Book Reviews

Most birding, like all politics, is local. For every over-crowded ornithological mecca, there are thousands of city parks, nature preserves, scrubby fields, and shabby woodlots that never see an out-of-state license plate. Little known and rarely visited, such sites are nonetheless the forming grounds for nearly all birders, the places where we have seen our [...]

Cui bono?
The Princeton Illustrated Checklists leave me more and more mystified. This newest volume, covering the passerines of virtually the entire Palearctic, is colorful and conveniently pocket-sized. But what good is it for the birder?
In his introductory paragraph, Arlott describes this book as intended as “a reminder of birds already seen and… a nudge towards [...]

 
Quick! Name the most influential figure in North American birding today. Score ten points if your nominee is among the half-a-hundred contributors to this book (eleven if you pointed to me: aw shucks). And score a perfect 100 if you recognized the correct answer in that last name on the little volume’s cover, Lisa White, [...]

Mike O’Connor owns the Bird Watcher’s General Store at the Orleans rotary on Cape Cod, an institution celebrating, if I figure it right, its 25th jubilee next year (the store, I mean, not the rotary or Cape Cod). In those two and a half decades, he has answered thousands of questions; most, he writes, were easy–”the hard part [...]

Long awaited, and here at last: Steve Howell and Jon Dunn’s new Gulls appeared on my doorstep this afternoon. I had a chance to leaf through it at the ABA Convention in Lafayette last month, and will ‘post’ a review as soon as I’ve had a chance to look at the book in critical detail.