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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.

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One day last June in Bermuda, after noodling around looking for a stand of Bermuda maidenhair fern —I was speaking with a British woman when she noted the New Jersey Audubon logo on my shirt.  She paused, smiled, and asked, “Do you know Pete Bacinski?”  He’d once led her around Cape May on an April day long ago.  As feral chickens wandered by and a Great Kiskadee called overhead, she dreamily recalled the Prothonotary Warbler Pete had shown her at a magical place called the Beanery.

I’ve been asked the same question in Newfoundland, Arizona, Texas, Maine, and many other more proximate birding venues, and I’m never surprised.  Pete Bacinski, the founding director of Sandy Hook Bird Observatory, is one of New Jersey Audubon’s most popular and beloved field trip leaders.  By his count, he has led over 2000 birding trips during the last thirty-four years throughout the state, the U.S., and spots as diverse as Spain, British Columbia, and Trinidad.  He leads his first New Jersey Audubon Eco-Travel trip to Panama this month.

Pete is the co-compiler of the “Voice of New Jersey Audubon” rare bird alert, and he writes the popular column “Seen in New Jersey,” which appears weekly in The Star Ledger.  He has served on the New Jersey Bird Records Committee, the boards of numerous conservation groups, and was an early and active member of the Highlands Coalition, which was instrumental in the passage of the Highlands Act in 2004.  He was one of the original participants in the birding competition which became the World Series of Birding, and a member of the first winning team, which included Pete Dunne, Bill Boyle, David Sibley, and Roger Tory Peterson.

RR:  Tell me a little bit about how you started birding.

PB:  When I was a kid I had an interest in all of natural history.  My parents did a lot of driving trips around the country and into Canada, and I had a whole series of Golden Guides—remember those?—and I’d try and identify everything I’d see.  My parents bought me my first pair of binoculars when I was nine or ten and  I’d try to identify hawks on poles and everything, but it never got beyond that and looking at things in my backyard.

Then when I was in college, I studied biology and ecology and wrote a lot of papers on a lot of subjects, including birds.  And then about my senior year, with my old friend Bruce Zatkow, I made a couple of forays up to Garret Mountain, not knowing it was, or was to become: one of the great birding places in the state…In 1970 or 1971 we found a Whip-poor-will there.

RR:  When did you first go to Cape May?

PB:  That fall in 1971 my mother read in a newspaper that New Jersey Audubon was sponsoring a weekend in Cape May and thought Bruce and I might be interested.  We signed up, and the fellow who was running the thing was named Norman Fisher, and we made friends with him the first day.  He was the director of NJAS after Frank McLaughlin and before Dick Farrar.  Later that fall, I went up to Franklin Lakes and began volunteering, and did so for 22 years until 1993, when I came to work for New Jersey Audubon full time.

RR:  And the weekend in 1971?

PB:  It was great, and the quote I heard–“If we’re lucky we’ll have five minutes for lunch”–was true; we birded all day long.  At that time, the weekend met at the north end of Lily Lake, where they had tables set up with coffee and donuts…and all the field trips originated from there.

RR:  There was no hotel involved at the time?

PB:  You had to make your own reservations at places.  Then the following year Bruce and I sold books for Audubon, we ran a bookstore in ’72 as part of our work as volunteers on the Fall Weekend.  And they put us up at the Montreal, where we stayed for several years, and which is still there on Beach Drive.

Then in 1973 I led my first field trips, which were insect walks…at the time I was getting my masters in biology-entomology at Fairleigh Dickinson.  Then in 1974 Rich Kane asked me to lead bird trips, and I’ve been leading bird trips ever since, volunteer work probably totaling thousands of hours for Scherman Sanctuary, CMBO, and NJAS in general.

RR:  Do you remember anything about those early years in Cape May?

PB:  There were very few bad days in Cape May then; a bad day in Cape May in late September was ten or twelve species of warblers, and usually lots of other birds.

RR:  When did you first meet Pete Dunne?

PB:  It was on a Fall Weekend in 1976.  I was walking across the lobby of the Christian Admiral Hotel, where they were holding the weekend in those days.

RR:  I remember that place, a huge old brick block of a building on the east end of Beach Drive, and it was owned by that fundamentalist minister and broadcaster Carl McIntyre.  We were thrown out of there once for having wine in our room.

PB:  You couldn’t drink there, you couldn’t cuss, and you had to be married couples…I didn’t stay there; we were still at the Montreal then, but most of the participants were at the Admiral because it had the biggest auditorium, and lots of vendors.

So I was walking across the floor and Karl Anderson’s daughter Barbara stopped me and said she wanted me to meet Pete Dunne, who was going to be working in Cape May for New Jersey Audubon starting that fall or next spring…to do some hawk work I think, and work on something called the Cape May Bird Observatory, which was being run at the time by Joe Lomax, who also owned the Osprey Guest House…

So I first met Pete in 1976…and the following spring, in 1977, we did the very first Cape May Spring Weekend…Bill Clark, Pete, and myself, and we had about thirty people.  And at about six o’clock that first morning Bill came to my room, at first light, and we had a Merlin come in off the ocean, exhausted, and it had to have been flying over the ocean all night…and it was a good omen.

We kept the group together, and we later saw a Bar-tailed Godwit at Longport and twenty-five species of warblers, one of the best warbler weekends I’ve ever had in Cape May…there were birds just everywhere…a good trip.

So then Pete and I began to do trips as CMBO started to expand.  I would come down at least one weekend every month, all year round, and stay in Pete’s room on top of the historical museum’s building in Swainton, sleeping sometimes on a mattress on the floor of his room.

RR:  Let’s talk about those early days of Big Days and the World Series of Birding.

PB:  I remember early Urner Big Days with Tim Koebel and company, when you’d stop and everyone would go off in their separate directions, and then you’d tally up, and go on to the next place.  And I’d done a few on my own.

So in 1980, Pete Dunne called me and asked if I’d take him on a Big Day, that he’d never been on one, but he had a few ideas…The traditional Big Day had ended at dusk at Brigantine or Holgate…Pete said why don’t we go to Cape May…he knew all the birdy places down there, and why didn’t we do the whole state?  So we did it sometime in the middle of May, 1980, and it poured all day, and we got in at the end of the day around 11, and sat down at the C View Inn, and we thought that 163 species in the rain wasn’t bad, considering the state record then was only 172.

Even after that first day, we thought we could do 200 species.

RR:  I remember you claiming that back in 1980, and everyone at the Urner meeting laughing that it was impossible, and Irv Black shaking his head and turning red.

PB:  So the next year we decided to do it all over again; I think it was just the two of us, in ’81, and most of the day we had a 30 mile-an-hour wind, the grass at Assunpink was horizontal, and we ended up with 169 species, but we really knew then we could do well with this competition if we ever got good weather.

So the following year we invited Dave Sibley to come with us.

RR: Young Dave Sibley.

PB:  He must have been in his early 20s at the time, but still, he was Dave Sibley, and we knew it.  Everyone was aware of how phenomenal he was, and we liked him.  And we had 185 species, just the three of us, from Sussex to Cape May…actually from Cape May to Sussex County and back to Cape May in 1982…but that was too brutal to continue.

RR:  And the next year, in 1983?

PB:  That year we asked Bill Boyle to come along, so we had a foursome, and we were fine- tuning the route.  And on that day we had 194 species.  That was when it was still called Birdathon, and Pete did the funny advertisements for pledges, holding out a tin pan and everything.

At that time we were constantly discussing strategy and routes…The old Big Days used to start in the Boonton Hills, but we were going to Sussex County…It was all new, we were pioneering new ideas about the event.  In those days Greg Hanisek was our biggest competition, and he was going down to Cape May too, but via the Delaware River.

RR:  What about the year you had Roger Tory Peterson on your team?

PB:  In 1984 Pete got Roger Peterson to come with us, and we did midnight to midnight, we—Pete, Roger Peterson, Bill Boyle, Sibley, and myself, the Guerilla Birding Team—did the entire state.

RR:  So it was a competition by this time?

PB:  We had thirteen teams—Hanisek, Rich Kane, Paul Buckley had a team, and maybe the DVOC, and others who I can’t remember.

RR:  So when did it become the World Series of Birding?

PB:  In 1984, and I have not missed one since.  Only Pete and I have been on an A Team for all the World Series; Rich Kane has also never missed a World Series, but he wasn’t always on an A-level team.

RR:  What are some of your memories of that day?

PB:  I remember when we were driving around during those long hours in the dark, Peterson regaled us with tales of Ludlow Griscom taking him on Big Days back in the 1930s, and about birding with Charles Urner, Lee Edwards, and the Jersey guys, and other stories of the early days of birding when he was younger…Stuff I really wish someone had recorded…

In the Newark Watershed he picked up a Solitary (now Blue-headed) Vireo which we all had missed…We went to Princeton, the Institute Woods, and we had to surround Peterson because the local birders were mobbing him for autographs…And at Assunpink he asked me to point out a Blackpoll, which by then, at the age of 74, he was having trouble hearing.  I remember him hearing a Mourning Warbler along Shinns Road in Lebanon State Forest… And at Bob Mauer’s, who had Black Rails in a marsh near his house…Peterson had contacts, and one had lodged in the back of his eye and he was having trouble seeing, so we’re walking along in the dark and I’m thinking of the headlines—“Famous Author, Artist, Bird Watcher Lost in Swamp on Bird Hunt”—so I literally grabbed his arm and helped him until we got to a place where he could see…And finally we heard Black Rail, bird number 198.

When we later counted up we had 201—really 202, but Pete refused to count the Peregrine on the hacking tower at Brigantine.

RR:  Someone got a life North American bird that day.

PB:  We had heard the day before that there had been a Fork-tailed Flycatcher seen in Cape May, and we were driving around Bayshore and New England Roads and finally found it in the fields.  Roger announced that he’d seen the species in South America, but this was a new North American bird for him.

RR:  I have a great memory of you in the early 80s in Cape May that involved a Northern Wheatear in the parking lot by the hawk watch.

PB:  I can remember that like it was yesterday.  I was sitting on the hawk watch platform with Bill Boyle and the hawk counter, Fred Hamer…and we were telling jokes and stories, typical hawk-watch banter, and no-one was particularly watching the birds.  And Bill Boyle said there was a thrush-like bird sitting on the picnic pavilion, and we looked at it for a while with Fred’s gunstock scope and didn’t think much of it for a while until Bill Boyle noticed that about a hundred people were now looking at this bird.

Soon after, all I heard was the word “wheatear” and I immediately put two and two together—Northern Wheatear—and I go bolting off the platform with Boyle, as I heard you say, “If Bacinski’s running, this has got to be good!”  And we ended up chasing the bird around St. Mary’s, and climbing fences, and the bird later settled on the garage of the state park office, where Alan Brady was taking pictures of it from the roof of a state truck.  Pete Dunne and I went up to the top of the lighthouse and we’re looking down at the wheatear, telling each other that this is definitely some kind of New Jersey first…

RR:  You and Rich Kane were the first people I knew who became very involved with the preservation of the Highlands.

PB:  In 1973 Rich Kane introduced me to the Newark Pequannock Watershed, part of the region now known as the Highlands.  Cherry Ridge. Wawayanda.  I just fell in love with it, did lots of breeding-bird studies, and led many trips there; it’s a unique place in the state.  And in 1986 Dennis Miranda asked me to join a group called Watershed Watch, and we got together with other people, started to get some publicity, and right after that I started to huddle over drinks with Tom Gilmore at fall weekends and pressed him to get Audubon involved, which it eventually did with both feet in the late 80s.  And around that same time the Highlands Coalition also formed…It all much later came to fruition when Governor McGreevy signed the Highlands Act in 2004.

RR:  How did Sandy Hook Bird Observatory come about?

PB:  Linda Mack (now on the NJAS board of directors) had always said that NJAS should have a presence out on Sandy Hook, and she had been saying it for a long time, so it was really her original idea.  I had later mentioned to Tom Gilmore about moving Owl Haven out to Sandy Hook, and he suggested that I start doing some programs out there for the National Park Service, which ran the place, as a way of getting our foot in the door.  That was around 1997, and it took us fifty-five months of travail from then until we opened our doors.

The Hospital Steward’s House, built in 1899 and on the Federal Register, and which we moved into, was a shambles…There was asbestos in the falling-down ceiling and the walls, the raccoons had chewed their way in, and there were animal droppings all over the place.  After extensive renovations by Roger Johnson, we finally moved in during December 2001, and had our grand opening as Sandy Hook Bird Observatory a few months later.  Sandy Hook is the northern coastal counterpart of Cape May.  Over 340 species of birds and over 50 species of butterflies have been seen there.

RR:  What do you think of the recent trends in Cape May?

PB:  Birding around Lake Lily and areas around the Point isn’t what it was thirty years ago, and the Neotropical migrants are way down from then; usually no double-digit warblers on many September days.  I once recently did a trip to Higbees and the Beanery and had zero species of warblers.

But then you’ve got great spectacles like the Sea Watch…hundreds of thousands of sea birds…and the opening of Hidden Valley Ranch has been great.  And moving fall weekend and The Bird Show to late October has highlighted the tremendous display that short-distance migrants like robins, kinglets, blackbirds, sparrows, and other birds can produce at that period.  I recently wrote an article in the September-October issue of Wild Bird about the subject, highlighting the huge November 7, 2000 fallout of short-distance migrants.  Few of us had ever seen anything to equal it.

I’ve been a fan of the National Geographic Field Guide since the first edition was published in 1983.  There were some problems with that first edition (remember the Connecticut Warbler with the huge foot?), but birders were pleased to find many corrections in the second edition, which came out in 1987 rather quickly after the first.  Somehow I’ve managed to accumulate these books – you know, out on a trip, didn’t think I’d need a field guide, buy it again at some wildlife refuge bookstore.  I think I own two copies of the first edition, three of the second and one of the third.  I managed to hold back from buying a copy of the fourth edition.

Well, I’m buying a copy of the fifth.  There are some wonderful improvements in the new book, and that’s high praise when coming from one who loves the earlier incarnations.  There are some new plates – because the National Geographic guide has always utilized multiple artists, it has always been criticized for its inconsistent artwork.  With each new edition the overall quality of the art improves.

Two very nice design changes will prove useful to many birders.  An abbreviated index has been added to both the front and back inside covers – in the front it’s an index to bird families, and in the back it’s a list of one-word bird names (warbler, bushtit, merganser, sparrow).  You’ll get to the right part of the book more quickly, and since each index appears on a fold-out page extension, you can easily mark the pages you’re using at any given time.  The guide has also added 7 thumb-tabs for major groups of birds to speed up the process of getting to the right pages.  Hawks, sandpipers, gulls, flycatchers, warblers, sparrows, and finches are marked by the tabs.

Accuracy and completeness have long been hallmarks of the National Geographic guide, and here, too, we find improvements in the new edition.  The guide has always included more rare species than most other field guides, and now the editors have added a 14-page section titled, “Accidentals, Extinct Species.”  With this section the National Geographic guide includes every species for which there is an accepted record in North America, as defined by the ABA – at least every species as of the time of publication.  Many distinctly plumaged subspecies are also included, with special emphasis given to subspecies rumored to be candidates for upcoming splits (such as Eastern vs. Western Willet).

Everything we’ve loved about the National Geographic guide is still here.  Many love its size – a bit bigger than many field guides, which allows for bigger pictures and bigger print, yet small enough to fit in many pockets.  Excellent range maps (Cape May’s own Paul Lehman continues to be the great guru of North American bird distribution, and he is listed as “Chief Map Researcher/Editor” for this book), superior text, solid introductory material … it’s simply a great field guide.

I can hear some of you thinking, “Is it better than Sibley?”  My answer: it’s different from the Sibley guide.  Every birder who is halfway serious about this pastime is going to own both, and many of us will also own Peterson, Kaufmann, and perhaps many other field guides.  But while I own them all, I rarely find myself turning to any guide other than the National Geographic or the Sibley guide.  The two are complementary in approach, and having them both makes each more valuable.

Dunn, Jon L. and Jonathan Alderfer (eds).  National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America.  Washington, National Geographic Society, 2006.  504 pages, $24.00 paper.  ISBN-10: 0-7922-5314-0; ISBN-13: 978-0-7922-5314-3.

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.

A few years ago we learned that Kenn Kaufman was working on a whole series of new field guides.  This was good news, for Kenn’s skills with both nature and with words are held in extremely high regard.  This first of the series published (in 2000) was the bird guide, no surprise given Kenn’s notoriety in birding circles.  That book met with mixed reviews, partly because of the illustrations, which were photographs that had been digitally manipulated to eliminate backgrounds and provide consistency.  Some were disappointed to discover that Kaufman directed his guide more to beginners than to experienced birders.  The book fills its niche quite well, most reviewers agreed.

While I found the bird guide to be okay, I really liked Kaufman’s butterfly and mammal field guides.  Now Kaufman and Eric R. Eaton have written the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.  This is a great book.  Of course it’s not complete – there are WAY too many insects to include more than a tiny fraction of species in a reasonably sized field guide, especially one attempting to provide coverage for the entire continent.  Like earlier insect field guides (most notably the Peterson guide, written by Borror and White), the Kaufman guide pays great attention to the coarser taxa of order and family.  But a number of species are illustrated, and it’s uncanny how many species included are ones that I recognize from field encounters.  Clearly the authors spend a lot of time in the field, and they have included insects that are most frequently encountered.  It’s a delightful surprise to see so few illustrations that seem completely unfamiliar, and the careful selection of illustrated species makes the book extremely useful.

As with the earlier Kaufman field guides, the text of the insect book is clear and concise, with a minimum of technical jargon.  The short introductory section is also clear, concise, and very useful.  It’s a shame that field guide introductions are rarely read carefully by users, who often do nothing more than try to match up pictures with critters found in the field.  A four-page pictorial table of contents serves as a simplified key to the major groups of insects, and I think beginners would find this to be very helpful and easy to use.

Certainly it won’t take anyone much time to find species in the field that are not illustrated in this guide, but unless you find something especially peculiar, you’re likely to get your critter sorted out to the level of order quite easily.  For most of us, just getting that far is good enough.  It’s the first step toward understanding the classification system used for insects, which inevitably leads to an understanding and appreciation of the massive diversity of this class of animals, and of their many crucial roles in habitats all over the globe.  If you pay any attention at all to the natural world, you will notice insects.  If you have any curiosity at all, you’ll want to know something about them.  Let Eaton and Kaufman help you out.  The Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America should be in the library of naturalists all across the US.  I already treasure my copy.

Eaton, Eric R. and Kenn Kaufman.  Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.  Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.  392 pages, $18.95 paper.  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-15310-7; ISBN-10: 0-618-15310-1.

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.

For as long as people have been birding there has been a need for information about places to bird.  The niche of the bird finding guide was first filled in a widespread, popular manner by Olin Sewall Pettingill in two volumes titled A Guide to Bird Finding East of the Mississippi, first published in 1951, and A Guide to Bird Finding West of the Mississippi, from 1953.  James A. Lane popularized the idea of regional bird finding guides, writing several such guides during the 1970s, a series eventually taken over by the American Birding Association (ABA), which continues to periodically update older volumes and publish new titles as well.

While a number of regionally published bird finding guides also exist (including Bill Boyle’s excellent book for New Jersey, the revised edition published by Rutgers in 2002), The ABA Bird Finding Guides are generally considered to be the gold standard for this genre.  Over the years the ABA has listened to criticisms and developed many design features that make these books very user-friendly.  It’s hard to go wrong with an ABA Bird Finding Guide.

In recent years, Falcon Press has moved into this genre in a big way.  Long a leading publisher of hiking guides and other volumes related to outdoor sports, Falcon is rapidly contracting with regional authors and creating an extensive set of bird finding guides.  Birding Florida, written by Brian Rapoza, is the latest effort from Falcon  Since this book covers the entire state, and Bill Pranty’s ABA guide also covers the whole state, it’s easy to make a comparison.  At first glance, the ABA guide jumps out as easier to use.  The text is larger, the maps more plentiful and more clearly drawn, the directions more concise.  The spiral binding of the ABA guide is a real plus – the Falcon book will readily flip closed when propped open on the seat of your car, while the ABA book keeps the map and directions right where you want them.

Digging through the text, I like the way the ABA guide is organized better than the Falcon Guide.  On the plus side, the Falcon Guide includes a ton of information, and includes great range maps for each species found in the state.  But each chapter includes several different birding areas within a region of Florida, and there are no sub-headers to make it immediately clear where the description of one area ends and that of another area begins.  Many key areas are highlighted by bold text, but this does little to eliminate the confusing layout of the book.  Birding Florida seems to be designed more for a birder to read before visiting an area than to use, quite literally, as a guide during travel.

It’s worth owning both books if you’re planning to bird in Florida, for each will offer a perspective and some specific information that is missing from the other.  Falcon promises to make very frequent updates to its guides, relying on the ability to economically publish these guides in small press runs.  If they follow through on this promise, that will be a great asset to their series.  But if you want just one guide to birding in Florida, I’ve got to recommend Pranty’s ABA Guide.

Rapoza, Brian.  Birding Florida.  Guilford, CT, Falcon Guides, 2007.  292 pages, $22.95 paper.  ISBN: 978-0-7627-3914-1.

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.