Book Review: The Family of Hummingbirds

Here, reproduced entirely, in The Family of Hummingbirds by Joel and Laura Oppenheimer, are the 418 magnificently detailed hand-colored lithographs of hummingbirds by John Gould (1804-81), the “British Audubon.”

White-throated Mountain GemIn the opening essay, co-author Laura Oppenheimer tells the story of Gould’s nearly predestined career, beginning as an apprentice to his father, horticulturist at Windsor Castle. While cultivating diligent and observant gardening skills, he found a secondary interest in ornithology and taxidermy, largely self-taught. In London, he set up shop as a successful taxidermist in a Victorian Age obsessed with the strange wonders of the natural world sent back to England by intrepid explorers. Elizabeth Coxen, formally trained in drawing and painting, became his wife (she later executed many of his prints). His knowledge was recognized by his appoint as superintendent of the ornithological department of the Zoological Society Museum, which provide him with a network of learned, wealthy gentlemen naturalists.

These successive life events nicely telescoped into his magnum opus, The Family of Hummingbirds. Gould had been entranced by the hummingbirds collected in the New World, where their habitats extend from Alaska to the tip of South America. Their skins, preserved in arsenical soap, were transported back to Britain. Gould mounted over 5,000 hummingbirds. With entrepreneurial business and organizational skills, he assembled a staff of talented artists and printers, and published, over 13 years (1848-61) the 418 plates. Gould tactfully promoted sales of his lavish production by combining it with a public display of 1,500 taxidermied bird specimens at the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. 75,000 attended, including Queen Victoria. Eager subscribers were astounded by these ‘living gems’ as he called them.

Gould’s complementary use of two innovations – lithography and gold leaf under hand-coloring – make this work outstanding. Prior to his time, the laborious process of engraving and etching on copper plants had often been used for printing natural subjects. Gould brought a more advanced method of lithography to maturity and a greater expressive potential in his bird prints. Here, the initial drawn image is transferred to a limestone slab with a greasy lithographic crayon. (Joel Oppenheimer, in the introduction, compares the techniques of etching and lithography in detail.) The beauty of lithography was that it enables the original artists to participate more directly in the process, resulting in a more faithful final image. The process was also more economical, producing more affordable prints.

Gould himself, initially sketched an overall design, with a male and female of each species, in a composition with a plant native to its habitat. An artist would further develop it to completion with only a few subtle adjustments suggested by Gould. The finished drawing was transferred to the lithographic stone. e resulting black and white toned print then required a final state of hand-coloring Here, Gould’s achievement was to illuminate the reflective iridescence of these ‘living gems’ with use of ‘transparent oil and varnish colors over pure gold leaf.’ And that is all we know of the formulas and techniques he labored over, for many years, to perfect. No notes have been found, and he obtained no patents.

The plates are indeed, awe-striking. The exquisite jewel-like patterns of the birds’ feathers stand out against muted background botanicals. About a dozen of the hummingbirds are further shown in enlarged images. But, unfortunately, in order to accommodate all 418 plates, it was often necessary to squeeze nine on one page, such that each is barely the size of a playing card and thus difficult to decipher and appreciate.

I was particularly taken by the design and composition of each plate. The birds do no merely perch on a branch, but seem comfortably at ease in their surroundings. Their poses are so animated that they appear like a balletic pas de deux pirouetting and jete-ing as they sweep across the page. How could Gould have such imaginative insight of their acrobatic activities when he dealt with dead specimens and did not see a live hummingbird until a trip to Philadelphia in 1854?

Each plate, actually, usually has three birds. Since the third has a slight size and color variation, I assume it is a juvenile.

Acquainted only with our common ruby-throated hummingbird, I was surprised to learn of their marked heterogeneity. Yes, I knew their long, pointed bills had supposedly co-evolved to extract nectar from deep inside trumpet-shaped flowers, but there are also ‘saw, sword, and tooth’ -billed hummingbirds. Tails may be ‘racket’ or ‘scissor’ -shaped. ‘Comet, sylph, sunbeam and sungem’ are just a few of the species names, attesting to their brilliant plumage.

If the birds were not present on the plates, this tome would nonetheless be a virtual encyclopedia of tropical foliage. Though, as noted, in somewhat lighter, cooler colors, the botanicals are beautifully rendered, many derived from Walter Fitch, chief illustrator for the era’s preeminent Curtis Botanical Magazine. Regretfully, none of the plants are labelled.

The Family of Hummingbirds will captivate birdwatchers, fans of natural history art and hummingbird lovers everywhere.

$65.00

www.rizzoliusa.com

book review: avian architecture by peter goodfellow

Master human architects skillfully design dwellings that optimally meet their clients’ needs and fit in well with their surroundings, both functionally and aesthetically. Equally so are the goals of birds as they construct their nests. Indeed, given the importance of the nest for successful reproduction and nurturing of the young, one wonders why other mammals have not cultivated this ability, through natural selection, to as high a degree as birds. Peter Goodfellow in Avian Architecture ponders these questions and further delves into the entire realm of avian engineering, from overall design plans to intricate construction techniques.

The book is well organized. Each chapter begins with an overview of a specific type of nest with key structural characteristics and building methods, and prominent representative families. Next, the architectural characteristics of each nest type are delineated as ‘blueprint drawings,’ crisp blue and gray drawings highlighting the component materials and their interrelationships in design, shape, structural support and strength. With photographs, in the ‘materials and features’ section, Goodfellow continues on to discuss unique aspects such as camouflage, distinctive adaptations to habitat and incorporation of available material. The 'building techniques’ pages expound upon remarkable skills such as the stitching and weaving of some passerines. ‘Case studies’ conclude each section; he discusses an individual species’ nest type in depth, including notes on courtship and mating, monitoring of eggs and care of young.

The author outlines eleven nest categories: scrape nests; holes and tunnels; platform nests; aquatic nests; cup-shaped nests; domed nests; mud nests; hanging, woven and stitched nests; mound nests; colonies and group nests; and courts and bowers. To the uninitiated, this may seem detailed, but Goodfellow’s presentation of each type is so lucidly well-composed, explained and diagramed that the read feels assured of a comprehensive understanding of each discrete nest type. Also, the author brings in examples of birds from around the globe, greatly expanding beyond the nest types we commonly encounter.

I will mention a few I found especially fascinating. The female Great Hornbill (a huge bird of India and the Far East) nests in the cavity of a dead tree and, once settled in, the female seals up the opening with mud to a narrow slip and there remains for months, completely dependent on the male for food. The Magpie Goose, a waterfowl, builds a reed platform nest by clutching reeds in her beak and folding them down about her, forming a base like the spokes of a wheel.

Red-eyed Vireo nestAs you continue through the book, you quickly discover that nests are not mere piles of debris, sticks, grasses, etc. Rather, just as most of us have learned that baskets are made by twining and binding strands around upright spokes, likewise birds carefully integrate weaving material about vertical supports. Aquatic nest builders depend upon standing reeds, rushes and sedges for structural bracing. Cup-shaped nest-builders often use the triple fork of a branch as a foundation. Woven nests (ex. Oriole) do not by happenstance have a plaited surface appearance. Rather, Goodfellow illustrates the intricate weaving methods, as the bird, with her beak, pushes a grass strip through, tucks in the short end, threads the long and through nearby fibers, pulls it out and around and makes loops, through which it pulls strands to create a secure binding. A Baltimore oriole nest comprises 20,000 such shuttle movements and takes four and one-half days to build.

Most of us are familiar with nests of twigs, grass, reeds, lichen, moss, and mud. Some mound builders, such as the Adele Penguin, use stones. Horned Coots (South America) pile up stones offshore to build a safe artificial island nest.

Some species build nests in groups or colonies. The tightly packed nests of swift colonies are a familiar example. But the Sociable Weaver constructs one large nest with multiple inlets like a gigantic apartment block.

The Bowerbird’s engineering efforts aim at ‘statement architecture designed solely to attract females.’ The construction activity itself is a type of courtship behavior. The attracted female, after mating, flies off to build a commonplace nest. The three types of bowers, stage, avenue and maypole, attest to their display purposes, and in the case of the Satin Bowerbird, go to the extreme of decorating the entryway with distinctly blue feathers and stones.

Although nest building has long been considered innate and instinctive, learning may also play a role. The Vogelkop Bowerbird male spends four to seven years practicing bower making before he breeds.

This is an engrossing book. The numerous types of bird nests are explicitly described by the succinct ‘blueprint’ illustrations, followed by step-by-step diagrams of construction techniques, case examples with photos, and further discussion of nest habitat and mating and incubation behavior.

I purchased the book from E. R. Hamilton, Bookseller Co., PO Box 15, Falls Village, Ct 06031-0015, on sale for $9.95. You could also try Amazon, or better yet, a local store like Bookmobile or Phoenix Books (for special order). 

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john gould's birds

John GouldA few weeks ago, while shuffling past the oversize book shelves at the Rutland Free Library, a tome, fronted with a painting of a sharp-eyed merlin, alighting on its nest, with her desperately gaping young, caught the corner of my eye. Boldly titled John Gould’s Birds, my curiosity was now piqued, and I had to take a closer look. After flipping through just a few pages, I knew that, despite being already burdened down by clunky boots, a down coat and several books for winter reading, this had to be added to my pack.

John Gould is known for his publications on the birds and animals of three continents, monographs on toucans, trogons and hummingbirds, illustrations for two ships’ voyages, and about 300 scientific articles.

He was born on September 14, 1804, in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, a town noted for its healthy clime and restorative bathing opportunities, certainly a snug “nest” for someone with a bent for nature. A childhood family move to Surrey, an area rich in wildlife, provided a variety of meadows, woodlands, ponds and rivers for exploration. He collected nests and shot specimens. As I’ve learned from my previous reading (and related in my book reviews), this was considered at the time, not mischievous antics, but wholesome, and was common in the U.S. as well. The introductory chapter included a side comment that Great Britain passed its “Wild Birds Protection Act” in 1880. I couldn’t help wonder, why, despite our pompous declaration of rights, liberty and democracy, the Brits were decades ahead of us in taking a stand against slavery AND against mindless destruction of birds.

Gould’s father was a gardener, eventually attaining a position at the grounds of Windsor Castle, where the young Gould was placed under a Mr. Archer for further horticultural training. However, John found his interest turned toward taxidermy. In 1825, he set up business as a taxidermist in London where he became renowned for his skills. In 1827, he was appointed “Curator and Preserver” to the Zoological society of London. He preserved a great number of specimens for their museum’s constantly growing collection.

In 1830, Gould somehow acquired a collection of Himalayan bird skins which he stuffed and mounted. Perceiving their artistic qualities he visualized how well they would look in an illustrated book. The previous year Gould had married Elizabeth Coxell, an accomplished artist with talent that surpassed her pedagogical drawing duties as a governess. Thus, Elizabeth was engaged to draw the Himalayan birds.

Gould himself was not primarily responsible for the fine art work of the bird illustrations. The plates were based on rough drawings Gould made of the mounted model. These were pencil or charcoal sketches indicating the position of the birds on the page, plants to be used, and perhaps a few dabs of suggested color. Elizabeth (and later other artists) painstakingly produced the detailed lithographic plates and drawings. Another group of watercolorists did the final painting of the prints.

Gould found 298 subscribers for his Himalayan bird book, mainly gentlemen, earls, lords, dukes, institutions and natural historians. He continually obtained specimens through his Zoological Society contacts. Next came Birds of Great Britain, Birds of Europe and Birds of Australia, for which Elizabeth journeyed with him to the southern continent. However, because of her untimely death at age 37, Gould was obliged to find other illustrators to complete the Australian and future works. Edward Lear and Henry Richter were notable artists who illustrated over 1000 plates.

One naturally is inclined to compare Gould and Audubon. Not only had Gould purchased some Audubon prints in 1827, but the two men apparently knew each other. Audubon borrowed skins from Gould and acquired a (live) dog from him.

Personality-wise, they seem to have been near opposites. The text notes that Gould’s “business methods remained brusque and direct, and he never seemed to have acquired the finesse of a gentleman.” On the other hand, Audubon was a social charmer when seeking subscribers in London. With his “shoulder-length chestnut ringlets and fringed buckskin jacket” he became the archetypical beloved “American Woodsman.” A significant difference was that Audubon had received training as an artist in Paris at the atelier of the great French master Jacques-Louis David.

Their techniques and styles were different. Gould utilized taxidermists’ specimens situated in stereotypical positions. His model’s feathers were often faded. Audubon set up recently killed birds in positions secured by wires. His compositions could become quite complex and appear staged, to the point of being contorted and almost “frenzied” such that some scientists questions their accuracy. Audubon appeals to the spectacular and striking, Gould to the formal and lyrical. “There are, for example, Audubon’s pintail ducks whose necks crane upward eager to catch a moth, whereas Gould’s ducks are quietly waddling toward the water. Audubon’s great white heron strides forward with a fish in its bill; Gould’s pair of herons is perched side by side in a tree. Audubon’s great black gull dies bleeding its wing shattered by a storm, whereas Gould’s gull glides peacefully through the water.”

Another clearly evident difference is that virtually all of Gould’s birds are done in vignette format, while Audubon often uses the entire sheet for his painting. Gould’s colors tend toward earth tones – ochre, russets, burn orange, umber, olive green, stormy blues, while Audubon’s encompass a wider spectrum and are more vivid. It seemed to be that Gould’s illustrators’ employment of more subtle, less saturated palette enabled them to achieve finer detail. In this respect, the accompanying wildflowers and plants are as exquisitely rendered as the birds, and they could serve as a fine reference for botanists except for the point that, oddly, they are not identified. If they deserve such study and care in their depiction, one might think a comment would be made as to the possible necessity of the plant in the bird’s chosen habitat. For example, goldfinches flittering about teasel – do they extract tiny seeds from the pods?

Check this one out at the library. Oversize books are upstairs, main room, far west stack. Often, many are set up in display fashion. And, yes, any oversize book can be checked out and taken home. Just bring a big pack!

book review: a natural history of tinmouth

In 1964, George T. LeBoutillier retired and, with his wife, went to live in Tinmouth. In A Natural History of Tinmouth, Vermont, he reflects upon his encounters with nature, both on his own property and over the wider Tinmouth region.

a Tinmouth farmHe lays the groundwork with a bit of history. Tinmouth was founded in 1761 as a center of the iron smelting industry. Residual slag pits can still be seen near Tinmouth Channel. Farming, of course, was always present, but he remarks that even at that time, in the 1960s, it was clearly evident that many farms had vanished.

A few pages of orientation elucidate the geography and geology. His hand-drawn map indicates the relationship of Tinmouth and Clark mountains, Tinmouth Pond and Channel, and The Purchase. The soil is generally neutral to alkaline as compared to the more acidic Green Mountains to the east. But the author points out that there are local variations based on the contribution of underlying rock (granite, limestone, or calcium).

This is followed by chapters on the flora, arthropods (including insects), reptiles and amphibians, mammals and birds. The book is not a field guide. Rather it is a compendium of LeBoutillier’s encounters with wildflowers, animals and birds as he actually experienced them. He does comment upon a few defining features, but prefers to draw the reader in with unique specimens he has comes across and unusual incidents likely to have been missed by those less attuned to their surroundings.

His overall philosophy on classification is exemplified by his declaring that, as an amateur, regarding spiders, he is content to get identification down to family or order; to go further would require catching, killing and dissection. Seeing a spider on the windowsill, he writes that “from its small size and the way it held its legs out at hits sides like a crab, I made a reasonable guess that it belongs to the group known as crab spiders….and decided to look no further as there are 200 species found in North American.” But his enlightenment was “Having found one yesterday, today I noticed four more.” Even more exciting was discovering an enormous wolf spider with 20-30 spiderlings on her back.

Viewing nature from ‘aloft’ so to speak, rather than down below, differentiating tiny details, he appreciates many generalities which are often overlooked in guidebooks, but would be useful to the novice. For example, he uses his own contour drawings to highlight distinctive anatomical features in swallowtail vs. skipper butterflies and also notes that fritillaries are distinguishable by their hairy forelegs (a point not sufficiently emphasized in the field guides I checked on).

Sedge Sprite, Nehalennia irene, at Tinmouth Channel WMAInsects are often dismissed by us as repellent irritants, but LeBoutillier begs a closer look. He corrects a common misunderstanding by stating that “Only a few insects are ‘bugs’ and they belong to the order Heteroptera,” and he goes on to “useful, if not wholly accurate generalities: Beetles have a line straight down their backs. Bugs have a triangle on their backs. Flies have only one pair of wings. Bees and wasps have two pairs of wings, and the connection between their thorax and abdomen is a thick tubular membrane. Resting, moths either spread their wings vertically or move them up and down. Dragonflies rest with wings horizontal; damselflies rest with wings vertical.”

For those venturing out in spring hoping to see more than their own arms swatting at “no-see-ums” he offers the general rule, that at least 50 degrees F is necessary for insect activity. Apparently ticks were a moot point “if ticks are present here, we have not yet encountered any.”

Things “stirred-up” while mowing: various butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, leafhoppers, “a green larva that lands on my knee from somewhere,” flies beetles, chickadees, swallows, etc., are worth two pages of commentary. Akin to current concerns, already in 1983 he noted decreased bobolinks and eastern meadowlarks secondary to early mowing.

LeBoutillier also makes a point of watching, sitting still and observing. He spent time scrutinizing red-tailed bumblebees approach and depart a ground nest hole, as they maneuvered beneath an arched leaf entranceway. He spends hours watching wood frogs skittering on the surface of a long (was it combat or coupling?) diving or cackling. Frog croaks are not summarily dismissed, rather “the green frog fails hopelessly to achieve the sonority of the bull frog’s bass viol, but only the twang of a loose banjo string.” Of the gray tree frog: “a short trilling call…when two or three call antiphonally, in slightly different pitches, it is pleasant sound indeed.”

White-tailed Deer, Odocoileus virginianusGray foxes, rabbits, mink, weasels, river otters, coyotes, bobcats and deer all traverse his property, and of these he makes keen observations and cogent conclusions. Mink sauntering by, even when searching for prey, have a more docile demeanor than the ferocious visage of the caged mink he has seen. The dexterity of apple-picking raccoons amazes him.

Since winter-watching of animals is aided by one’s ability to decipher tracks, he offers a few tips to explain print patters: Raccoons and bears are plantigrade, walking on the sole of their foot with the heel touching the ground, whereas cats, dogs and deer are digitigrade, walking only on their toes, and thus are faster and more graceful. Walking birds, like crows, decisively put one foot ahead of the other, thus their prints are in a straight line, whereas birds that hop from place to place have footprints in pairs.

Birds are the last major chapter. Watching his feeders over time, he concludes that chickadees have an established hierarchy and behavioral etiquette. He “records” sparrow songs by depicting them as notes on a musical staff on paper. Using this he was able to trace individual sparrows who returned from year to year. He noticed that rough grouse would ascend off their nest with very turbulent strong wing beats which stirred up a flurry of dried leaves, to fall back and conceal the eggs.

The last thirty pages are selected journal entries.

I was struck by the author’s wealth of perceptions and impressions of his environment. LeBoutillier had his eyes wide open. But he wasn’t just passively watching it scroll past before him. He also went out with questions, and looking for answers leads him to see more incisively.

Without his expressly saying so, I think his ultimate message, is first to strive to be well-acquainted with your surroundings. Knowing at least the basics of geology and geography will help you understand and appreciate the inhabitants of your environment. Being familiar with the fundamentals, you will be receptive to variations, and that will enhance your knowledge and understanding. Be “mindful” of the world around you. Lastly adopt a “look it up now” resolution. An ongoing journal would be exemplary, but it is helpful to just jot down what you saw, where, time of day, description or even crude drawings. Having something documented serves as a quick reference to jog your memory. You will be motivated to resolve questions by looking something up. And with your notes, future sightings will be more reliably compared to the past.

This book is no longer in publication. I checked with “The Bookmobile” in downtown Rutland and they said they could probably locate used copies. A Natural History of Tinmouth, Vermont is also available at the Rutland Free Library.

book review: bird sense by tim birkhead

In this concise guide, Tim Birkhead’s goal is not only to explain the biology, anatomy and physiology of bird sensation, but also to enable us to perceive what it feels like to be a bird – to be snuffling the humid undergrowth like a kiwi, or to sniff rain falling 100 km away like a flamingo.

The author gives a lucid description of bird senses, allotting a chapter to each: seeing, hearing, touch, taste, smell, magnetic sense and emotions, and traces the observational and experimental history that led to the current understanding. He relates clever, insightful means of testing hypotheses and debunking or confirming folk anecdotes. An important point is that our conclusions of how birds sense are constrained by the limitations and biases of our own human senses. Notable in this respect, was the discovery of birds’ ability to detect ultraviolet light.

In some cases, as for the eye, the avian sense organ is anatomically distinct from that of humans. Birds of prey, with their extraordinary vision, have two foveae (where the image is sharpest) whereas humans have one. Birds have a nictitating membrane under the eyelid, which cleans and protects the eye. They also have an unusual structure, the pecten, which projects into the posterior chamber and contains a mass of blood vessels able to provide oxygen and other nutrients to the eye. As opposed to the human eye, which has a richly vascularized retina, the bird’s eye is largely bereft of blood vessels, other than those of the pecten.

Birkhead sidesteps for a moment, to remind us that the brain, of course, is the ultimate mediator of all sensation: long, fine, neuronal axons link the sense receptors to the brain. However, the brain is not just a passive control center. For example, the center of the avian brain that controls acquisition and production of song in male birds shrinks at the end of the breeding season and grows again the next spring.

a Sanderling probes for foodUntil recently, birds were not thought to have senses for touch, taste and smell. The development of higher power microscopes and finer dissection techniques revealed that birds have touch receptors within pits in their beaks. Using these sensitive bill tips, birds like sandpipers, woodcock and snipe detect prey such as worms or mollusks either by touching them directly or detecting their vibrations, or by noticing pressure changes in sand or mud.

Complex studies have also elucidated the sense of taste in birds. Taste buds were found to be located at the back of the tongue and throat and in the palate. Birds are able to respond to the same four categories as humans: sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Research has shown that hummingbirds can detect differences in the amount of sugar in nectar, fruit-eating birds can differentiate ripe and unripe fruit, and sandpipers can taste the presence of worms in sand.

At the end of the chapter on taste, the author takes an odd, almost reverse track in discussing the five New Guinea birds that are toxic to humans and he goes on to query the relation of plumage color to palatability.

If a book on bird physiology can possibly have a climax, Birkhead pulls it off in the chapter on smell. He begins by dethroning our beloved John James Audubon, at least on his merits as a scientific logician. Audubon believed vultures had no sense of smell, as they were unable to detect carcasses he had hidden in secluded spots, like a dead tree cavity. His conclusions even received plaudits in the scientific journals of the time. Later it was determined that vultures only respond to fresh carcasses, whereas Audubon had supplied only rotting carrion.

Contrariwise, it was Betsy Bang, a Hopkins trained medical illustrator, but only an amateur ornithologist, who did the fine dissections delineating the labyrinthine maze of bird nasal cavities. She also measured, with a ruler, the olfactory bulb size of many birds and developed an index of size corresponding to olfaction’s relative importance, the kiwi coming out on top. However, in subsequent decades, this straightforward reasoning did not always hold true. Recent, the advent of 3D reconstruction by means of high resolution scanning and tomography has shown the volume of the olfactory bulb to be a much better measure of olfactory sensibility.

Topping off this chapter on taste is a bombastic statement only a pretentious birder would declare: “Apart from the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and the ongoing Napoleonic War, the most significant event of 1813 was Europe’s discovery of the kiwi." Indeed, having very poor eyesight, the kiwi is very dependent on foraging by snuffling into the ground for earthworms.

As humans have no innate magnetic sense, scientists were at ground zero when contemplating this capability in birds. Actually, they were in negative territory, since it is only recently that it has even been speculated that birds possess this special property. Some of the first studies were done by Steve Emlen implementing his Emlen funnel: "It consists of a blotting paper funnel about 10 cm in diameter, with an ink pad at the bottom, and a domed wire mesh top, through which birds can see the sky. As the bird hops, the ink on its feet leaves a trace on the blotting paper which provides an index both of the direction and intensity of the migration." (A drawing of this apparatus would have enhanced the reader’s visualization.) In further searching for the Holy Grail of a “magnetic compass,” robins were put in a cage surrounded by huge electromagnetic coils. Shifting of the magnetic fields altered the direction of the robins’ hopping.

Alas, there is no “magnetic organ” as such. “Magnetic sensations are different, because unlike light and sound, they can pass through tissue: this means it is possible for a bird to detect magnetic fields via chemical reactions inside individual cells and through its entire body.” Ingenuous studies have substantiated a visually induced chemical reaction as the mechanism of magnetic field detection. On a grander scale, we have seen how the new geolocators and satellite trackers have been utilized to study bird migration and navigation.

Lastly, emotions – still largely a conjecture and somewhat of a romantic frontier of investigation – perhaps mocked by many, but any devout birder will tell you that the behavior she/she has seen suggests otherwise.

Although each chapter has an introductory page with a few drawings and diagrams, more would have provided further clarification. Birkhead’s writing is clear and flows at an even pace. Anatomy and biology come alive and are not fact-ridden and textbook like. At only 209 pages, it will provide pleasant and enlightening reading for a few dark winter evenings.

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book review: butterfly people

Silver-bordered FritillaryThe benefits of casual browsing struck again when I espied Butterfly People at the Rutland Free Library. A rainbow of multicolored butterflies covered a book set atop the ‘new selections’ case. Like nectar, it drew me in. A quick thumb through revealed many plates of butterflies and moths illustrated with artists’ skillful drawings, saturated with deep oranges, yellows and blues. They evoked a collision of sensuous beauty with scientific detail – wing venation to internal organ systems. Such enticement is the jewel in William Leach’s historic chronicle of nineteenth century America’s infatuation with butterflies.

The Victorian world is often acclaimed as the ‘heyday’ of natural history. Similar to what I related regarding early gatherers of bird eggs in my review of Oology and Ralph’s Talking Eggs, butterfly collection had become a frenzied mania. To capture hundreds of butterflies during a day’s outing was routine. As with bird eggs, butterflies were a marketable commodity, with advertisers searching for distinct species. Henry Edwards amassed 250,000 specimens.

The adventurous and harrowed lives of many ‘butterfly people’ are outlined by Leach, highlighting the curious ways they became enamored of butterflies. One of the chief collectors, Wm. Henry Edwards was a West Virginian coal mining kingpin. Many had another primary day job: Herman Stecker was a stone mason. Very few arose from a professional science background because they were the first ones writing the biological science of butterflies, dissecting and describing morphology, analyzing and comparing species.

American LadyTwo of the main contentions were species distinction and taxonomy. Sexual dimorphism of males and females, and sometimes significant changes in the mature winged adult throughout its lifespan, were the source of much confusion and heated debate. Arguments also arose over taxonomic nomenclatures – should it be Linnaean, alluding to antigenic relations, or should just a common vernacular name be attached? Stecker named one moth “Eudaemonia jehovah.” At this even his religious friends thought he had breached conventional standards of decency. Another source of dispute and rancor (Darwin having lately arrived on the scene) was whether each species was a perfected end in itself or represented evolutionary adaptations over eons. In fact, sixty fossil butterflies were discovered during this time.

An interesting parallel between today and these 19^th century butterfly people, popped out to me. Today many birders saunter out and post their notable findings on eBird or similar websites and listservs for professionals such as the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and etc. to encounter, accumulate, consolidate and arrive at hypotheses on species survival or decline, distribution, etc. Similarly the Victorian ‘butterfly people’ often fell into two groups. The collectors did the field work, catching as much as possible and shipping their harvest off to those like Wm. Henry Edwards who spent most of his hours at his desk in his library, examining specimens and writing the first catalog listings of butterflies and moths.

This is a fascinating story, well written, except that I often had trouble keeping straight Wm. Henry Edwards and Henry Edwards, two separate collectors who were close colleagues. It makes one long for earlier decades when there was such a widespread enthusiasm to get outside and experience and learn more about the natural world. Even further, one hopes mankind harbors a deeper reverence for nature beyond the monetary economies of the ‘collecting bug.’

Be sure to check the RCAS Flickr page for more photos of some of the beautiful butterflies that can be seen in Vermont.

book review: The Handbook of Bird Photography

The Handbook of Bird Photography by Markus Varesvuo, Jari Peltomäki and Bence Máté is a recently published tome directing dedicated bird photographers through the in-depth information they need to develop their skills, with the goal of producing exceptional bird photos, whether for documentation or artistic purposes. Equipment and techniques are delineated, but the main emphasis is on field work. Digital image processing and computer manipulations have been left out of the book. Indeed, the authors state that their aim is to present a balanced mix of informative reading and enjoyable viewing. Markus Varesvuo, Jari Peltomäki and Bence Máté, the authors, hail from Scandinavia and Hungary, and the photos are skewed toward that region. Ring Ouzel, Red-flanked Bluetail, Siberian Jay, Eurasian Griffin, Dalmatian Pelican and Western Capercaillie are just a few examples of birds they photographed that are unfamiliar in the Americas. Each of these three authors has won various photographer of the year awards.

The professional bird photographer will be the one who finds this book most valuable. At that level, equipment includes a high-end DSLR camera in the $6,000-$8,000 range. (Semi-professional cameras can be had for $1,000-$4,000, whereas amateur DSLRs will only cost you $600-$1,600.) Truly dedicated bird photographers pack two DSLR cameras in their bags: one with a wide-angle lens for bird flocks, and a second with a telephoto lens for close-ups. Additional technical chapters give highly detailed discussions of sensors, lenses, telephoto extenders, continuous high-speed shooting, exposure, light metering, etc.

To the average bird enthusiast, all of this sounds very haughty, but it is essential knowledge to creating breathtaking award-winning photos. Even so, the authors recognize the proper place of precise technical skills, for they repeatedly state that the most aesthetically pleasing bird photos are grounded in following several general rules of thumb which can be practiced by any photographer. Foremost, knowledge of bird behavior and biology will improve your photography; the best photos are the result of spending long stretches of time with one species. Experience in the field, and viewing field conditions, as well as the bird, is prime. Photographers should let birds approach them and not vice versa (birds will move away). In this vein, all three authors strongly suggest using a blind. Although the book illustrates several elaborate settings, their point is that any good coverage is an immense help, as well as subdued or camouflage clothing. Also, it is well to remember that headwinds are better for photographers than birds flying with a tailwind because a headwind forces the birds to fly closer to the earth’s surface.

Reading through the book, as a ‘newbie’ myself in the leap from 35 mm to digital photography, I began to understand that the way to improve your photos is to progress from a reactive “point and shoot” photographer, to one who plans to capture a subject utilizing whatever limited (and hopefully increasing) skills one has to, to proactively create a good shot. And though the book gives insider tips for stunning scenes (migration across the sheen of the aurora borealis, anyone?), there are plenty of practical, simple tips for photographing in mist, fog, falling snow - and that bane of all nature photographers – when your subject is just behind a prominent branch. Getting beyond point and shoot requires looking for new angles and adding a little bit extra: the light of a beautiful evening, dramatic backlighting, or an interesting background. Creating a controlled, simulated setting need not be so involved that it is best left to the professional. Anyone can set out berries or dead rodents as a lure. And there is a way to install a small mirror at a bird bath to give nice backlit features.

Lastly, it is probably the undefinable that results in the greatest photos. It is an inner aesthetic receptiveness to the beautifully enticing: that which the photographer perceives without technical or site manipulation. My favorite photo (page 27) is of Red Phalarope gingerly stepping through a pool or red reflective water. The photographer had been taking various close-ups of the phalarope when he suddenly noticed that his travel partner had moved to a position such that his bright red feathers were making interesting patterns of deep red way reflections right around the bird.

The $50 price for this book (358 pages) is somewhat daunting. But from my amateur’s viewpoint, this is an extremely valuable addition to the professional’s reference shelf. For the amateur, there is still a lot of useful material to start working with to begin moving beyond common frustrations and toward more satisfying photos. And for the rich and famous with no prior bird interest, you could spend $50 on a lot less healthy things to lift your mood. The photos are exquisite, and you’ll spend a few hours transporting your mind through ethereal realms of nature’s beauty.

(In the interest of full disclosure, RCAS was given a free copy of this book provided we would give a public book review. The above represents my honest opinion of the book, and I have not received any personal compensation in preparing this review).

 For a list of other books we’ve reviewed, click here.

book review - The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds

Julie Zickefoose is a bird person. I tender that characterization, not tongue-in-cheek, but in all sincerity and as an honorific. Indeed, she herself is certain that the young orphan chicks for which she cares, consider her their mother.

In The Bluebird Effect – Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, she relates her observations of many years rehabilitating birds and raising newborns and nestlings. She parents them with a broad knowledge of each species’ specific requirements. Although she does not claim professional veterinary or ornithology credentials, she utilizes all the exacting maneuvers needed to examine an injured bird and determine which particular muscle or bone is damaged. If there was a likely assailant (cat, fox), she knows the type of injury to look and test for. And yes, she’ll know just how to set the wing or leg, often using household items.

a juvenile Eastern Bluebird at Bomoseen State ParkI was also struck by her patience. The young chicks require more care than her own two children, Phoebe and Liam, with feedings at twenty-minute intervals. Concocting multi-ingredient omelets (her term) to feed the chicks, is her first duty upon arising. And as humans would make their choice of cut of beef (tenderloin, flank, ribs), she is well-versed in the selective mealworm parts preferred by her fastidious dependents.

Her aim in these endeavors, and in writing the book, was not only to give her best effort toward bird restoration, but also to learn from those birds under her care. To fully encompass this objective, she has created drawings and watercolors of the chicks as they healed, matured, and fledged. I was particularly moved by the paintings of feeble newborns, in which Julie’s glazes of maroon, mauve and dull ochre manifest watercolor as the perfect medium for depicting the chicks, limpid, translucent skin.

This delightful, yet serious, book is a confluence of science and soul. Julie Zickefoost has the skills and knowledge to attend to the physical needs of her subjects, yet she recognizes the individual personality in each. She triumphs upon discovering, perched, on their favorite backyard branch, her previous summer’s fledglings. After a winter’s migration, they have found their way back home. Conversely, she is not above expressing profound grief at chick failures and death.

This book is available at the Rutland Free Library.

book review - the birds of heaven: travels with cranes

In his introduction, Peter Matthiesen asserts that to understand the origin and previous nature of a single living thing (as he attempts with his transcontinental research of the status of 'Grus' - crane species), is one way to grasp the main perspectives of environment and biodiversity. He bears this out in his book, as he not only informs us of worldwide studies of crane populations, breeding sites and migration routes, but also puts such work within the scope of differing cultural environmental attitudes and the consistent flux of biodiversity.

Sandhill Crane in Brandon, VermontAbout the first quarter of the book is given to Matthiesen's peregrination traversing breeding grounds in the Siberian watershed of the Amur River, on into Mongolia and central Asia, culminating in a large international crane conference. At first, the reader is heartened to discover that there are knowlegeable ornithologists in remote lands dedicated to crane preservation and restoration. Yet their earnest good will and work is still riven by simmering longstanding political animosities: on a multicultural river-based crane survey on the Amur River, the Chinese complain they have not been given their fair share of limited places on an onshore excursion, while Russians grumble that the Chinese are too starchly dressed, with shoes and shirts, for field work.

Likewise, those motivated to advocate development of large crane reserves face the oft unspoken conundrum that the Chinese like the idea of nature as an abstract, witnessed by the prominence of it in their art, but the reality makes them uneasy. In the Cultural Revolution, cranes were decimated as a food source, despite their traditional spiritual embodiment as sentinels of heaven, omens of longevity and good fortune. More recently, in San Jiang, or Three Rivers, which is the heart of the breeding range of the Red-Crowned Crane, the wetlands were drained to create seven hydroelectric dams and the "Great Northern Breadbasket."

Matthiesen's travels in search of cranes take more than a decade, and he presents them in reverse chronological order, beginning with the most recent in Siberia, gradually going back in time through China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, Australia, Europe and North American (South America has no cranes). Specific facts of crane behavior, anatomy, coloration, etc., are introduced along the way. An interesting point noted is that cold climate species lay darker eggs, whereas white eggs will reflect the heat of a warmer climate.

The author describes each species more specifically as he encounters them: there are eleven species of the genus Grus. Oddly it is not until page 147 that he goes into a more comprehensive comparison of each species' color pattern variations, facial features, size, calls, etc., that result in the current genus and species delineation. I would have appreciated a few pages of such a didactic approach at the beginning, to get me grounded. An immense aid in this respect, are several pages of eloquent crane paintings by Robert Bateman, an acclaimed wildlife artist. These are not field book rendtions, but figurative work of cranes in their habitat - preening, calling, wading, and flying. All have a softened tone, in keeping with the legendary sentiment of a mystical bird. There are also four pages of "portraits" which allow closer study of head colors and markings.

This book also is a traveler's essay since Mattiesen is very dependent on local guides, not only for reaching prospective crane sites, but also for shelter, food, and vehicular transport. Thus the reader learns much of the cultural and physical differences of inner and outer Mongolians, the details of ger (yurt) construction, and, in India, the complexities of dodging Hindu and Muslim riots to get to the hinterland.

Overall, I came off impressed by the great fluidity of crane numbers and success, their travels and breeding grounds. After all, in 1979, more than three centuries after it was last reported, the Eurasian Crane returned to England as a breeding species. Yes, the declines and absences are often of human origin, but they may also be due to natural disasters or incremental enviromental changes. Some are still a mystery.

At the end, I believe Peter Matthiesen is still hopeful. He was triumphant, when in attempts to develop a non-migrating crane population in Florida, after 211 trasport egg tries (cranes lay two eggs; since usually only one survives, the second is often taken by scientists for studies and to establish captive flocks), one Whooping Crane was finally hatched, the first born in the U.S. in sixty years.

This book is available at the Rutland Free Library.

Note: Aside from the endanged Whooping Crane, North America has a healthy population of Sandhill Cranes. While usually found well west of Vermont, a pair of Sandhills has successfully bred in the Bristol area for several years. Occasionally in migration Sandhill Cranes may be spotted in Rutland County such as one in Brandon last spring (see photo). Click here for an eBird map of Sandhill Crane sightings in Vermont.

pete dunne on bird watching

I was presented Pete Dunne on Bird Watching, for review, by another Auduboner, who thought it was a good introductory book that, while slightly dated (2003),  is still available and ought to be more well known.

Pete Dunne as authored many books on birds and bird watchingCertainly Pete Dunne is to be acknowledged for taking a holistic approach to birding, by accruing numerous diverse skills in order to successfully identify birds in the field. But I don’t consider this a beginner’s book. It is not a handy guide to keep in the glove box or on the windowsill to determine what flits by in the campground or backyard. Having finished chapter one, I felt he was writing at least for the serious beginner. By the end of the book, I concluded that Mr. Dunne’s audience is the committed birder, well on his or her way to building a life list, with enough experience to ask intelligent questions the likes of which he can answer.

Binoculars and spotting scopes are discussed at length in several chapters. Here must be everything you will ever need to know about the optics of lenses and the critical evaluations to consider when purchasing (porro vs. roof prisms, lens coatings, BAK-4 vs. BK-7 glass, optimal magnifications, etc.). The avid birder will be more confident when shopping for optical accessories. The beginning birder will be daunted by Dunne’s assessment that any binoculars with a tag less than $200 isn’t worth a second look.

Dunne follows with a detailed description of the maneuvers for correct use of binoculars, an acquired skill of frustrated beginners. He nearly envisions the experience birder as performing a choreography of mind-hand-binocular-bird intuitive flow of action for maximum identification success.

Although this is not a typical field guide akin to Sibley, Peterson, etc., Dunne does give a nod to their variable design, accuracy and illustration format. Here

 a subsection covers process guides, “those guides that work best are those whose format is not so much anchored in a process as an embodiment of it.” This sounds to me, that if you’re well-versed in such apparently biblical field guides, you’ve mastered the Tao Te Ching of birding!

A chapter on where to bird mentions various local sites by habitat, noting that some of the best birding is upwind of sewage treatment plants, and gives extensive coverage of hotspots across the country and abroad, as well as pelagic (by sea) adventures.

Scattered throughout the book are inserts by guest writers with tips and anecdotes, such as one beginner’s expedition being matched with an (unknown to her) expert birder on a Christmas Bird Count.

Dunne is at his best when he comes down to reiterating his ten steps of bird identification, only the first few of which concern size, shape, and field marks. The more experienced birder then knows to consider behavior, flight patterns, ground and roosting activity, habitat, nearby birds, reaction to human presence, etc. He gives ample pages enlarging on these nuances.

Nonetheless, Dunne does seem to delight in propounding the proper ‘pishing’ pronunciation protocol, or enthralling with the near esoteric, as how to predict a fallout by watching the moon with your spotting scope on the night before you plan to go birding.

Fortunately, for the novice, such terms as “fallout” or “passerine,” glided by in the text, are defined by a glossary at the end of the book, where there is also an American Birding Association Checklist of the Birds of North America and a code of birding ethics.

This book is an omnibus of all things about birding outside of classic field guide identification. It will refine your skills and advance you toward your goal of expert birders. It is clear that the author finds himself a guru in that category.

The book is available at the Rutland Free Library and also at Amazon.com where it received a rating of four out of five stars.

feathers - a book review

Surprisingly, Thor Hanson begins his treatise on feathers with a titillating introduction that describes the role of birds in shamanism and ancient mythologies, and he goes on to speculate why most religions share a belief in angels as intermediaries on a flight path toward unity with God. But from there on, the reader encounters a definite shift of tone. The remainder of the book follows three themes: the evolution of feathers, their biological utility to flight and life functions, and the commercial use of feathers.

As someone who has persistently bypassed the dinosaur articles in National Geographic as being the epitome of ennui, I was totally engulfed by Hanson’s lucid discussion of Archaeopteryx studies in unraveling the evolution of feathers. (Archaeopteryx was a pre-historic linchpin having physical properties of reptiles and birds.) Traditional theories argue that feathers evolved for the purpose of flight. Others proposed non-aerodynamic proto-feather structures that facilitated the insulation, waterproofing and display and courtship colors, were the first to appear.

But more recent studies jettison origin from reptile scales or the multiple potential uses of the emerging new feather form. Instead, they focus on a how a feather grows, as the key to answering questions as to how feathers evolved. Hanson very carefully, with precise diagrams, details the five states of feather development. This theory attempts to overcome the confounding discordance of the structural difference between flat scales and tubular feathers. Though initially speculative, this theory has received profound support from numerous fossils exemplifying the five stages, unearthed by paleontological studies in northeast China in the 1900s.

Secondly, Hanson discusses the physiological properties of feathers, and their numerous survival functions. Although feathers are composed of keratin, as are our hair, nails and skin, it is a chemically unique keratin providing the molecular basis for particular characteristics: strong yet light, firm yet flexible, durable and elastic. Each individual skin follicle can produce all the feather types and colors over a lifetime, from natal down to juvenile, adult, and breeding plumages. Each follicle is modulated by muscles and nerves that give a finely tuned agility to individual feathers. Likewise, molting is more than a random, diffuse shedding. It occurs in a staggered pattern from innermost primaries out to wing-tips, although in ducks the molt can take place more precipitously, leaving them rather helpless in hunting season, giving rise to the phrase “sitting duck.”

Besides physiological molting, birds can release a mass of feathers in a moment of stress or fright, leaving a predator with a feathery mouthful. Although feathers also provide insulation, they are positioned in clusters or tracks with in-between bare patches, providing for cool drafts and evaporation.

The third major theme is man’s commercial use of feathers. Of course, the author is obliged to briefly cover the pre-World War I global “plume-boom” (which gave rise to the Audubon Society), but Hanson has also dug up tales of ostrich magnates and African ostrich espionage! He also points out that although women were the feather industry’s principle market, women founded nearly every local Audubon chapter and made up most of the early membership.

Hanson undertook several excursions to investigate the current feather market. He visited the only remaining New York City milliner, who handcrafts here artisan ally designed hats. After several reassurances of his purely academic interest, he is finally given a tour of the “The Rainbow Feather Company” where feathers are dyed in a secretive industrial process. He also inveigles an interview with the producers of “Jubilee!,” the most extravagant show in Las Vegas, followed by a visit to backstage storage replete with elaborate feathers costumes.

However, present uses of feathers go beyond the commercial uses that serve our vanity. “Biomimetics” is a recent approach to scientific innovation whereby researchers go back to nature, now with very high powered microscopes and digital instruments, to look for high-tech ways to mimic what nature has accomplished superbly on its own. As I alluded to previously, birds can instinctively, independently, move individual feathers in a much nuanced response to wind conditions in order to manipulate speed, orientation, etc. A specific example is soaring birds’ adjusting their wing-tip “fingers” as needed. Engineers have closely studied birds and devised artificial “winglets” that have been added to the tips of plane wings to increase flight efficiency. They have been found to decrease fuel use by 6%.

This just skims the surface of the revelations in Feathers. The evolution research chapters are clear and accompanied by explanatory diagrams. Hanson’s junkets exploring commercial uses of feathers are lighter reading, with a sprinkling of humorous anecdotes.

Check out this month's issue of National Audubon for an article on feathers by author Thor Hanson and beautiful photos of feathers by Robert Clark. Click here to read the article.

For a great winter read, you can check this book out from the Rutland Free Library and the Brandon Library.

book review: oology

Verreaux's Eagle, an African birdRalph Handsaker (1886-1969) was an Iowa farmer, wood carver, carpenter, hunter, fisherman, taxidermist and oologist - egg collector. Carrol Henderson, the author of Oology, an ornithologist and avid nest collector (he has a species "nest list" of 500) became aware of Ralph Handsaker via his brother, who found out that an old farmhouse in Iowa, that belonged to the great-grandfather (Ralph Handsaker) of John Handsaker, was to be re-opened and restored for the grandson and his new wife. Thus, Ralph's egg collection, which had been in the farmhouse, neatly arranged in cabinets he had made, was rediscovered. The author was invited to survey the collection and see to its disposition.

The heyday of oology was 1880-1918. It began as a hobby among bird enthusiasts in England in the mid to late 1800s, and then crossed the Atlantic to North America.

There were three main types of egg collectors. The market egger collected large numbers of wild bird eggs for commercial use and personal profit. Eggs were sold in markets and restaurants for human consumption. This was especially profitable near the seacoast where there were nests of gannets, auks, gulls, albatrosses, puffins, and murres. A notable example is Laysan Island, near Hawaii, which had large colonies of albatrosses. The albumen of their eggs was used to make albumen prints when exposures on glass plates were used in photo development.

A second group were young boys who collected eggs for fun. Most were destroyed, but for a few it led to a lifelong interest in wildlife, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Lastly, there were true oologists who collected and accumulated bird eggs using a standard protocol for preserving, identifying and labeling eggs and documenting nest data. Braving swamps, tall trees, dangerous seas and hostile natives, they were intrepid venturers. A few lost their lives in the quest. Ralph was quite determined. He devised a twelve-foot wooden ladder with a curved flat iron hook bolted to the top to hook over a tree limb. His collection consisted of 4,000 eggs. No laws protected birds, their nests or eggs in that era.

Stanley Crane, another African birdMost oologists would collect the entire clutch because birds most often re-nest, though the second clutch usually had fewer eggs. Hundreds of eggs was not unusual for a good day of collecting. To lighten the load home, the oologist often blew out the egg in the field (this is necessary in any case for preservation). A small drill head was used to bore a hold in the egg. With a tiny blowpipe, a high pressure stream of air entering the holde forced the contents of the egg out.

As ink pen was then used to place data in a standard manner around the hole. The first number above the hole was the reference number of the American Ornithologist's Union for the species. The second number is written as a fraction. The top number was the "set mark" - the number of nests of that species collected on a particular day, under which was the number of eggs in that particular nest. Lastly, the date was recorded.

Eggs were stored in cabinets with drawers (sunlight would fade the colors), in cedar sawdust to keep insects away.

To supplement their collections, oologists often traded or purchased eggs. The author lists the 1904 value of Ralph's eggs. Most were less than $1, but the Great Auk egg could go for $1,600.

As early as 1831, in England, oology books had notable wild bird egg drawings. These, however, were not field books, but collectors' volumes of considerable value. Characteristic egg and nest paintings, many by famed bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, were featured on bird trading cards, a popular premium in Arm and Hammer baking soda boxes. The author considers these cards to be America's first handy reference for identifying wild birds. Another type of publication was the 1904 "Taylor's Standard American Egg Catalogue," 98 pages of values for birds' nests and eggs. It served as a resource for trading and selling eggs, nets and stuffed birds. A typical ad is the following:

W. H. Bingham, Algoma, Iowa, Box 151: Collection of nests and eggs. Specialty - waders and warblers. Exchanges desired. Will purchase sets of above if reasonable. Must be from original collection.

Another section of the book covers egg classification. There are four basic egg shapes: ellipitical, pyriform, oval, and subelliptical. Since there are short, medium and long sub-categories, twlve different egg shapes are possible. The pigments, porphyrins, that create the colors, are prodcued by the breakdown of hemoglobin from ruptured blood cells, which are deposited on the egg as it traverses the oviduct and uterus. White eggs are found in species that nest in tree cavities or burrows where eggs are not visitble to predators. Patterns are classified as dotted, blotched, marble, overlaid, splashed, spotted, streaked or scrawled. There is great variation in markings that occurs within a single species and sometimes within a single clutch of eggs.

Egg collecting became illegal after the passage of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

After the background information on the history of egg collecting, Carrol Henderson spotlights sixty of the nearly 500 species present in the Handsaker collection. They were donated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University in 2006.

These old collections are more than historical curiosities. The data they contain can reveal changes in species habitat, distribution, nesting sites and clutch size. Morphological measurement of egg size and shell thickness and chemical analysis of shells and their dried inner membranes can reveal the presence and effect of pesticides and heavy metals. DNA analysis is a burgeoning field of study.

Oology is fascinating reading. The numerous photographs, drawings and paintings are exquisite. The book is available through inter-library loan from the Rutland Free Library and, of course, from your local independent bookseller, and I presume, online resources.

looking for a new field guide?

The latest entry into the world of field guides is Don and Lillian Stokes’s The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America. This comprehensive volume may not be one all birders want to carry into the field, as it is just shy of 800 pages. However, many of us didn’t flinch when David Sibley published his massive volume. While it may remain at home for some, others will probably find it useful enough to keep it handy in their cars.

lots of photos in a field guide is helpful when identifying gullsThe guide contains superb photos showing various plumages for each species. Most the photos give additional information such as where it was taken and at what time of year. This is helpful in determining whether feathers are fresh or worn, or if regional variations occur.

Content includes the most up-to-date regional maps, the American Birding Association’s (ABA) rarity rating for each species, and information on wild hybrids. It also includes the most recent additions, deletions, splits and lumps, and changes to common and scientific names. For example, according to Lillian Stokes, the book was updated to include the recent split of Winter Wren (into Pacific Wren and Winter Wren) just before it went to press. 

A bonus of the new field guide is a downloadable CD of 600 calls and songs of 150 common birds, as well as photos.

With the size of the book and all the color photos and the CD, I was surprised that it sells for around $24.99 (less at some online retailers). With the holidays around the corner, this might be something to give to a favorite birder in your life or put on your own wish list. Studying the great photos will be a great way to spend the winter.

book review: Summer World by Bernd Heinrich

In Summer World, Bernd Heinrich completes his inquisitive survey of seasonal adaptations that he inaugurated in Winter World (reviewed in fall 2008 newsletter).

Upon opening the pages, one’s sense of touch is aroused by the unusually softly textured paper. How perfect, I thought, for those of us with a bent to cozy up for a winter’s evening reading and dreaming warmer climes and times. Whether this will also be true of the paperback edition coming out in April, I cannot say. The back cover flap says it’s also available as an e-book. Sorry, no sensual accompaniments there!

Although it is entitled Summer World, Heinrich’s observations do not begin at the summer solstice (June 21), but rather in February, when he first sights a raven pair building a nest. He points out that, though we tend to think of winter, with its test of severe cold, as necessitating months of preparation, the few truly warm weeks of summer are a limited time for successfully mating and raising young. American RobinSo birds, insects and amphibians, all get as early a start as possible to take advantage of the warmest days. Also trees, for one might say they are “obsessive” about preparation, since they flush out early, complete their yearly growth shortly thereafter, and by July, have developed buds for the next year.

I found his further discussion of tree budding particularly enlightening. Many of us have found mid-winter bud identification workshops and field trips quite frustrating. Now, to make it more perplexing, Heinrich alerts us that many northern forest trees have separate buds for leaf and flower. There is a logical utility for this. Wind-pollinated trees flower a month before leafing out, when they can be more easily pollinated because there is less blockage of wind carrying pollen over leaves. On the other hand, bee-pollinated basswood is pollinated a month or so after the leaf buds have opened, when, in late summer, the bee population has peaked.

BloodrootAs in Winter World, the author relates his ingenious yet practical methods for evoking nature’s secrets. Using garbage can lids, he studies crocuses’ response to light, and to consider Bloodroot’s blooming relation to temperature, he puts them in his refrigerator.

A large part of the book is given to discussing insects. He delves into great minutiae on the distinct nests and unique behaviors of various wasp species and wonders, “Aside from the mystery of how wasps can do so much with so little, there is the mystery of how what they know, is passed faultlessly from one generation to the next.”

Seemingly instinctual behavior of some moths and butterflies can appear positively perspicacious. Their caterpillars chip off the petiole of the leaf they have just partially consumed, allowing it to drop to the ground. Heinrich calls this “covering their tracts,” from buds on the lookout for caterpillar activity.

However, I found the author occasionally spotty on the lucidity of his explanations. For example, a seven-page dissertation explores red and black ant colonization, emigration and social interaction. Yet,Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillar in a subsequent chapter, in one paragraph, he describes a sphinx moth caterpillar that overnight became “covered with 91 white braconid wasp cocoons, its skin covered with little dark puncture wounds.” There is a rather ghastly photo of this phenomena, but not explanation. Had the caterpillar ingested wasp eggs during prior days when Heinrich had been watching it casually munching leaves? For someone who is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont, the answer is probably something he considers quite commonplace.

The author redeemed himself, in my estimation, by providing an answer to something that struck my curiosity this past fall. On many golden leaves of a neighbor’s poplar, I noted a dime-sized deep green splotch, at the base, near the mid-vein. Heinrich put similar spotted areas under a microscope and found feeding “leaf miner” caterpillars with trails of black fecal pellets.

As distinct from Winter World, in Summer World Heinrich takes more excursions off course into philosophical speculation. In sequential chapters, he hypothesizes on the possibility of life on other planets, presents a diatribe on global working that leads into the necessity of a “spiritual imperative,” and theorizes how man evolved from a “hairy” ape into a “naked” human.

All in all, I was less enamored of this book than Winter World, even though the text is accompanied by beautiful and clarifying drawings and watercolors, which I always consider a plus. On the contrary, entomologists and other insect enthusiasts would be enraptured. Perhaps this is because, despite being so numerous, insects are more inconspicuous, often considered a nuisance, and requires time, patience, and close observation to understand the intricacies of their lives.