Category: Book Review
The origin and distribution of birds in coastal Alaska and British Columbia: the lost manuscript of ornithologist Harry S. Swarth
Harry Swarth (1878-1935) was a prolific ornithological explorer, curator, collector, and thinker. In 2019 his grandson Christopher found a manuscript that Swarth had completed shortly before his death. The unedited manuscript, which is based on over 1,000 days of rugged expeditions to southeast Alaska and adjacent British Columbia between 1909 and 1934, forms the core of this book. Read More
Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Empidonax and Pewees
For many North American birders and ornithologists, the field identification of Empidonax flycatchers and their pewee cousins has long been one of the most difficult ID puzzles. Over the past six decades a range of top museum specialists, banders, and birders have spilled considerable ink on the subject in the scientific literature, field guides, and magazine articles, but this book is the first field guide to focus specifically on this often-perplexing group of flycatchers. Read More
Baby Bird Identification: A North American Guide
Linda Tuttle-Adams has taken on an under-appreciated and under-studied aspect of our birdlife in Baby Bird Identification: A North American Guide. Her work is a highly laudable illustrated guide for identifying hundreds of North American bird species in their early stages of life. The author helps the user through the identification process for young birds, from the just-hatched to the fledgling-stage, and she does it very well. Read More
Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration
If there is a perfect if unintended target demographic for Flight Paths, the debut book by science writer Rebecca Heisman, it may be the members and associates of the Association of Field Ornithologists. Subtitled "How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration," Heisman's book chronicles the emergence of the increasingly sophisticated techniques... Read More
Vultures of the World: Essential Ecology and Conservation
This book provides a very thorough and up-to-date scientific review of all aspects of the biology of a globally imperiled group of birds that arguably have a disproportionately large ecological role everywhere that they occur in the world. Not since the pesticide DDT drove a suite of apex predators to the brink of extinction in the middle decades of the twentieth century, has the survival of an entire group of birds been threatened by human use of a single chemical... Read More
Identification Guide to North American Birds, Part I (Second Edition)
For more than three decades, the “Pyle Guide” has been banders’ most comprehensive resource to aid in identifying, ageing, and sexing birds in the hand, and many banders consider their equipment incomplete without a copy. Part 1 of the Identification Guide to North American Birds, first published in 1997, contains meticulously detailed species accounts for all North American passerines and near-passerines with text describing all plumages, molt strategies and timing, and other identification, ageing, and sexing criteria. Read More
Halcyon Journey
Within the field of ornithology, there is a melding of different people who are connected by a common passion – birds. Our passions are as diverse as our obsessions for these creatures. Some of us simply love birds for their beauty, some for their fascinating natural history, and others for the adventures related to merely sharing a “place” with them. There are also those who desire to study, research, and reduce the complexities of birds to advance scientific knowledge and understand their contribution to the overall... Read More
Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior
There is a stereotype of a certain type of birder, sometimes called a lister, ticker, or twitcher, who is only concerned with identification, chasing rarities, and adding new species to a life list, while the behavior and the lives of the birds are unimportant. I don’t know how many birders actually fit that stereotype, but it is certainly true that many birders know little about the behavior of the birds they chase. Even backyard birders might initially know little about the chickadees that are coming to their feeders. Read More
The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent
The COVID19 pandemic presented an enormous scientific challenge almost unparalleled in its urgency. Among the myriad of questions laid at the feet of virologists and epidemiologists by the emergence of SARS-CoV2 was the question of transmission. We all recall the first months of the pandemic in early 2020 and the guidelines calling for frequent handwashing and distancing of two meters... Read More- 3 of 4
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