The Ramble is a labyrinth of paths winding through dense trees in the center of Central Park, one of the few places in New York City where it’s easy to lose sight of skyscrapers and crowds. At its heart, hundreds of birds—warblers, woodpeckers, chickadees, swallows, and more—flit amongst a trove of bird feeders, a hidden gem maintained by the city’s dedicated corps of birders.

Leave the pigeons to the tourists in Times Square: If you know where to look, the Big Apple is among the country’s best birding locations, a key stopover for hundreds of species migrating up or down the East Coast. Songbirds accompany buskers in the parks, herons and gulls chill with surfers on the Rockaway beaches, hawks and falcons scan for prey on the eaves of executive boardrooms high above Wall Street.

“Once you start to notice birds, you will see them everywhere,” writes Leslie Day, a longtime New Yorker and naturalist who set out to catalogue the city’s vast array of avian fauna.

Day's deeply researched and richly illustrated Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City will be indispensable to locals and tourists alike. (Who knew you could find wild turkeys just blocks away from the diner of Seinfeld fame?) It includes a rundown of birding hotspots that will have you flying from Midtown to some of the city’s most beautiful natural areas.

Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City, by Leslie Day (John Hopkins University Press, 2015)