E.N. Panov, Wheatears of [the] Palearctic

The iron curtain is down, but the Russian language remains a serious obstacle for many birders to cross. For most of us, the old gray-bound volumes of Dementiev and Gladkov are the closest we’ve ever come to the ornithological literature of the now-former Soviet Union, and I can’t say that my early exposure to that series whetted the appetite much.

E.N. Panov’s extensive survey of the ecology, behavior, and evolution of the charming chats of the genus Oenanthe provides a good measure of both how much and how little things have changed. Published by the ambitious Russo-Bulgarian house Pensoft (http://www.pensoft.net/), this English version of an originally Russian-language study has been nearly 7 years on its way to us, hardly less time than it might have taken before November 1989. But unlike the dim and dingy volumes that made their way west in those days, this volume is attractively and competently produced, with nice big type on nearly white paper, and a host of black-and-white illustrations and more than 100 color photographs of wheatears and their habitats. Pensoft and the author are to be congratulated on publishing a book that is in its physical presentation fully up to the standards of the international birding community.

Panov’s English, though, could have used a more critical reading than it received at the hands of the colleague mentioned in the preface. It is rarely wrong, but it is often oblique, sometimes just a bit tangled, occasionally clumsy. Negative hypotaxis (”It is not the fact that X is not Y, which, it cannot be denied, may not be equivalent to Z”) is a risky rhetorical pose for even the most confident of native speakers to strike, and the kind Oxonian who reviewed Panov’s text should have striven for greater clarity in every instance.

The volume’s proofreading, as distinct from the editing, was thorough and competent; there are few spelling errors and only a few instances where, for example, words are erroneously repeated. The typographical errors are largely concentrated in the French and German species names provided, which were obviously not checked with the same care devoted to the text.

Wheatears is not an identification guide, though fans of the genus (and who is not?) will certainly be able to glean information useful in distinguishing these often confusingly similar thrushes. The book begins with a brief, extensive review of the biology of the 15 wheatears it includes, then proceeds to offer thorough accounts for each of the species and subspecies. Some taxa are much better known than others; these birds, such as the widespread Norther Wheatear, are treated in chapters of up to 25 pages. Others, such as the scarce Hooded Wheatear, can be covered in half that length. Even the little-known species, however, such as Hooded or Hume’s, are treated as thoroughly as the available literature and the author’s own field work permit, and these sections like the others are well illustrated with drawings of typical postures, large-scale range maps, and sonograms of each species’ vocalizations.

There is much of interest in these accounts. Several species, for example, turn out to build rock platforms as support for their nests, sometimes gathering 5 pounds of pebbles for their foundations; interestingly, some individuals persist in this behavior even when their chosen substrate is already sufficiently stable, or even when the stones simply slide onto the ground beneath the nest. The birds in this genus are apparently fiercer predators than their mild appearances might suggest: Northern Wheatears share with Northern Shrike the distinction of being the only high-latitude passerine able to capture, dispatch, and eat large bumblebees. And the ants consumed by many desert-dwelling species “can act upon the wheatear as something of a mild stimulant”! Cream and sugar with that?

Perhaps the most important contribution made by this book to ornithology is its discussion of various hybrid and introgressant wheatear populations, some of which were described originally as distinct species. Panov’s exploration of the origin, status, and potential future of these demes has important implications for the study of avian hybridism and its significance to the process of speciation.