Category: Book Review
Birds of the Mesozoic: An Illustrated Field Guide
Birds fascinate people. A quick journey through human history reveals ample evidence of how birds have captured our imagination since the dawn of history and across cultures, from illustrations of birds in paleolithic cave art, to the in ancient Egyptian god Horus depicted as an eagle, to carved thunderbirds crowning totems in many North American indigenous cultures. oday, fascination in birds takes another form: birders – folks who engage in birdwatching as a recreational activity. In a report issued by... Read More
Audubon at Sea: The Coastal and Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon
Christopher Irmscher (a noted Audubon Scholar) and Richard J. King ( an accomplished writer about marine literature) provide an excellent review of John James Audubon’s waterbird adventures at a time of renewed interest in Audubon’s place in ornithology history and recent controversy about his life as a slave owner during this time of racial awakening. Read More
Birds of Costa Rica
Costa Rica is a hotspot of avian diversity, and not surprisingly both ecotourists and scientists flock to this small Central American country to observe and study its birds. This new field guide to the birds of Costa Rica will doubtless become the standard reference for the country, and offers a more streamlined and navigable product than the previous Birds of Central America (2018), also illustrated by Dale Dyer. The authors have extensive experience developing field guides and it shows... Read More
The (Big) Year That Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record
It’s a given that birders like to keep lists. We all, to a greater or lesser extent, do it. Whether it’s a world list, a state or county list, a house or garden list, a self-found list, or even the more esoteric stuff like a commuting-to-work list – we seem to gravitate towards them, for better or worse. At their best, lists form part of an ongoing data gathering exercise that feeds information to a local or national body... Read More
Peterson Field Guide To North American Bird Nests
Nests can be tricky to find, so discovering one is exciting like learning about a secret. Nests are also marvels of bird behavior. They are intricate, intimate, splendid, often ephemeral structures, and hold clues about how birds overcome challenges associated with reproduction. With wonderful photographs and succinct text, The Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests captures this excitement of finding a nest and leaves readers in awe of the stunning diversity of nest morphologies seen in North American birds. Read More
Field Guide to the Birds of Chile
This review was made on the basis of an electronic copy, so some information was obtained from the publisher and seller web pages, or from collaborators who have it printed, to whom I thank. The Field Guide to the Birds of Chile describes 468 species (illustrated by one of the authors), including those recorded at least five times in the Chilean territory. This guide is a reworked edition of Spanish language texts by the same authors (Martínez & González 2004, 2017), where the most important change... Read More
Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay
In Woman, Watching Merilyn Simonds shares the true story of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a self-taught ornithologist who spent decades of her life studying the wild birds that she shared her northern Ontario home with. At first glance, prospective readers might think Woman, Watching is a book solely for bird enthusiasts. How wrong they’d be... Read More
The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism 1850-1920
As I read The Market in Birds, I found myself drawing Venn diagrams. I have multiple partially overlapped circles, trying to sort out the convergence zones of “hunters vs. conservationists” or “sportsmen vs. naturalists.” Some of my diagrams became complex puzzles, like the one sorting out how much overlap there might be between people who: like birds; like “nature”; like being outside; and like money... Read More
Birds of East Africa (Second Edition)
This is the second edition of this highly successful field guide. The first edition appeared in 2002 and was entitled Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa. There has also been a shift in publisher from T & AD Poyser to Helm Field Guides in the Bloomsbury Publishing stable. The guide covers Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. This hits rather a ‘sweet spot’ in terms of geographical coverage, with the other relevant major field guides covering either smaller or larger areas... Read More- 2 of 4
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