Keeping Common Birds Common

A spotlight on Ithaca-area birds and the plants that protect and nurture them.

Birds rely on their habitats for food and shelter. The right plants provide essential nesting materials, fruits, nectar, and seeds at the right times. These habitats also foster rich insect populations—such as caterpillars, which are a vital, nutrient-dense food source for growing chicks—and support the small animal populations that raptors and other predatory birds depend on.

This exhibit features stunning bird portraits taken by photographer Marie Read on the grounds of the Cornell Botanic Gardens and its natural areas to showcase the vital connections between habitat and bird life. The pairing of birds and key flora, represented here with botanical illustrations from library collections, helps to illuminate the critical role that green space conservation, habitat restoration and thoughtful plant selection for cultivated gardens can play in keeping our common birds common for generations to come.

Local wildlife photographer and author Marie Read captured these intimate moments that reveal how plants support birds, insects, and other wildlife that depend on them. Read is known for exquisite bird photography that combines beauty with impactful story-telling. Her images have been featured nationally and internationally in magazines, books, calendars, educational exhibits and elsewhere. She has authored or co-authored seven books on bird natural history and bird photography. Her quest for photogenic subjects takes her around the globe, but among Marie’s most favorite subjects are the local birds, like the ones featured in this exhibit, that she finds near her home in Freeville, New York.

A rich diversity of trees, shrubs, and other plants provide food and shelter for wildlife throughout the gardens, arboretum, and natural areas of Cornell Botanic Gardens (CBG). CBG staff and volunteers work hard to maintain and enhance plant diversity so these interdependent systems remain healthy and resilient, and the life within them can continue to thrive even in the face of climate change and invasive species.

If you visit and look closely, you too may catch moments like the ones captured in the photographs featured in this exhibit. All areas are open from dawn to dusk, every day of the year, free of charge.

A number of key flora that sustain thriving bird and insect life in the Cornell Botanic Gardens—and in our own backyards—are represented in this exhibit with botanical illustrations from the collections of Cornell University Library and the L. H. Bailey Hortorium Library. The specific sources range from a comprehensive early 19th century government-funded inventory of potentially commercially valuable North American trees, authored by French botanist François-André Michaux and illustrated by some of the foremost French botanical illustrators of the day, to a pocket-sized wildflower guide by self-taught American naturalist Chester A. Reed, who is best known for creating the first portable bird identification books for popular use. Original print copies of the featured books in this exhibit can be viewed in person on the Cornell University campus, and in all cases digital scans are also viewable online from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

From fall of 2025 through spring 2027 Cornell University Library (CUL) is hosting a series of exhibits titled From the Brink: Contributions to a Sustainable Future from across Cornell. The exhibit series showcases collections, research, and artistic expression from across Cornell, stimulating conversations about the threat of environmental and cultural loss and its implications, while also illuminating ways of addressing these issues of critical, global importance with insights into positive developments and constructive steps toward a healthier, more sustainable future for our planet and our communities.

Consisting of eight exhibits in five unit libraries, the From the Brink series has been created by CUL staff in these units working in collaboration with other Cornell institutions, departments, faculty, students and artists.

Keeping Common Birds Common: Birds & Habitat in Cornell Botanic Gardens & Beyond is the result of a collaboration between photographer Marie Read, the Cornell Botanic Gardens, and Mann Library. It is made possible by the support of the Elizabeth E. (Betty) Rowley Fund for Mann Library.