A wild bird rehabilitator and nature artist describes her painstaking efforts to rescue injured birds and her experiences when those birds come back to visit, looking at the personality and quirks of individual birds of different species.

Spring songbirds : peeking into the nest. The bluebird effect ; Tree swallow : the early bird wins my heart ; Speaking of starlings ; Chickadee : tough tit ; Barn swallow : old friends and eggshells ; Carolina wren : kitchen sink ornithology -- Summer work : drawing, raising, and saving birds. Hummingbird summer ; Osprey : hooked by round talons ; Nobody can cuss like a titmouse ; Chimney swift : high-maintenance aerialist ; Rose-breasted grosbeak : close encounters of the bird kind ; Scarlet tanager : a voice in the canopy ; The summer of phoebes ; Piping plover and least tern : you do what you must -- Autumnal reflections : pondering the imponderable. The strange case of the companionable grouse ; White-throated sparrow : the song in my heart ; Savannah sparrow : forever wild ; Orchard oriole : I know why the caged bird flutters ; Touched by a redtail ; Ivory-billed woodpecker : not saying goodbye -- Winter musings : birds we feed, birds that feed us. Love and death among the cranes ; Mourning dove : the meatiest songbird ; Northern cardinal : stoking the red fire ; Turkey vulture : the unlikely totem ; Chestnut-fronted macaw : first comes love-- .