Book News - Category Archive

2011 has the makings of a great year for bird books. It’s just the end of January and there are already several that I’m anxiously awaiting. Here’s a little of what we have to look forward to.

• I always look forward to getting the latest field guide. I like to see what new features and innovations the authors have incorporated. In that regard, this year’s new North American field guide – The Crossley ID Guide – will be a doozy. Crossley’s digitally created plates, incorporating photos of birds from many different angles and distances, are groundbreaking. Hopefully they will be useful as well.
  February 21, 2011; Princeton University Press
• I generally enjoy “big year” books, so Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year caught my eye. The author, Lynn Barber, is an ABA board member, and contributor to their blog.
  March 19, 2011; TAMU Press
• Hawks at a Distance: Identification of Migrant Raptors is Jerry Liguori’s followup to his excellent Hawks from Every Angle. According to the book’s description, this will be “the first volume to focus on distant raptors as they are truly seen in the field”. Sounds like a must-have for any hawk watcher.
  March 30, 2011; Princeton University Press
• Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding has long been a required book for anyone wanting to come to grips with gulls, flycatchers, and other difficult-to-identify groups of North American birds. I’m sure his updated Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding will be just as indispensable.
  April 19, 2011; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• After the Crossley guide, Peter Goodfellow’s Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build is probably the book I’m most looking forward to this year. How birds are able to build such marvelous structures has always been a mystery to me. I’ve been waiting a long time for a book that could explain and demonstrate the process. Hopefully that wait will be over shortly.
  May 26, 2011; Princeton University Press

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  Just today I ran across this title – Binocular Vision: The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides. The title piqued my curiosity; I had to find out what this was about. The publisher’s catalog says:
  

  By putting field guides into direct conversation with concerns about species conservation, environmental management, the human alteration of the environment, and the problem of toxic pollution, Binocular Vision is a field guide to field guides that takes a novel perspective on how we think about and interact with the world around us.

  
  As someone who loves bird books and books about bird books, this sounds interesting to me.
  July 31, 2011; University of Massachusetts Press
• Arctic Autumn: A Journey to Season’s Edge is the third book in Pete Dunne’s series on season and place. The first two were great, but I’d be excited regardless because it’s Pete freakin’ Dunne!
  September 21, 2011; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Last, but certainly not least, is the final volume in the landmark series – Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 16. This will be “the first work to verbally and visually portray each member of an entire Class of the Animal Kingdom”. I’m especially excited due to the families covered: Tanagers, Cardinals, Buntings and New World Sparrows, and New World Blackbirds.
  October, 2011; Lynx Edicions

For the fourth straight year there’s a new photographic field guide to North American birds. This latest one is by the well-known and highly regarded husband and wife duo of Donald and Lillian Stokes. I haven’t had a chance to really delve into it yet, but so far it’s pretty impressive. I’m planning on doing something different to give everyone a good look at it, but in the mean time, check out the reviews at 10,000 Birds and Birding is Fun!. There’s also a fantastic interview with the authors.

If you’re anxious to get a copy, you can enter to win one through the 10,000 Birds Conservation Club. And if you don’t luck out there, be on the lookout here for a giveaway.

A while back, I wrote about a promising looking field guide that Richard Crossley was working on. Since then, Princeton University Press has announced that they will publish The Crossley ID Guide.

The guide isn’t coming out until next year, but some details have already been released, and now I really can’t wait to get my eyes on this thing. There are some excerpts and a great video interview with Crossley at Barnes and Noble.

It should be interesting, to say the least.

The Sibley Guide to Trees

by David Allen Sibley
September 15, 2009; $39.95

Nine years ago, The Sibley Guide to Birds was published and quickly became generally regarded as the best North American field guide. And now Sibley turns his tremendous talent to a very different group of organisms.

The Birder’s World magazine blog has an excellent multi-part interview with Sibley. In it, he discusses why trees, the process of creating the guide, why birders will enjoy it, and much more. It’s a fascinating interview, and made me really look forward to the guide. Amazon also has a video interview.

I’m very excited about this, since I’ve been telling myself for some time that I need to learn trees better.

Trogons: A Natural History of the Trogonidae

by Joseph M. Forshaw

I love trogons, and the description of this new book left me drooling:

This is the definitive natural history of the spectacularly beautiful tropical birds known as the trogons, a family that includes the legendary Resplendent Quetzal, the sacred bird of the ancient Mayans and Aztecs. A collaboration between renowned ornithologist Joseph Forshaw and eminent bird artist Albert Gilbert, Trogons combines science and art to create an unprecedented picture of a threatened bird family. Forshaw’s text provides the most authoritative and comprehensive account of the trogons ever written, and Gilbert’s stunning paintings are the first to accurately depict all species of trogons in their natural habitats and true colors. The book’s detailed synthesis of current knowledge about the trogons is enriched by Forshaw’s personal field observations in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas, while Gilbert’s meticulous artwork is based on fieldwork in the same areas. With its large format, more than 40 full-color plates, and state-of-the-art five-color printing, this limited-edition book promises to become a classic and a collector’s item.

However, there are some over at BirdForum that were leery of the artwork. After seeing a couple of sample plates, I can see why.

But I went ahead and ordered it anyway. The trogons are one of my favorite families, and I couldn’t resist. Additionally, this is a limited edition, with only 700 copies available in the U.S. and another 700 for the rest of the world. I hope publishers don’t read this, but I’m a sucker for limited editions.

As soon as I get this, I’ll post my initial thoughts as soon as I can. But in the meantime, if you think you will eventually want a copy, I would suggest ordering it sooner rather than later. Amazon currently shows only one left in stock. I have no idea if they will be receiving any more. But given how much it costs, I wouldn’t blame anyone from holding off until they can see it first!

I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had enough time to write reviews. I’m hoping that will change soon. But in the meantime, here are some thoughts on some recently published bird books.

• Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds
  Olivia Gentile

  This is an excellent biography of uber-birder and lister Phoebe Snetsinger. I have already written a review of Birding on Borrowed Time, Phoebe’s memoir, and I was curious to see how this biography would compare. Briefly, in just about every regard, I consider this bio as superior. I would recommend starting with it.

• Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience
  Jeremy Mynott

  My favorite bird book from last year was The Life of the Skies. I’m less than 50 pages into Birdscapes, but so far it reminds me very much of Life of the Skies. It may touch upon some of the same subjects, but it’s really the way that it makes you question things, and really think. I’m going to make a bold prediction and say that this may be my frontrunner for favorite book of 2009 – I’m enjoying it that much so far.

• Birdsong by the Seasons: A Year of Listening to Birds
  Donald Kroodsma

  Kroodsma’s The Singing Life of Birds is fantastic, and should be required reading for anyone interested in bird song. This book, which is a celebration of birdsong from January to December, looks like it could be just as good.

• Flyaway: How A Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings
  Suzie Gilbert

  A verteran bird rehabber chronicles her experiences with injured birds. This looks like an interesting story, all the more so because it’s a subject that is underrepresented in birding literature.

• National Geographic Complete Birds of the World

  This guide presents an account for each of the world’s bird families, similar to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Birds. I’ve only had a chance to skim through this one, but my initial impression is that if, given the choice, I’d take the one from Princeton.

• The Travails of Two Woodpeckers: Ivory-Bills and Imperials
  Noel F. R. Snyder, David E. Brown, Kevin B. Clark

  I believe the title says it all. Snyder has written books on several other extinct and endangered species, and I’m interested in his take on these two.

This book, by Andrew Nikiforuk, is available for free as a pdf download. You need to hurry, though, it’s only available through March 20 (that’s tomorrow, as I write this).

This is a very important, and controversial, issue that directly impacts birds and other wildlife, and indirectly affects every living thing on this planet. Here is some more information on the book:

Canada has one third of the world’s oil source; it comes from the bitumen in the oil sands of Alberta. Advancements in technology and frenzied development have created the world’s largest energy project in Fort McMurray where, rather than shooting up like a fountain in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the sticky bitumen is extracted from the earth. Providing almost 20 percent of America’s fuel, much of this dirty oil is being processed in refineries in the Midwest. This out-of-control megaproject is polluting the air, poisoning the water, and destroying boreal forest at a rate almost too rapid to be imagined. In this hard-hitting book, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands and argues forcefully for change.

The Boreal Songbird Initiative has further information about the book and the giveaway.

Princeton has just published a wonderful Encyclopedia of Birds. I just wanted everyone to be aware that it appears to be a softcover version of the 2003 Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds.

I do not know if it has been updated in any way, but from a quick glance it looks the same. I think it’s safe to say that if you already have the Firefly edition, then you can skip the new one. But if you don’t, then go for the Princeton, unless you have a strong preference for hardcover binding or you can find the Firefly for significantly less.

Either way you go, this encyclopedia is fantastic!

The only thing better than bird books is cheap bird books! Here are some bargains I’ve found on Amazon. FYI: some of these are remaindered, so there may be a sticker on the cover, or a black mark on the bottom. I’ve bought remaindered books from Amazon before, though, and these have yet to be a problem.

• Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America – $10.49
  This is a great deal on the new, combined Peterson guide.
• Pete Dunne on Bird Watching: The How-to, Where-to, and When-to of Birding – $4.80
  Still one of, if not the, best book on birding.
• The Sibley Guide to Birds – $17.99
  Half-off the best North American field guide.
• To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession – $4.99
• Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons In the Lives of Migratory Birds – $5.58
• The Backyard Bird Lover’s Field Guide: Secrets to Attracting, Identifying, and Enjoying Birds of Your Region – $8.00
• Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die – $4.99

I haven’t found a whole lot of bargains at Amazon lately. These are the only two that I’m aware of.

• To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession – $4.99
  by Dan Koeppel
• Field Guide to the Birds of Peru – $19.95
  by James F. Clements and Noam Shany
  This guide did not get very good reviews, and has been supplanted by the more recent Birds of Peru. However, if for some reason you’d like to get this one, this is the best price for it that I’ve seen.