Olive Thorne Miller was an American naturalist and author whose writing introduced readers to the behavior and personalities of birds. The pen name of Harriet Mann Miller, she combined patient observation with an approachable storytelling style. Books such as Birds' Ways and In Nesting Time encourage attention to the small events that make ordinary encounters with wildlife rewarding.

Miller began contributing to newspapers and later wrote for children, developing natural-history sketches alongside fiction. Her early animal writing was gathered in Little Folks in Feathers and Fur and Queer Pets at Marcy's. As her interest in birds deepened, she devoted increasing energy to watching their habits and describing them for readers outside specialist scientific circles.

Her work belongs to a tradition of nature writing that makes curiosity an invitation to closer observation. Rather than treating birds only as specimens, she presented them as active creatures with recognizable differences in behavior. Her contributions earned recognition within the American Ornithologists' Union. Miller's books preserve both the enthusiasm and the assumptions of their period, while continuing to offer readers a model of sustained interest in nearby living things.