calm, relieving anxiety and improving mental balance

With so many benefits to birding, why not try coloring and see how your birding improves?

Best Bird Coloring Books

There are many different coloring books available with bird and nature themes. They vary in size and style, with many different birds to colorize.

• Fifty Favorite Birds Coloring Book – A moderately detailed book featuring 50 North American species with habitat settings and a full-color guide for accuracy.
• The Birdwatcher’s Coloring Book – 30 beautiful illustrations to color, including dynamic activities, familiar settings, and basic identification details for North American birds.
• The Audubon Birds Coloring Book – Stunning collection of more than 40 Audubon prints with color guides to recreate this amazing artwork in your own hand.
• State Birds and Flower Coloring Book – Includes all 50 state birds and flowers, plus the national bird (bald eagle) and flower (rose) in beautiful pages to color.
• Birds of Prey Coloring Book – Detailed book featuring 42 raptors from around the world, plus realistic habitats, scientific names, and a full-color guide for accuracy.
• Birds: A Mindful Coloring Book – More than 35 stunning patterns representing some of the world’s most beautiful birds, with paisley and other details for relaxing coloring.
• The Sibley Birds Coloring Field Journal – 75 birds to color in true field guide style, with accurate field marks, habitat details, a color guide, and bird anatomy references.
• Coloring Book for Adults: Hummingbirds – More than 50 hummingbird-themed designs with exquisite flower details to improve mindfulness and relaxation.
• Little Birds Stained Glass Coloring Book – Just 8 simple patterns on translucent paper to bring the most familiar backyard birds to colorful life.
• Birdtopia: Coloring Book – Amazingly detailed illustrations of worldwide birds, including birds-of-paradise, toucans, flamingos, fairy-wrens, and other colorful subjects.
• Colorful Parrots: Tropical Birds Coloring Book – 30 beautiful macaws, parrots, toucans, and other tropical birds with mindfulness patterns to creatively color.
• Birds: An Easy Large Print Adult Coloring Book – Beautiful birds of all types – ducks, songbirds, herons, swans, owls, and more – with larger patterns for easier, relaxing coloring.
• Creative Haven Birds Color by Number Coloring Book – Detailed illustrations of 46 species of different bird types with an integrated number guide for coloring accuracy.
• The Aviary: Bird Portraits to Color – Beautiful images of eagles, jays, puffins, hummingbirds, and more to intricately color, with habitats to frame each stunning portrait.
• Whimsical Birds: A Stress-Relieving Coloring Book – Stylized depictions of birds that can be creatively colored without worrying about field marks or natural accuracy.

These are just a sampling of the bird-themed coloring books available; every day there are more options published, giving birders and nature-lovers more opportunities to spread their creative wings and color their own birds. Which birds will you take colorful flight with today?