Birdsearch. Arcturus, 2021.

Bridsearch is a collection of word search puzzles all dealing with the subject of birds. While I am indifferent to word search puzzles (I prefer crosswords and sudoku), this caught my attention because of the birding aspect. It was cleverly done, with many distractors. For example, one of the words in one puzzle was cowbird. One of the strings said cowbire. Was it a typo? No, cowbird was hidden in the puzzle as well.

This covers birds all around the world. While I know North American birds and have had some knowledge of birds of England and Brazil, I was unfamiliar with many Asian, African, Australian, and Pacific Island birds. These birds appear in the puzzles as well.

I learned more about birds around the world by doing these puzzles and researching their names. For example, people familiar with birds know that rails are hard to see. They prefer tall grass, usually in wetlands. Many are nocturnal. Some are flightless. I learned that one species has a reputation of being so hard to find that its common name is the Invisible Rail. Interesting stuff here, even if word searches are not your favorite game.