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Roger Tory Peterson was probably the best-known birder of the 20th Century and one of the true pioneers of contemporary nature education.  The accomplishments of his illustrious career are ubiquitous, and you can’t pick up a field guide without paying homage to this great man.  His artwork was also quite celebrated, his paintings gracing the halls of the Smithsonian more than once.

Peterson was also a fine writer, and Wild America, which he co-wrote with the British Naturalist James Fisher, is a touchstone for many writers and naturalists to this day.  This narrative of a journey the two men took in search of birds is a vivid and important portrait of an era – the 1950s.  Among his many attributes, Peterson is a grand story-teller, and the lively prose of Wild America has encouraged countless birders to take to the highways and back woods of North America in search of great birding adventures.

Later in life Peterson agreed to write a bi-monthly column for the magazine Bird Watcher’s Digest.  This column appeared for the last 12 years of Peterson’s life, from 1984 to 1996.  Bill Thompson, that magazine’s editor, has assembled these columns into a new book titled All Things Reconsidered.  Here Peterson the story-teller holds court, recounting many adventures from a long and active life.  There’s no new material here, it all appeared in the magazine, but it’s no less fun to read the stories again.  Collected into one volume, it’s a marvelous window into 20th Century birding.

The tales are diverse.  There are travel tales a-plenty.  A successful career gave Peterson the means to travel around the world, and his tales from Kenya, the Pribilof Islands, Antarctica, and other locales are fun to read.  Florida, Delaware Bay, and Cape May are also on the list (though I frown about his comment that, “Few places can be as birdless as the dunes at Cape May Point on an off day;” I know of plenty of places that are more birdless!).  Peterson also marvels at the changes witnessed in his lifetime, ranging from the protection of formerly persecuted birds of prey at Hawk Mountain to the many aspects of birding, bird watching, ornithology – and he tries to define these often-overlapping terms.  He pays homage to some of the greats of 20th Century birding and of conservation.

There are adventure tales, too.  He writes of being capsized while photographing seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, but also of days watching migrants pass over Manhattan.  Not all of the writing is from memory, as he also describes to readers the bird life observed around his chosen home of Old Lyme, Connecticut where he spent the last years of his life.

He leaves story-telling behind (well, not completely) in several essays focused on conservation.  There are chapters about extinctions, introduced species, and ecotourism.  We learn of his hopes for the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, an environmental education facility built in his childhood hometown.  All Things Reconsidered does indeed encompass a wide sweep of thoughts about birds and birding, and it’s an enjoyable read just for that.  But the book’s true value is that is provides a portrait of the senior Peterson through his own words.  I never met the man, but reading these pages make me feel like I did.  That, my friends, is a great gift.

Peterson, Roger Tory, Edited by Bill Thompson III.  All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures.  Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.  354 pages, $30.00 hardcover.  ISBN-10: 0-618-75862-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-618-75862-3.

To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder’s Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.

Ecuador is a spectacularly diverse country that straddles both the Equator and the crest of the Andes in northwestern South America.  It has long been regarded as a country whose habitats support one of the world’s richest avifaunas.  In recent years the infrastructure for visiting birders has improved dramatically, and now Ecuador is one of the most popular ecotourism destinations in the world, especially among birders.  The American Birding Association’s recent international conference in Ecuador is a nod to the popularity of the country among its members.

If you’re a birder and you haven’t been to Ecuador yet, you have almost certainly talked with friends who have been, and I’ll bet they said they had a wonderful time and saw some amazing birds.  The country now has excellent lodges, great guides, easy travel, and that extensive collection of amazing birds.

When tourism increases in any part of the world, can the lavishly illustrated coffee-table book be far behind? Plumas, by Murray Cooper, is just that, a collection of strikingly beautiful photographs of many of the birds found in Ecuador.  There are a few short bits of text that describe the country’s habitats and conservation needs, and these are well written and useful, and some of the photo captions offer useful insights into bird biology, but the words are all secondary to the pictures.

There are a few images that aren’t as sharp as you might like, and some of the pictures are straightforward portraits of perching birds, but many are knock-your-socks-off, stunning shots, sometimes of birds that are quite rare and/or hard to find.  After the momentary jealous thoughts of, “Doggone it, I looked for that one and missed,” I found myself marveling at some of the behaviors and postures captured by Cooper.  The Coppery-chested Jacamar is shown in dramatic pose with captured butterfly in its beak.  An extreme close-up of Rufescent Tiger-Heron captures the feeding bird mid-gulp.  Pink-throated Becard is shown pausing amidst palm fruits with nesting material in its bill.  Greater Ani is shown bringing food to the nest, and the frog in its bill is even identified to species (Hyla calcarata).

Of course some of Ecuador’s best-known birds are included, and these are shown in elegant, atypical poses.  Cooper’s Andean Condor photograph shows two birds in flight from near eye-level, a striking shot that is certainly not the typical view of these birds soaring far overhead.  Visitors to the Amazon basin in Ecuador are likely to see Hoatzins, but not necessarily one adult bird with two tiny chicks nestled into its belly feathers.  A series of photos shows a Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe bathing.  The list goes on and on.

If you’ve traveled to the tropical rainforests and tried to photograph birds, you know how hard it can be to get decent shots.  It’s very impressive that Cooper photographed birds in their natural habitats, didn’t use a flash, and, with a few exceptions, did not digitally adjust the photos.  Yes, there are a few photos where a leaf or branch is between the camera and the bird, and some purists might criticize those imperfections, but, to me, they just add a bit of reality to the work.  I like it.  A lot.

I do wish there was an index in the book, so I could immediately flip to the photo of a particular species, but that’s a small complaint.  The book is designed for casual viewing, for simply leafing through the pages and enjoying the photos.  That’s how the book will be enjoyed.  If you’ve been birding in Ecuador, you’ll enjoy Plumas as a keepsake from your journey.  With luck, lots of people will see the book, marvel at the photos, and be inspired to support bird conservation efforts in Ecuador and throughout the American tropics.

Cooper, Murray.  Plumas: Birds in Ecuador.  Quito, Latinweb, 2006.  239 pages, hardcover, $49.00.  ISBN-10: 9978-45-515-9; ISBN-13: 978-9-978-45515-9.

Remember that eccentric but enthusiastic teacher whose lectures were always interrupted by long stories and reminisces?  Most of us have met the type.  The stories are entertaining, if a bit over-the-top, while the passion for the subject matter is perhaps overly intense.  If you’re not too distracted by the wild adventures, and if your interest in the subject is serious, you can learn a lot from these teachers.

The Sound Approach to Birding, which lists as its authors Mark Constantine and The Sound Approach, fits this archetype perfectly.  In the acknowledgements, it is stated that, “The Sound Approach are Arnoud B van den Berg, Mark Constantine and Magnus Robb,” but most of the text is written in the first person singular, so I assume that Constantine is the author, while van den Berg and Robb are his primary field companions, and that ideas for the project were generated while afield birding and recording bird sounds.  The Sound Approach is also listed as the publisher.  It’s a bit confusing just who or what is “The Sound Approach.”  Regardless, The Sound Approach to Birding is a wild, if somewhat undisciplined, and highly entertaining look at the study of bird sounds.

This volume, which combines a book with two audio CDs, is an intensive lesson that could be subtitled, “Everything you could ever imagine that has to do with bird sound.”  For the passionate birder, it’s an amazingly rich and complex discussion that dissects bird sounds, compares various techniques of field recording, and chronicles the enormous amount of time and effort that has gone into its production and to the generation of the concept.  If you’re more of a beginner or a casual birder, stick to Birding by Ear (in the Peterson Field Guide series) for learning purposes, but you still might enjoy The Sound Approach to Birding simply for its irreverent prose and outrageous stories.

If you’re ready to fully explore the variety of bird sounds, and the varied (and often inadequate) methods people use to describe sounds, jump into this volume with all the vigor and enthusiasm you can muster.  Its basic approach is superb: the CDs are designed to provide audio examples at key points of the text.  It makes a great lecture, and experienced birders are likely to learn the most.  While the author (authors?) are European, and most recordings are of European species, the whole point is not to teach you bird songs, but to teach you how to listen and how to study.  If you’ve never learned how to decipher sonograms, after going through The Sound Approach to Birding you’ll either understand completely or you’ll give up trying to learn forever, for the text is loaded with these graphs.  Happily most of the sonograms include handwritten notes of emphasis to direct your attention to key bits of the sound.  Listen to a song, “watch” it on the sonogram, pay special attention to the noted parts, and, by golly, you’ll hear what the authors want you to hear!

While the CDs are matched to the text, it’s fun to just listen to them to enjoy the variety of sounds that are made by birds.  There are more than two hours of recordings on the CDs, divided into 99 tracks on each CD, including two tracks of humans imitating bird calls!

The Sound Approach to Birding is really quite an interesting project, and it doesn’t end with this volume.  Head online to www.soundapproach.co.uk to discover a rapidly evolving universe surrounding the book, the approach, and the intensive (and growing) British obsession with birds and bird sounds.  If you consider yourself a serious birder, you’ve probably already been there.  It probably won’t take you long to notice, too, that Mark Constantine is a very successful entrepreneur.  He and his colleagues are trying to sell you on the ideas they have about learning bird sounds; the sales pitch is persuasive.

Constantine, Mark & The Sound Approach.  The Sound Approach to Birding: A Guide to Understanding Bird Sound.  Dorset, UK, The Sound Approach, 2006.  192 pages, 2 audio CDs, hardcover.  ISBN-10: 90-810933-1-2; ISBN-13: 978-90-810933-1-6.

There are many intense birders in this world, and there are many strident conservationists, but there are too few people who are both.  Jeffrey V. Wells is one, a top birder with World Series of Birding victories under his belt, and a wise, thoughtful, and seemingly effective advocate of conservation.  He would like to see more birders do more to support conservation.  Me too.

Wells’ new book can make a positive difference to the health of many bird populations.  The Birder’s Conservation Handbook, does more than preach conservation.  He has chosen 100 North American species whose populations are in decline as the heart of the book.  There’s a chapter for each species, and each chapter is organized in the same way.  First there’s a large range map that shows the complete range for each species, including wintering grounds far from North America where appropriate.  Next are sections on Status and Distribution, Ecology, Threats, Conservation Action, and Conservation Needs.  This final section includes some lofty goals, written without emotion but in a clear, matter-of-fact tone that says, essentially, if we don’t do these things there will be fewer of these birds.  Land managers and others within the decision-making realm of society will find this section to be extremely useful as a guide and reference, and hopefully many will heed its suggestions.  For the rest of us, the entire chapters are concise, enlightening summaries of the life histories of many of our favorite birds.

I’m sure most readers will use this book as a secondary reference, looking up species scattershot to learn more about them, especially after seeing the bird in the field.  I imagine many will ignore the introductory pages.  This will be a real shame, for the 44-page introduction is wonderful.  In just a few pages he manages to summarize the history and current status of bird conservation in North America.  He presents a concise list of 6 major conservation issues that have affected bird populations: global warming, habitat loss and degradation, nonnative species and disease, overexploitation, incidental mortality, and hunting.  Finally there is a list of 18 ways to help save birds, mostly small, easy steps that don’t require extreme effort or sacrifice.  Without preaching, Wells tries to show us that we can make a real difference to the survival of birds with relatively little sacrifice or effort.  The key, of course, is for many people to take the small steps simultaneously.  There’s a lot of passion in the introduction, just as appropriate here as it would be inappropriate in the individual chapters.  Wells has hit the right tone throughout.

I can’t go further without also noting that Wells writes very well.  The prose throughout is snappy, concise, clear, and well organized.  Many references are listed throughout, and Wells’ explanation of why the text is not footnoted to the references is sensible and convincing.  If you’re getting the feeling that I like this book a lot, you’re correct.

If you love birds and birding, get this book.  Read the introduction.  Examine your lifestyle, read Wells’ suggestions carefully, and try to heed one or two of those suggestions.  Birders working together can make a huge, positive difference to the health of many bird populations.  The needs are growing more critical every day.  The Birder’s Conservation Handbook should prove to be a valuable guide to us all toward a future where birds continue to be abundant and a source of inspiration to our society.

Wells, Jeffrey V.  Birder’s Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk.  Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007.  420 pages, $79.50 cloth, $35.00 paper.  ISBN: 978-0-691-12322-6 cloth, ISBN: 978-0-691-12323-3 paper.

To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder’s Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.