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Pamela Kirby sees her book as a love story.

A male "courts his young mate," she writes.

"He perches ... He calls. He offers her worms."

A lifelong conservationist, Kirby got involved in bluebird preservation efforts nearly 30 years ago. Now, she has compiled about 50 of her photographs into "What Bluebirds Do" -- a tale of two Eastern bluebirds who took up residence and had babies in her backyard.

"Bluebirds are very endearing," the Albemarle native said. "It doesn't bother them if you're nearby, as long you respect their space. It makes you happy watching them. I wanted to tell a story and maybe ignite in people a desire within them to take care of their space."

How she came to write the book is a love story, too. Her husband encouraged her to keep photographing the birds to help her recover from a stroke. Later, when he was recovering from surgery, she used the photos to create a gift that showed her love for him.

Kirby will be reading from the book and signing copies May 8 at Barnes & Noble in Greensboro and May 16 at Barnes & Noble in Burlington. The pictures in the book follow the feathered creatures as they build their nests, lay eggs and raise their chicks.

The 57-year-old retired hand therapist has five nesting boxes set up around her 11-acre property in southeast Rockingham County. She lifts one, made out of a hollowed-out log, off of a pole, removes the top and reveals a nest with one baby blue egg inside.

It was the maker of that box, Laurance Sawyer, who sparked her interest in bluebirds.

The son of bird artist Edmund Joseph Sawyer, the Georgia man was a maker of birdhouses. One day in 1981 while working on a lathe, he cut his hand. Kirby, who was living in Georgia at the time, ended up being his therapist.

"While I was doing therapy on his hand, he was telling me about bluebirds," she said. "He was such a wonderful man, full of knowledge and compassion for the plight of the bluebirds, and that just inspired me so much. So, I made him a promise that when he got to so he could use his hand again, I would come down and get some bluebird boxes from him."

In the 1960s and 1970s, the bluebird population, like that of many of their avian brethren, began to drop as DDT thinned their eggshells. They also suffered from many of the same problems as other wildlife, namely that suburban sprawl was taking over their habitat.

Several organizations, including the North Carolina Bluebird Society and the North American Bluebird Society, were formed in the mid-1970s to advocate for the protection of bluebirds and to put up nesting boxes in which the birds could take shelter. Their population is now at about 65 percent of its peak, up from about 10 percent in the 1970s, says Frank Newell, president of the Warrenton-based Eastern Bluebird Rescue Group.

North America is home to three types of bluebirds, the eastern bluebird, western bluebird and mountain bluebird. Kirby's book focuses on the eastern bluebird, whose domain stretches roughly from Quebec to Central America. The birds are secondary cavity nesters, which means they inhabit either knotholes or holes made by other creatures. They've also been known to take up residence in mailboxes and newspaper tubes.

"They're curious little birds about cavities," Kirby said. "They see a hole, they'll just go stick their head in. We put a box out there, and 10 minutes later we have bluebirds."

The birds start looking for mates in February and usually start laying eggs in March or April. They can have three broods of two to seven chicks during the course of the spring and early summer.

A soft-spoken woman who bears a passing resemblance to actress Kathryn Joosten (Karen McCluskey on "Desperate Housewives"), Kirby had some pictures printed in bird magazines and newsletters and even won the grand prize one year in the Birder's World photo contest. But in 1999, she had a stroke and suffered some memory loss. While she was recovering, her husband, Darrell, used a camera to help her regain her memory.

"He would say, 'OK, what's this button? What's this button?' " she said.

Kirby, who still uses a cane to get around, started shooting the pictures in her book about three years ago, while Darrell was recovering from knee surgery. When he was sleeping, she would go out with her dog, a beagle-dachshund mix named Chico, and put her Canon digital camera and 600mm lens on a tripod.

"At the end of the season, I had a whole lot of pictures, and I wanted to give Darrell a gift that said, 'I love you,' and was something that nobody else could give him," she said. "So, I made this dummy bluebird story in a notebook with pictures. And I gave it to him, and he looked at it very lovingly and handed it back to me and said, 'You have to send it in.' And I thought, 'Send it in? How much medicine have you had?' "

Nevertheless, she started shopping it around and eventually caught the attention of Boyd's Mill Press, a division of magazine publisher Highlights for Children. The company released the book last month, and it has thus far received positive reviews from Booklist and Kirkus Reviews. It has also drawn words of praise from people in the bluebird conservation community.

"The pictures are gorgeous," said Helen Munro, acting president of the North Carolina Bluebird Society. "And it shows what you can do just by putting up a nest box. A lot of people say they don't know what they can do for the environment. Well, that's one thing they can do. Put up a nest box and monitor it."

In addition to appearing at book stores, Kirby has also been visiting classrooms. In 30 years, she said, she might not be around, but she likes the idea that a child poking around at Edward McKay Used Books will stumble upon her book and be enticed to set out their own box.

"That's what we need -- to put out more boxes and give bluebirds a chance to make more bluebirds," she said.

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com