Many of my recommendations are old books but still good. Good news: being old, they can usually be bought cheap as used books.
Fiction:
Borthwick, J.S. The Case of the Hook-billed Kites. Mystery. Not only is the birding background accurate, but birding is essential to the plot.
Hiaasen, Carl. Hiaasen was a newspaper reporter in Miami Florida. He has a great appreciation for Florida’s environment and a deep knowledge of how humans are messing it up. Also of the many strange people in Florida. He wrote several novels for young adults including Hoot. Recommended. He also wrote novels for adults. I like their sarcasm, weirdness, and environmental awareness, but some people might be put off by the violence (a very small part of each book but often grotesque). Sex is not described graphically but it happens in some of the books and not always in approved pairings. You learn some things about Florida ecology along the way. I recommend novels Stormy Weather, Native Tongue, Squeeze Me, Nature Girl, and others, if you like this sort of thing.
Peters, Ellis. The Cadfael Books. (seconding suggestion above. They’re also a painless way to learn some history. If you like them, you’ll probably like Margaret Frazer’s mystery series with main characters Dame Frevisse and later on a young man whose name I forget.)
Hillerman, Tony. (series continued by his daughter Anne). The Hillermans aren’t into nature at the species level like most of us here are, but their mysteries set in Navajo culture are also firmly set in the environment of the Four Corners area.
