The Songs of Wild Birds is a unique introduction to the voices of more than fifty native birds. Along with beautiful songbirds, the book features owls, rails, bitterns, snipe, and a host of lesser-known birds that make strange, curious, or bizarre sounds. The informative text and outstanding photographs are accompanied by memory phrases and sonagrams that provide phonetic and visual representations of songs. In fifty essays, Lang Elliott shares his favorite stories about these birds, with emphasis on the unusual aspects of their singing or calling behavior.

The accompanying sixty-five-minute audio compact disc presents samples of all the songs and calls discussed, along with narrated introductions by the author.