Sy Montgomery Books in Order

Collected from Montgomery's nature columns, these essays investigate the surprising activities of familiar plants and animals. Observations of insects, birds, mammals, and changing seasons invite readers to notice the lives unfolding in backyards, streets, parks, and nearby wild spaces.

Montgomery follows the work of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, three researchers trained by Louis Leakey. Their lives studying chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans reveal different approaches to understanding and protecting the great apes.

Organized around the seasons, these nature essays explore familiar North American plants and animals. Montgomery turns attention to the living world close at hand, tracing the changes and mysteries that become visible as the year moves from one season to another.

Across four journeys into the Amazon, Montgomery seeks the elusive pink river dolphins known as botos. Their biology, conservation pressures, and place in local stories emerge through encounters with researchers, riverside communities, and people who believe the dolphins can change form.

Sy Montgomery joins scientists searching Southeast Asia for an unusual golden bear scarcely known to science. The expedition combines dangerous travel, local folklore, and evolutionary research, exploring what this elusive animal might reveal about biodiversity and conservation.

Fifty essays follow the changing seasons through wildlife found close to home. Montgomery invites readers to encounter plants, birds, animals, and insects directly, combining natural history with observations that make familiar surroundings seem newly rich and surprising.

A sickly piglet becomes Christopher Hogwood, an enormous and much-loved member of Sy Montgomery's household. His adventures draw neighbors and friends into the family's life, teaching the traveling naturalist unexpected lessons about belonging, acceptance, and community.

In the Sundarbans mangrove forests, tigers sometimes kill people yet remain objects of reverence. Montgomery investigates how fear, faith, and daily survival shape relationships between the predators and local communities, revealing an unusual balance that helps protect the animals.

Encounters with chickens, hummingbirds, parrots, hawks, and other birds reveal personalities and abilities often overlooked in familiar species. Montgomery combines firsthand adventures with research to explore avian intelligence, behavior, and the surprising connections between birds and people.

This biography follows Temple Grandin from a difficult childhood to her work transforming the treatment of farm animals. Montgomery explores how Grandin's visual thinking, persistence, and experience of autism shaped both her scientific career and her advocacy.

This picture book recounts how an unwanted cockatoo became a dancing celebrity and a subject of research into music and the brain. Told in Snowball's imagined voice, it follows his performances, scientific importance, and life at a bird rescue.

Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas explore animals ranging from household companions to sharks and octopuses. Their essays use observation and research to challenge assumptions about animal minds, considering what relationships across species reveal about humans too.

Montgomery reflects on thirteen animals whose distinctive personalities helped shape her life. Moving between encounters at home and around the world, she examines empathy, family, grief, forgiveness, and the lessons other species offer about living well.

Inky the octopus leaves his New Zealand aquarium through a drainpipe leading to the sea. This picture book recounts his real escape while introducing young readers to octopus intelligence, curiosity, and the behavior that makes these animals resourceful explorers.

Montgomery follows wildebeest across the Serengeti with scientist Richard D. Estes and fellow travelers. Photographs and observations explore the animals' migration, asking how they find their way and how the movement of great herds shapes the surrounding environment.

Drawing on encounters with dogs, gorillas, octopuses, and other animals, Montgomery introduces young readers to lessons learned beyond a classroom. This picture book explores patience, understanding, forgiveness, and the connections people can build by paying attention to other creatures.

A wild seagull begins visiting Captain Ellis's passenger schooner in a New England harbor. Over several summers, shared food and repeated visits form an unexpected friendship, documented in this picture book about the relationship between a free-living bird and a person.

Working alongside turtle rescuers, Montgomery and artist Matt Patterson help injured animals recover and return to the wild. Their experiences reveal the patience and determination conservation requires, prompting reflections on time, healing, disability, and the value of individual lives.

This illustrated introduction explores the variety, longevity, and unexpected abilities of turtles around the world. Individual animals bring their lives into focus, while facts about their history and present dangers encourage young readers to understand and protect them.

This picture book follows a young hummingbird's early life, introducing the vulnerability of newly hatched birds alongside the extraordinary flying abilities they develop. The story explores how one of the smallest birds begins finding its way in the world.

New research and encounters with octopuses explore their intelligence, flexible bodies, camouflage, and reproductive lives. Montgomery also follows scientists working to understand and conserve these animals, combining their discoveries with photographs that reveal an unfamiliar underwater world.

Fire Chief, a snapping turtle who has survived decades of challenges, is badly injured on the road between his seasonal ponds. This true picture-book story follows the people who help him recover and seek a safer future for him.

Montgomery joins scientists studying giant manta rays in Ecuador's waters, following efforts to locate and protect the threatened animals. Underwater photographs accompany the team's demanding fieldwork, revealing the rays' behavior, intelligence, and vulnerability to extinction.

Montgomery travels to the Sundarbans mangrove forests to investigate why healthy tigers hunt people there. Listening to scientists and local villagers, she explores the animals' behavior alongside the beliefs of communities that fear and revere them.

Sy Montgomery explores octopus intelligence through encounters in aquariums and the ocean. Blending personal relationships with scientific observation, she considers their distinctive personalities, problem-solving abilities, and what connections across species suggest about consciousness.