One of the most poignant as well as multifaceted metaphors in the literature of the English language is that of Autumn. Often employed as an image of the wisdom that can only come from maturity, “No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring” (Samuel Johnson); sometimes reflective of the imminent decline toward old age, “Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay” (Robert Browning) – Autumn is almost always a symbol of transition.

Naturalists of a poetic disposition know this perhaps better than anyone else. They see the transitions inherent in the world; they mark well the time as one season passes into another. Not unexpectedly, they often also mark the changes they observe in themselves. Which is why it is so very appropriate that Pete Dunne, one of America’s most poetically disposed naturalists, has taken Autumn as theme of his third book in his series of seasonal biome portraits. Perhaps more so than any of his previous works, it is a book he could not have written ten years ago nor would he have been able to do so ten years from now. Near the top of the world, he and his subject met face to face at the right time in both their respective lives and Arctic Autumn was the result.

Just as the Autumn of one’s life begins much sooner than it might have been expected, so too begins Arctic Autumn. As Dunne so well repeatedly depicts, our modern interpretations of time are not appropriately applied to the Arctic. Autumn does not begin with the turning of the leaves; it begins – biologically as well as metaphorically – at the first second following the Summer Solstice. Thus it is only appropriate that this is when we meet Pete and his wife, the renowned photographer Linda Dunne, as they prepare to record this moment of transition. It will not be the last transition Dunne discovers.

From business and economic cycles to human and animal population shifts, not forgetting of course climactic changes and the effects they bring as well, Arctic Autumn is a study in transitions. As one season slides into another, so changes the land and the wildlife that calls it home – either for a few weeks or all throughout the year. So too change the lives of those who seek these wild creatures, professionally, recreationally, or as an essential element of their very own survival.

Through Dunne’s eyes, the Autumn of the arctic is not limited to a quarter of a calendar year, it encompasses much of what is happening in the arctic today. Just as it’s plants and wildlife are, for most of their existence, widely scattered and cryptic to the point of being generally difficult to see, so the biome itself is, being separated from the majority of us in the more populated areas of the globe, similarly obscure and its changes difficult to perceive.

Nevertheless, Dunne challenges the reader to do so. Not through an unceasing torrent of data or eco-political posturing, but by, as E. M. Forster so eloquently proposed, “only connecting.” Connecting across geographic boundaries and political lines; connecting what we do with the results it causes. It is a wisdom as seemingly plain as a water-smoothed rock plucked from beside an arctic stream – yet the longer one contemplates it, the more perfectly formed one perceives it to be.

Book Title: Arctic Autumn; A Journey to Season’s Edge
Author: Pete Dunne
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Imprint: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Clothbound
ISBN-13/EAN: 9780618822218
Published: September 20, 2011

This review was originally published in Bird Watcher’s Digest.

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

The May / June 2012 edition of Bird Watcher’s Digest contains two original Well-read Naturalist produced reviews:

The Princeton Illustrated Checklist: Birds of North America and Greenland by Normal Arlott (Princeton University Press)

In the Field, Among the Feathered: A History of Birders and their Guides by Thomas R. Dunlap (Oxford University Press).

If there was one thing I could change (and there is, in fact, only one thing I would change) about Bernd Heinrich’s Life Everlasting; the Animal Way of Death, it would be the subtitle. For while a portion of the book does in fact directly address the manner in which select members of the animal kingdom die and their remains are “undertaken” – e.g., Nicrophorus beetles burying mice, oceanic bottom-dwellers deconstructing “whale falls” in the total darkness of the deep – there is a far larger story being told by Dr. Heinrich than is encompassed by the word “death.”

I would have rather chosen something along the lines of “the Natural Cycle of Destruction and Creation;” for this is really the core topic of the essays included in the book. How out of the death and deconstruction of one particular form of life (Heinrich does not limit himself to the Kindgom Animalia but ventures into those of the Plantae, Fungi, Bacteria, and Protozoa as well) other forms arise or are sustained. With a combination of the erudition of a professor (Dr. Heinrich is in fact Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biology at the University of Vermont), the inquisitiveness of a field biologist, and the ground-level experience of a naturalist and and hunter, Dr. Heinrich leads his readers through a selection of his experiences with and investigations into just how this cycle plays out continually all around us – and in a final concluding chapter, reminds us how we are not outside of it, despite how much we may try to convince ourselves that we are.

Readers of Dr. Heinrich’s previous books, particularly his magnificent Ravens in Winter and his subsequent book devoted to the species, The Mind of the Raven, will be very pleased to learn that a sizable portion of Life Everlasting draws upon his experiences with these undertakers of the northern forests. However as important as these highly intelligent corvids are in ensuring the continuation of the cycle of deconstruction and regeneration, it is upon the activities of a much smaller species that so much of the cycle depends.

Despite what that famously melancholy Prince of Denmark may have declared, we – and much of the other larger forms of life with which we share the planet – are not so much food for worms as food for beetles. From the previously mentioned mouse-burying Nicophorus beetles Dr. Heinrich observes outside his cabin door, to the longhorn and other tree boring beetles that emerge from his rough-hewn furniture, to the bird-sized rollers of elephant dung that he investigates on the plains of Tanzania, the reader is presented with a few tantalizing glimpses into the astonishing variety of the planet’s Coleoptera, without the activities of which the entire cycle would largely come to a screeching halt.

As short a book as it is (it could have easily been twice as long and still only grazed the surface of the myriad variations of its seemingly inexhaustible subject) Life Everlasting is a lively collection of stories, investigations, reflections, and musings all joined together by a central theme – that of not just how the remains of the dead are reincorporated into the cycle of life but, perhaps more importantly, why they are, and in the concluding chapter, what happens when they are not. Indeed, the final chapter, “Beliefs, Burials, and Life Everlasting,” is one that should be read even by those with no previously expressed interest in natural history, ecology, or biology (hard as it is to believe, such people do in fact exist – in regrettably sizable numbers, so I am told) for in it Dr. Heinrich makes his case for a profound reconsideration of how we humans treat the remains of our own dead, and of how in a quest for a physical immortality we can never achieve we sacrifice a larger and far more holistic one that we can.

Book Title: Life Everlasting; the Animal Way of Death
Author: Bernd Heinrich
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-13/ EAN: 9780547752662
Published: 19 June 2012

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

When it comes to the subject of feathers, our language all too often belies the truth. We use phrases such as “light as a feather,” “feather-weight,” and “downy soft” in describing things that are insubstantial or delicate. Were our colloquial phrases to more correctly reflect the truth we might instead make reference to the durability of feathers or their astonishing protective qualities; “tough as a feather,” “feather-tight,” and “snug as a down-covered chick” might become the norm. Thor Hanson knows these things well, not just intellectually as the result of reading about them but from first-hand, first-rate investigation and experimentation in the best traditions of a field biologist, the results of which we are fortunate to be able to read for ourselves in his recently published books Feathers; The Evolution of a Natural Miracle.

Try to think of a bird and not imagine feathers. It’s impossible. Even a a plucked chicken in a supermarket shows evidence of it once having been surrounded in feathers. And this is as it should be; for as Hanson clearly (and most entertainingly) explains, the very evolution of birds as a Class is inextricably interwoven with the evolution of the feather itself. Without feathers, not only would birds not be anything like what they are today, they would in all likelihood not be at all.

From flight to environmental protection against everything from heat, cold, and rain to predation and parasite infestation, feathers are a bird’s most important asset in life. Even their ability to communicate with one another heavily depends upon their feathers (in ways which, given the ability of birds to see into a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than our puny human eyes can and thus clearly see patterns in the plumage of one another that are entirely invisible to us, we can scarcely imagine).

To be sure, many previous books have included information about many of the remarkable qualities of feathers; most every field guide or book explaining the physiology of birds addresses the subject. However few, if indeed any (at least to the knowledge of this reviewer), have approached the astonishing depth as well as the vast breadth of the subject in so inviting a manner as Hanson has in Feathers. By his own admission, there are many who know more about the subject or at least one aspect of it than he does; indeed, he interviewed many of them while writing the book and much to its benefit records the results of these conversations within its pages. What he himself adds to the work is the very thing that makes it such a delightful book to read: his seemingly limitless curiosity and the willingness to follow it to wherever it led him, regardless of how impossibly strange a question or idea may have seemed at the time.

To read Feathers is to meet up with an enthusiastic old friend who simply cannot wait to tell you about something he just discovered regarding a subject in which you both share a common interest. Deceptively conversational and fast-moving, disguising the true depth of the information it conveys with Hanson’s buoyant, good-humored prose, Feathers is a book not only intellectually accessible to anyone with an interest in the subject but also one that should be considered as a must-read by bird watchers and naturalists of all levels of interest or experience.

Book Title: Feathers; The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
Author: Thor Hanson
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Imprint: Basic Books
Format: Clothbound
ISBN: 9780465020133
Published: May 31, 2011

This review of Feathers; the Evolution of a Natural Miracle was originally created by The Well-read Naturalist for publication in Bird Watcher’s Digest. The issue in which it was published now having cycled off of news stands it is now published here.

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

If you were born during or after the early 1960s, grew up in the United States, and had an interest in nature as a child, chances are that at some time you likely had a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. I know that when I was a boy the day each new edition arrived in our family mailbox was a red letter day indeed. Needless to write, now that I’m a father myself, a subscription has been maintained for our daughter since she was old enough to read; and although the artwork has become a bit more colorful and and the editorial style incorporates a few more exclamation points than I recall from my own childhood, both our daughter and I seem to share a common reason for enjoying the magazine: it teaches about the natural world and all its many creatures in a way that is both informative and fun.

However as the way that media is “consumed” is vastly different now than it was when I was a boy (I predate not only home computers but also the widespread presence of color television), I often worry that such publications as Ranger Rick magazine might fade away into memories just as so many other print magazines have, taking with them all the good work they did in helping so many to come to appreciate and love nature. Fortunately, that clever little campaign-hat wearing raccoon has a few tricks up his sleeve that are keeping him, his friends, and the magazine recounting their adventures well attuned to the recent and rapid changes happening to our modern media.

The most recent of these is a trio of new apps for mobile devices that convey the same classic Ranger Rick messages and ideals to children using the very new media of “smart” phones and tablets. For the very little ones (age two to five years) there is What Did Snakey Eat? for all the Apple iProducts and Android devices. Older children (age seven years and up) can chose from two different apps: the photography-oriented game Click the Birdie for the iPad as well as Android devices, and a mystery-solving game named Raiders of the Lost Aardvark for Apple iProducts. All are colorful, quick and easy to learn, and tap into the natural interest in nature present (although these days sometimes latent) in children.

All three apps are available in slightly reduced function “Lite” (free to download) as well as full (requiring a very small payment) versions.

The March / April 2012 issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest contains two original Well-read Naturalist produced reviews. Both Peter Goodfellow’s Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build (Princeton University Press) and The Birding Life; A Passion for Birds at Home and Afield by Larry Sheehan, Carol Sheehan, Kathryn Ge Precourt, and William Stites (Random House) are reviewed in detail.

“If you wish to know, seek first to understand.” When the statue of Kenn Kaufman is finally unveiled in the (alas, still yet to be built) Birding Hall of Fame, these words should be inscribed in bold letters across the front of the pedestal upon which it stands. It’s not a direct quote from Kaufman mind you; however it is the encapsulation of his philosophy of birding – a philosophy that has been decades in the making and which is now superbly explained in detail in his new Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding; Understanding What You See and Hear.

For those who might recall his 1999 book the Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding; Birding Challenges and How to Approach Them and wonder if this is simply a reprint of it or perhaps just an expanded edition, it is most certainly not the former nor is it very much the latter. It is, rather, the next step in Kaufman’s process of going ever deeper into the very heart of birding in order to bring to it as many people as whom may wish to learn how to do it not only better but also, in the mind of this reviewer, in a more mentally healthy way.

“Mentally healthy?” you may ask. Indeed. For in changing the emphasis between the 1999 book and this present one from “approaching challenges” to “understanding,” Kaufman has made perhaps one of the most positive steps in decades to lead birding away from its sometimes off-putting (especially for beginners) wonkish and nit-picky emphasis on memorizing vast catalogs of field marks and other minutiae and toward a more holistic method by which identification is learned through larger concepts and ideas in order that they may by dynamically applied as needed. Perhaps even more importantly, Kaufman has included the explicit statement that it is, even and perhaps especially for experienced birders, entirely acceptable to admit the times when one simply doesn’t know the identity of a particular bird.

Now this is, of course, not to say that Kaufman discounts the importance of developing a detailed knowledge of birds in order to facilitate the identification of them; far from it. The difference is in how and more particularly why this knowledge is acquired and accumulated. The key is observation. While the second half of the book is dedicated to addressing specific information regarding the differentiation of various bird families, Kaufman never relents in reminding his readers that it is through the time they spend actually looking at, watching the behavior of, and carefully examining the birds they see that they will come to know and thus be able to identify them more confidently in the future.

Lest it be thought by some that they are not yet ready for an “advanced” guide and thus may not be sufficiently able to comprehend all of what Kaufman explains in this book, it is here declared that no such thoughts should dissuade anyone from purchasing and reading this book at the earliest opportunity. Yes, some of the latter half may seem a bit over-whelming to those who are fairly new to birding; however the opening chapters are very much accessible to, and entirely appropriate for, birders at all levels of experience. Read as much of it as you deem appropriate to your current level of interest then come back to it later once what you read has sunk in and you have felt your field birding experiences enriched thereby.

As the old Buddhist proverb says, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” With the publication of the Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding, we can all be assured that our teacher is ready at hand whenever we are.

Book Title: Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding; Understanding What You See and Hear
Author: Kenn Kaufman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Imprint: Kaufman Field Guides
Format: Vinyl bound paperback
ISBN: 9780547248325
Published: April 19, 2011

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

Back in the late autumn of 2004, I stumbled across a mention of a new book by a fellow of whom at that time I had only recently heard – Simon Barnes. Not being much of a sports enthusiast and The Times – in which publication he has long written on the subject and for which he has now risen to the position of chief sportswriter – not being sold within fifty miles of my rural Oregon home (and only then at a downtown Portland tobacconist who made it a point of pride, if not good business, to carry many of the world’s major newspapers, despite their appearance on his shelves usually being a week or two following their publication) I had no previous knowledge of him or his work. However after reading this aforementioned book, How to be a Bad Birdwatcher; To the Greater Glory of Life, his name became not only one I thereafter spoke in tones of respect but one I hoped would find its way onto the cover a future volume on the same subject.

My hopes were, in fact, realized roughly a year later with the publication of his A Bad Birdwatcher’s Companion; Or a Personal Introduction to Britain’s 50 Most Obvious Birds. In this book, I found the same rare combination of seriousness and good humor, passion and playfulness that I had in the first; a combination that had established him in my mind as not only a natural history writer worthy of respect but as a fellow enthusiast for one of the world’s most patently mad yet spiritually enriching past-times: bird watching.

Now, with the publication of his third book on the subject (he has, it must be noted, written many more on other topics both closely related to and vastly different from the observation of the planet’s birdlife), Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed; An Introduction to Birdsong, he continues to bring his unique combination of professional experience and amateur enthusiasm to a very wide potential readership; one that includes not only bird watchers of all levels of experience but, more importantly perhaps, those who don’t necessarily even consider themselves bird watchers but do, however, possess that – pardon the pun – natural curiosity with which we are all born but of which we are too often robbed by the myriad demands of modern life.

The premise of Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is a simple one: in our far distant past we depended upon our ability to recognize bird vocalizations for, not to put too fine a point on it, our very survival. Few of us have such a critical need to do so today yet all of us can regain at least some of the knowledge our ancestors had; in fact, we still do possess it without often realizing it. Rather than dive immediately into the deep end of the proverbial pool, Mr. Barnes brings us to understand, through reference to bird songs and calls we likely already know at a generic level – crow, duck, pigeon – as well as a few that are more or less ubiquitous if not by their song then at least by their permeation of the culture – Robin, Wren, Dunnock – that we not only can learn to identify the calls of the birds all around us whenever we step outside but that for the sake of the vast enrichment of our lives we should. However this last is not a point he makes through pontificating, preaching or belaboring the point; he does so rather through something more akin to the gentle encouragement of a friend who knows you to be capable of something that you really should be doing for your own good and sets about seeing you through to it with humor and fellow-feeling.

Now, as you might have asked yourself by now, and if you haven’t this would be a perfect time to do so, how can one possibly learn to identify all the tweets, chirps, whistles, clicks, mews, and rattles that birds produce in a bewildering variety of combinations from reading a book? After all, be they ever-so-carefully transcribed, the various explanations of them in field guides barely serve to remind those already familiar with them how the various songs and calls of birds actually sound. Which is why, despite how effectively Mr. Barnes conveys the feeling of the songs and calls of the birds about which he writes, he employs a freely available podcast to enable his readers to hear the sounds of which human language is at a loss as to be able to describe.

Finally, lest anyone get the wrong idea that Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is simply about learning to identify bird vocalizations, it must be pointed out that it is far from what would, were it so, be such a dry text. Even the most talented of popular natural history writers, among which Mr. Barnes has clearly shown himself to be counted, could not succeed in writing an enjoyable book that was merely the explanation of one species’ songs and calls after another; which is why, interwoven between each chapter in which he muses upon the vocalizations of a particular species of bird are one or more chapters on everything from why birds make the sounds they do, to how they do it, to what it has meant to the lives of our ancestors both ancient and recent, as well as to ourselves today.

Thus it should by this time go without saying that Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is a book that should be on the reading tables of all those Britons with any level of interest in birds or natural history (and judging by the distinguished history of such in both the depth and breadth of the subject that should be just about every last one). However should you not be lucky enough to be in England when April, or any other month for that matter, is there and find yourself thinking that, as it is a book specifically addressing the songs and calls of British birds that it may not be particularly relevant to you, I would ask you to reconsider. While the birds about which Mr. Barnes has written are indeed the heart of the British List, it is what he has written about them, how he has reached deep into the subject of what it is to be a bird not only in the UK but throughout the world, not only in the present day but into the distant past, and what it is to hear them as a human being that makes the book transcend the species themselves. To read Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is to learn about not just what you hear but how to listen – and why; knowledge as free of, and unrestrained by, political or geographic boundaries as the lives of many of the birds about which Mr. Barnes so passionately writes.

Book Title: Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed; An Introduction to Birdsong

Author: Simon Barnes

Publisher: Short Books

Format: Clothbound

ISBN: 9781907595479

Published: 3 November 2011

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

When it comes to reviewing field guides, a reviewer can work his or way through a more or less generic checklist of items deemed important and evaluate: clarity of maps, detail of illustrations, helpfulness of descriptions, etc. From this, one can arrive at a reasonably reliable assessment of the book’s worth as a guide. However to determine the true value of such a guide, there is no substitute for “putting it through its paces” in the field – such as this reviewer recently had the remarkable privilege of doing during a trip across northern Europe that spanned from England to Russia. As a result, it can be confidently reported that the new (second) edition of the Birds of Europe is a must have guide for anyone interested in the birdlife of this geographic area.

The guide covers the 713 species of breeding or regularly occurring birds in Europe, North Africa north of 30 degrees north latitude, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, plus the Canary Islands, Madiera, and the Sinai peninsula. In addition to these, it also includes the 59 occasional visitors, 32 escaped or introduced species now breeding somewhere in the area, and 118 very rare vagrants from other continents.

There is a strong emphasis on species occurring in Great Britain and Ireland, particularly demonstrated by the inclusion of an extensive coded notation to help those birding in these areas quickly to determine if a particular species has ever been recorded in those geographic areas. While at first perhaps a bit off-putting to those birding in the rest of the guide’s defined region (“what are we, chopped liver?”), a quick consideration of the fact that 1/3 of the first edition of the guide’s 700,000 total printed copies were sold in these two areas, despite it also having been translated into 13 different languages, puts this into perspective.

As there are multiple (and sometimes conflicting) international taxonomies for the birds in the region covered by this guide, the taxonomy employed in the guide is described as being organized around the “authors preference,” which is very similar to the IOC list (Gill and Wright, 2006) and follows the naming conventions accordingly.

So how does it fare in the field? Remarkably well. Extensively illustrated with meticulously painted images (no photographs appear in the guide whatsoever – something not at all troublesome to this reviewer, however others may be less than pleased), not just in profile but often in action poses as well, the guide provides a quick visual reference even to those entirely new to the birds of the region.

Naturally, not every identification challenge can be solved through visual cues alone, and it is in the textual descriptions that Birds of Europe gains particular merit. From the observation that the Thrush Nightingale is the “less satisfying” nightingale of northern and eastern Europe to the explanation of the Black Redstart’s habit of not only inhabiting rocky hillsides but industrial areas as well where it finds a synthetic home amid bricks and other construction materials (an invaluable piece of information for this reviewer whose first one was spotted in an industrial port in Copenhagen).

These and thousands of other seemingly insignificant bits of information are the stuff of true greatness in a field guide; they can only be written by authors exceptionally familiar not only with the birds discussed but with the needs of those who will be employing the book either in the field or for reference at a desk. Going bird watching in Europe without a copy of this new Birds of Europe would be at best fool-hardy; at worst, pointless.

Additional notes:

Birds of Europe, Second Edition, is published simultaneously in Great Britain and continental Europe as the Collins Bird Guide, Second Edition and as such is available both in jacketed hardcover as well as trade paperback editions.

Book Title: Birds of Europe, Second Edition

Author: text and maps by Lars Svensson, illustrations and captions by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Series: Princeton Field Guides

Format: Trade Paperback

ISBN: 978-0-691-14392-7

Published: February 1, 2010

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

The November / December 2011 edition of Bird Watcher’s Digest is now available and contains not one but two Well-read Naturalist produced book reviews – Thor Hanson’s Feathers; The Evolution of A Natural Miracle and Richard Crossley’s The Crossley ID Guide, Eastern Birds – as well as a “Well-equipped Birder” review of the Leica Monovid 8x20mm. Be sure to look for more original Well-read Naturalist reviews in each new issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest in the months to come.