Book review: Rare Birds of North America by Steve Howell, Ian Lewington & Will Russell

Rare Birds of North America 

Steve N. G. Howell, Ian Lewington & Will Russell
Princeton University Press | 2014
448 pp. | 18 x 24.7 cm | 275 colour plates. 2 line drawings. 9 tables. 17 maps
Hardcover | £ 24.95 / $35.00 | ISBN: 9780691117966

I have spent the last few weeks looking through a review copy of the Rare Birds of North America, kindly sent to me by Princeton University Press. It has taken a while to get down to the review itself because of the temptation to revel in the craftsmanship and absorb the fine detail. This is a stunning book. Not surprising, given the authors and artist. Nevertheless, it surpassed my high expectations. The text is masterful, the illustrations as good as anything yet produced in the bird identification literature. The publisher must take credit for the clarity of design and quality of production. I wish all new bird books were produced to this high standard – not just on the part of the authors, but also the publisher. It is not often that a technical manual will serve equally as a coffee table book but Howell, Lewington and Russell and Princeton University Press have achieved that in this guide.

Rare Birds of North America is quite simply a 'must-buy' for any North American birder with more than a cursory interest in vagrant birds or bird migration. 262 species fulfil the selection criterion of fewer than five records per year since 1950 (the approximate year that birding became popular, according to the authors). Of these, 50% are Old World, 33% New World and 16% pelagic. With an increasing tally of Palaearctic vagrants on Trinidad & Tobago, and records of Redwing from Brazil (Brito et al. 2013), it will perhaps have relevance even for those south of the US-Mexican border. The comparative illustrations of Piratic and Variegated Flycatcher (p. 355) are better than those available in Neotropical field guides!

What about a British or European readership? Some will judge from the title that there is likely to be little of relevance here for Old World birders. They would be wrong. A large proportion of the species covered have occurred, or could potentially occur on this side of the Atlantic. This book is another tool in the birder's kit, and will very definitely help western Palaearctic birders sharpen their identification skills. How? On one hand, this book provides the inverse perspective on identification of American vagrants – how to tell a Golden Plover from an American Golden, a Hen Harrier from a Northern, rather than vice versa – and in doing so it gives many insights into field separation of similar species. On the other, it is often quite simply the best source of information available for species which present identification pitfalls on the E side of the Atlantic. Considering solely non-passerines, European readers will find a wealth of useful information in the accounts of snipe, smaller Tringa waders, Cuckoo & Oriental Cuckoo, besides a host of pelagic birds.

From the cover onwards, the plates are of the very highest quality: amongst the most accurate and helpful to be found in any identification literature. Apart from their accuracy (only a few of the tropical species are anything but completely convincing, and even they are extremely lifelike), they are charming works of art. The text is masterful, a distillation of decades of field experience, offering countless insights. The re-evaluation, documentation and referencing of individual records is scrupulous, allowing the user to consult original sources and perhaps arrive at his or her own conclusions. In this case, the layout and design deserve the highest praise too. The plates are placed close to the appropriate text, and they are reproduced large enough for the reader to appreciate the artwork itself and for field characters to be easily visible, while the text itself is extremely well laid out with clever use of different fonts to enhance clarity.

Quite apart from the identification section, the introductory information on bird migration is the best non-academic summary I have seen of what is known to date about migration and the causes of vagrancy.

This will doubtless prove to be one of the most important birding books of 2014. It is a pleasure to browse through, an endless source of curious and surprising information and a key reference in the identification literature.

So, a hearty approval from me. A wonderful book!



References

Brito, G.R., Nacinovic, J.B. & Teixeira, D.M. (2013) First record of Redwing Turdus iliacus in South America. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 133(4): 316–317.

Book review: The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson & Scott Whittle

The Warbler Guide

Tom Stephenson & Scott Whittle
Drawings by Catherine Hamilton 

Princeton University Press | 2013
560 pp. | 16.5 x 22 cm | 1,000+ colour illustrations. 50 colour distribution maps

Paperback flexibound | £19.95 / $29.95 | ISBN: 9780691154824

Last month, Princeton University Press kindly sent me a review copy of The Warbler Guide. Being a long-time admirer of American warblers, or Parulids, and fortunate enough to be able to feast my eyes on an assortment of them on a regular basis, I was eager to get my hands on this book. I had already looked greedily at some of the material on the authors' website and had read some of the reviews and comments elsewhere. When I finally got the chance to flick through the book at the UK Birdfair, I realised that this new guide had taken American warbler identification to a higher level – and I found it hard to drag myself away! This is definitely my kind of guide!

I already have Curson, Beadle and Quinn's superb New World Warblers and Dunn and Garrett's Peterson Field Guide to Warblers of North America. The latter is as close as one might reasonably expect to a definitive guide to Nearctic Parulids: my copy is well-thumbed and has seen service everywhere in America except for the United States and Canada! Neither of the previous works are diminished by Stephenson and Whittle's efforts; they are different reference tools with different functions, each has passed the test of time and they remain indispensable. But The Warbler Guide is something else.

More than a guide, this is an identification compendium, an encyclopaedia. With over 550 pages of high-quality paper, The Warbler Guide weighs in at 1.3 kg (almost 3 lbs) – about the same as Sibley. Even so, if I were learning these birds, I would still heft this into the field with me. I can see it being used at bird observatories, migration watchpoints, banding stations and birding lodges across the Americas. It will be a home reference for almost every keen birder in North America and, notwithstanding its geographic coverage, many from outside the region.

Why so big? The main reason is the huge number of photographs and figures: to illustrate with the species account of one of my favourite Parulids, there are 58 photographs of Blackburnian Warbler, as well as a pair of good-sized range maps and a double spread of sonograms. Another example, American Redstart, is here. In addition to the species accounts, there are also over 150 introductory and supplementary pages – and these are not 'fillers' but useful syntheses of comparative data for field identification. To get an idea, have a look at the 'quick finders' on the Princeton University Press blog.

So, over a thousand photographs make this a highly visual guide. A picture being worth a thousand words, sonograms are a big and fairly unusual feature of this guide. They may be daunting for those who have not come across them before, but the helpful annotations and 38 pages of introductory text on vocalisations should ease the reader into the art of interpreting them. Some very nice, original mnemonics of the songs are also provided for those who do not want to get into too much detail. But, like it or not, songs and calls are vital in identifying warblers.

Apart from the introductory chapters, text is kept to a minimum. It is short, concise and used to summarise ID points or emphasise particular ID features in photographs. This is just what an identification guide requires. Excellent!

The maps have two innovations. First, unusually for a North American guide, the maps show wintering ranges south of the US-Mexico border. This not only broadens the knowledge of the North American reader, but greatly enhances the utility of the guide outside the Nearctic – in the Neotropics, where most of these warblers spend most of their time! Secondly, where appropriate two maps are used to illustrate both spring (northward) and fall (southward) migration routes. Subspecies are clearly indicated on the range maps, using scientific names – another welcome feature.

Any downsides? I have already mentioned weight, and some will find this a hindrance. As for me, unless I actually intend to take a book deep into the field, I prefer a weighty tome that aims to be exhaustive: and at £15 per kilo, this is better value than most things you'll find in the supermarket. The other slight detraction concerns the order of the species. I am not an advocate of following strict systematic order, since this changes over time – sometimes quite dramatically – and there is often disagreement over the order at a particular time. However, alphabetic ordering seems to me to be even less natural. I would have preferred to have closely-related species grouped together, with those that present a particular ID challenge laid out consecutively. This would have put, for example, Black-throated Green and Golden-cheeked together, grouped Blackpoll, Pine and Bay-breasted, and avoided splitting the waterthrushes. The authors get over this by repeating information on each species account – it works.

Who will buy this book? Those with an interest in identification of Nearctic birds will find it essential. Since the majority of these birds move south after breeding, at which time they sport their rather less distinctive first year or non-breeding plumage which can be a challenge for birders (not least because many Latin American field guides opt to leave out the 'familiar' Nearctic breeders), Neotropical ornithologists will also find much of utility here – that's where I will be using my copy. With a good scattering of these birds hitting Palaearctic shores this autumn, I suspect that British and European birders will not want to be left behind.

A wonderful book that has been a joy to explore. I anticipate many happy hours using this guide in earnest, and perhaps many more as I indulge at home. Congratulations to the authors on producing such a marvellous resource. More information, including free downloads, from Princeton University Press and from the authors.

The Shorebird Guide next?

Book review: Birds of North America by Kenn Kaufman

Birds of North America

Kenn Kaufman 

Houghton Mifflin | 2000
384 pp. | 11.5 x 19 cm | 2,000+ digitally enhanced photographs. Colour distribution maps

Paperback | £22.00 / $20.00 | ISBN: 978-0-395-96464-4

According to the author, Kaufman Guides are "the best and fastest way to get started... to send you outside quickly, putting names on what you find". If that is the objective, the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America has realised it admirably.

Aimed at the beginner rather than the expert, the facing-page format allows illustrations, text, and range map for each bird to be viewed simultaneously, at one opening of the book. That is a major advantage over, say, the Peterson Field Guide series. As for the illustrations, Kaufman opts for digitally enhanced photographs over paintings, the idea being to combine the strengths of a real, photographic representation with the flexibility of a painting. There are more than 2,000 depictions of birds in natural conditions, all of them processed digital images based on photographs. Range maps show where each species is common or rare and indicate migratory status.

A further advantage over most other North American bird guides is the inclusion of all the regularly occurring birds, so you do not need to purchase separate field guides for the East and West.

For anyone with a casual to enthusiastic interest in birds, this is the field guide to get. It will enable you to "search and locate" fairly easily. Even the experienced birder may find him / herself carrying this handy little guide and leaving the heavier tomes (Sibley) in the car.