This is a virtual storybook account of the author’s personalized observations throughout Ontario’s cottage playground. It clearly illustrates the downright fun, vast beauty, and consuming involvement of bird watching – even for the most sceptical of laymen. Bill Mansell’s daily experiences at birding, spread over a period of sixty-five years, result in such a familiarity with his subject that the reader is drawn as a participant into a delicately beautiful intimacy with avian nature. Birds of the Cottage Country will be read by some solely for its humour and humanistic style; yet serious birdwatchers will also find it a refreshingly new guide and reference tool.