It used to be–and probably is no more–that the most telling insult one could offer to a bookish schoolchild was to spread the rumor that she spent her time “reading the dictionary.” It was never true, of course–actually reading a reference work is something only those charged with the writing of a book review would ever consider. Not even the most voracious, the most obsessive readers would think of consuming their encyclopedias and dictionaries and almanacs and atlases seriatim and at a single sitting.

“Reading” the dictionary, or the handsome and heavy Princeton Encyclopedia of Birds, for that matter, is instead a process of browsing, of letting one thing lead to the other, of following up the questions inevitably posed by the answers. And there are answers aplenty in the PEB, a splendidly illustrated reference to all the bird families of the world.

Organized taxonomically, the family entries are preceded by front matter comprising a general introduction to the anatomical unica that make a bird a bird; there is also a surprisingly, and probably inappropriately, specialized discussion of passerine classification.

The family accounts follow a standard pattern: paragraphs on “form and function” treat the physical adaptations characteristic of the taxon, and breeding behavior is treated at fascinating length for most groups.  Most of the bad news is concentrated at the end of the entries, where the conservation status of the family’s species is detailed. For particularly diverse or well-known groups, more precise information about distribution, diet, and general behavior is also provided. For users in a hurry, shaded boxes–”sidebars,” I suppose they’re called–briefly summarize the family’s nomenclature, species diversity, distribution and habitat, size range, nest and egg characteristics, diet, plumage and voice peculiarities, and conservation status; a small map depicts the family’s native range, and an amusing graphic compares a silhouetted representative with a human body part. Given this wealth of information, the curious browser can learn all about asities, mesites, and other relatively unfamiliar groups, and nearly every page reveals a tiny nugget of novelty somewhere.

The relevance of that novelty isn’t always immediately apparent. Among the dozens and hundreds of things to learn, we’re told in a photo caption that Mugimaki Flycatcher “is a far-eastern forest species whose name means ’sowing wheat’ in Japanese.” I’m entranced–but nowhere in the text is there so much as a speculation on why the bird should have such a name. Occasionally such mysterious utterances are simply wrong: sinensis Great Cormorants and Pygmy Cormorants are far from being “the family’s only true migrants.” But outright inaccuracy is rare in this book, and in the weeks it’s been on my shelf, I’ve used it a number of times as an authority to verify statements from other sources that seemed–and sometimes were–too outlandish even for birds.

The PEB is, if I understand correctly, a gently revised reprint of the second edition of the Firefly Encyclopedia. The text has been largely Americanized, though the occasional “aeroplane” seems to have slipped through; the use of “Stone Curlew” to refer to the family better known in the western hemisphere as thick-knees is also a bit of British palimpsest. I was disappointed to see that the revisions and updates did not extend to the list of contributors, many of whose institutional affiliations are now out of date and a few of whom, sadly, should have a dagger next to their name. The list also truncates Lester Short’s initials.

Any user spending time with this book will soon enough find its poor proofreading a source of annoyance. There are few outright misspellings (“retrices,” as on p. 22, always gets my goat), but it’s unfortunate that the first one–a missing hyphen in “spoon-billed”–should occur on the copyright page. Much more serious is the abysmal punctuation, which makes the text anything but a pleasure to read; the use of commas often seems to be merely decorative, and exclamation points show up in the strangest places.

Equally strange is the capitalization (or not) of bird names in the text. I do not belong to the camp of those who capitalize species names as “proper nouns”–but I have a lot of sympathy with the practice when (as in my b-log, come to think of it) it is intended to make scanning easier. All the same, lower-case species names don’t bother me at all, and the old chestnuts about not all yellow warblers’ being Yellow Warblers just don’t hold water (to mix a metaphor). It’s a fairly simple editorial decision–but one that wasn’t made here at all. Instead, it seems that the proofreader has decided to capitalize the first word of every species name and nothing more, giving us such weird artifacts as “Great blue herons” and “Cattle egrets.” Such forms are particularly risible in the case of long names: who would ever think to write “Southern rough-winged swallow”? And I really don’t know what to think of “Wood warbler.”

My complaints are serious, but they are not intended to detract from the great usefulness and the occasional pleasure of this book. It’s here that I learned that Marabous have hollow toes, and that Darwin’s rhea was discovered at the dinner table. Such gems would be the more accessible to the curious user if the book’s index allowed us to look them up using English species names instead of just the scientific names–a good discipline, I suppose, to be forced to learn them all, but surely it would have been easier to give the monolingual reader a page number than to chide her with a cross-reference.

Of course, it’s probably quicker, easier, and heaven knows lighter (all that glossy photo paper!) to look all these things up on the internet (where you can actually learn why the flycatcher is called “Mugimaki”); the days of printed encyclopedias are, inevitably, numbered. But until e-references are constructed in such a way that they can be not just consulted but browsed–even, I suppose, read, if you must–nothing can substitute for the chance to be led from one fascinating topic to the other, as this richly illustrated book does so well.

 

One could argue that birding in the western hemisphere started on Hispaniola, with the colorful birds captured by Columbus’s men as trophies of their voyage. Today, more than five centuries later, this Caribbean island and the two nations that share it, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, are the subject of renewed interest in the birding community; Hispaniola now has its own eBird (at http://www.ebird.org/Hispaniola/) and its own field guide, a handsome, easy-to-use volume available in English, Spanish, and French.

And just in time. No fewer than 38 of Hispaniola’s 306 avian species are endangered, among them fully 15 of the island’s 31 endemics. Habitat loss and degradation are to blame; the authors also cite failure to enforce environmental laws and a lack of local knowledge of the island’s biodiversity and its importance. The ultimate goal of Birds of the Dominican Republic and Haiti is to “inspire a new generation of birdwatchers, ornithologists, and conservationists” to “become as fascinated as we are by the diversity of the island’s avifauna.” The guide has a good chance to do just that.

BDRH adheres to the familiar format of color plates with facing-page identification notes, followed by a more expansive text offering a detailed description, distinctions from similar species, a voice description, detailed status and distribution information for Hispaniola, and miscellaneous comments. Each species account is accompanied by a range map, and local names (in Spanish for the Dominican Republic, in Creole and in French for Haiti) are also provided.

These longer texts are generally adequate for the identification of all but the most subtly distinguished species, and will likely serve both visitors to Hispaniola and local birders well. The “Comments” sections are often thorough, concise explorations of the more interesting aspects of a species’ life history or conservation status. Only occasionally do the species accounts leave important questions unanswered: we are told, for example, that the West Indian forms of the Short-eared Owl differ from North American birds ”in plumage and vocalizations,” but regrettably, no details are offered about those distinctions. The presentation of additional taxonomic information is generally clear and thorough, but the comment in the account for Hispaniolan Crossbill is befuddling: the authors write of “this crossbill” as “a species typical of northern coniferous forests,” and note that it was “considered part of the White-winged Crossbill species complex” until 2003. It would have been more accurate, and thus necessarily less confusing, to write that the Hispaniolan Crossbill was long considered conspecific with the White-winged Crossbill, but was recognized as a separate species in 2003.

The front of the book is rather less satisfying. The color plates (many borrowed from Princeton’s West Indies) range from adequate to poor. Hispaniolan endemics are depicted in full-page portraits by Barry Kent McKay; these images are dramatic and decorative, but particularly in the case of those species presenting identification challenges, a more traditional field-guide format, showing the birds against a plain background and in profile, might have been more helpful. Unfortunately, the tails and bills of some of McKay’s birds are cut off in my review copy.  

The telegraphic identification texts facing the plates are generally quite good. Occasionally, though, the text emphasizes a field mark not visible in the facing image; for example, the strong white primary fringing described for Stolid Flycatcher cannot be seen on the plate. (This problem is shared with the plate in Raffaele et al., where the text speaks of “primaries” but arrows point to the strong white fringing of the bird’s tertials.) Conversely, some images show features useful for identification that are not addressed in the text; the different face patterns of Tree and Golden Swallows, clearly depicted but unmentioned, are an example. The scale on many plates is off as well, making a Song Sparrow as long as a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Most troubling perhaps is the topography sketch in the field guide’s front matter. Not only is the drawing (of a Hispaniolan Spindalis) misshapen, but a number of the labels are incorrect: the “secondaries” are actually tertials, the “malar” actually the throat, the “legs” actually the tarsus (or tarsometatarsus, as long as I’m being picky), and the “chest”–well, I don’t know what that is. This is a disservice to the new and potential birders the guide hopes to attract, and should be corrected in any subsequent printings of the book.

The weakness of the illustrations, though, is far outweighed by the usefulness of the text, and by the value of the book as a whole. Let us hope that its goal is realized, and that the residents of Hispaniola come to recognize the beautiful diversity of their avifauna before it is too late.

 

 

I came long ago to be suspicious of the encyclopedic impulse, the naive notion that knowledge could be captured and condensed in its entirety in a way that would not reduce its value. Encyclopedias of birds, birding, birdlife, whatever they are called, seem particularly susceptible to superficiality, and browsing most of them gives me what we used to call the willies.

Not so the new edition of Christopher Leahy’s Birdwatcher’s Companion, which in spite of its geeky title is as much fun to read as it is informative, even (get this!) accurate. From “abbreviations” to “zygodactyl,” by way of “imagination,” “rodent-run,” and “Teratornis,” the articles in the Companion cover a nearly overwhelming range of topics in ornithology, birding, history, and culture, all presented in an engaging and easy style. Leahy wears his considerable erudition lightly, and even the most casual reader will laugh out loud at the wit that shines through in sometimes the least expected places.

But the Companion is not likely to find many casual readers. Grabbing the thick, sturdy volume from the shelf, one may well intend only to check on the correct pronunciation of “Botteri” (accent on the first syllable, please) or the top speed of the Peregrine (verified at “only” 82 mph); but the book is seductive, and it will suck even the most single-minded user in with its recipes for American Coot, its mildly X-rated etymology of the word “stork,” its musings on the color “hepatic.” One topic suggests another, and one clearly and engagingly written article leads inexorably to “just one more,” until one is no longer consulting the book but reading it. The fine illustrations by Gordon Morrison are equally appealing, and range from plans for a Wood Duck box to the skeleton of a Northern Gannet.

The Companion first appeared 25 years ago, mirabile dictu, but the new edition, recently released in paperback, represents a thorough revision, many articles added and many others completely rewritten. While typographical errors are quite frequent, more substantive lapses are scarce (though oddly concentrated: the poor alcids fare particularly badly, for some reason, with the Long-billed Murrelet styled “Long-tailed,” the nesting sites of Ancient Murrelets moved high into the trees, and the length of the largest auks given as an intimidating 62 inches). Such slip-ups are, I am sure, only rarely the author’s fault.

Ned Brinkley’s gracious and graceful Introduction sings the praises of this book as a guide and a gift for the non-birder. I could not agree more; but birders too, no matter how inexperienced, no matter how sophisticated, will be charmed, amused, and educated by what is not just a reference book, but in the truest sense of the word a companion.