New Titles

 

 

1) Stokes, Lillian Q. and Matthew A. Young. The Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada. 2024. Little, Brown and Company. Paperback: 332 pages. Price: $21.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Learn all you need to know about identifying and attracting finches with this comprehensive, gloriously colorful field guide from America’s foremost authorities on birds and nature.

     Following the extraordinary finch superflight of 2020-2021, birders across the country became obsessed with finches. With The Stokes Guide to Finches of the United States and Canada, you can gain expert knowledge on these beautiful birds and bring them into your own yard. This fully illustrated guide tells you all you need to know about attracting, observing, and protecting finches.

The book also includes:

• A special section on endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper finches, plus other rare and vagrant species
• Detailed identification information on each finch species’ plumages, subspecies, and voice
• The most complete and up-to-date range maps, including maps of core occurrence and irruption ranges for all red crossbill call types, which have never before been published in a guide
• Complete life history information
• Scientific studies on finch migrations and conservation
• More than 345 stunning full-color photographs and over 50 range maps covering 43 species

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone with an interest in the finches of the region!

 

2) Thomas, Rob. The Storm-petrels. 2024. T & AD Poyser. Flexibound: 335 pages. Price: $50.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY:  Imagine a bird as small as a sparrow, which lives most of its life on the open ocean yet can survive for decades. It walks on the water, and migrates half way around the world, returning to remote islands to breed underground, often in exactly the same rock crevice each year. To attract a mate it sings like a fairy and smells aromatic, but it vomits oil onto its enemies. It visits its nest by night, lays a single enormous egg, and feeds its chick until the nestling weighs more than both parents put together. It seems to have little fear of humans, but was itself feared by ancient seafarers. This might sound like the stuff of legend, but is actually the description of the European Storm-petrel, a member of the Hydrobatidae family.

     The latest in the Poyser series, with comprehensive text and beautiful illustrations, this follows the remarkable life of the storm-petrel. Focusing on the European species, it tracks their lives from the remote North Atlantic islands, where they breed via the coasts of Africa, to the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean, where they spend the northern winter. There is also discussion on other members of the storm-petrel family. We learn about their evolution, behaviour, ecology, and adaptations to a life in the harsh and unpredictable environment of the open ocean, and discover what these enigmatic seabirds can tell us about what humans are doing to our planet.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone with an interest in the storm-petrels!  

 

 

3) Elphick, Jonathan. Ferdinand Bauer's Remarkable Birds. 2024. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Hardbound: 240 pages. Price: $74.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: A richly illustrated volume, which reproduces one of the finest collections of eighteenth-century ornithological art in its entirety.

      In 1786, Austrian natural history artist Ferdinand Bauer traveled to Italy and the Levant. The watercolors he created from meticulous drawings made during the trip are among the finest examples of natural history illustration. Bauer’s botanical paintings are well known yet this industrious artist also made stunning illustrations of over a hundred different bird species, very few of which have been published until now.

      This book describes Bauer’s early life, achievements, and his experiences of traveling for fifteen months—often facing the perils of weather, illness, bandits, and pirates. It also details his field method of recording the precise colors of the birds on his pencil drawings by employing his scheme of coloring by numbers, each representing a specific hue, to be used as a reference when he returned to Oxford.

      Each illustration is reproduced alongside a facing page of vivid expert text describing the characteristics of each bird, interwoven with aspects of their ornithological and cultural history as well as comments on Bauer’s depictions. Not widely seen since they were painted approximately 230 years ago, and now reproduced in their entirety, these beautiful paintings represent one of the finest collections of late eighteenth-century ornithological art. 

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in historical bird art.

4) Howard, Jules. Infinite Life: The Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution, and Life on Earth. 2024. Pegasus Books. Hardbound: 258 pages. Price: $29.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: An expansive investigation into the most unifying and enduring structure in the history of life—and a story of biological richness at a moment when so much of our precious biodiversity hangs in the balance.

     Eggs are the origins of 90 percent of the Earth’s organisms. They can be found as far apart as deep-sea volcanoes and in space. Yet despite their fundamental importance, eggs often find themselves an afterthought in the discussion of evolution of life on Earth as the interests of scientists congregate around the things that emerge from eggs rather than the eggs themselves.

      In his new book Infinite Life: The Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution, and Life on Earth, Jules Howard explains—with great passion, authority, expertise, and infectious enthusiasm—why it’s time to give eggs their moment in the spotlight: it is the eggs that can teach us new and surprising lessons about Earth’s history, the trials of life, and the exceptional ways in which natural selection operates to propagate the survival of individual species.

      Infinite Life: The Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution, and Life on Earth, offers a wholly new perspective on the animal kingdom, and, indeed, life on Earth. By examining eggs from their earliest histories to the very latest fossilized discoveries—encompassing the myriad changes and mutations of eggs from the evolution of yolk, to the hard eggshells of lost dinosaurs, to the animals that have evolved to simultaneously give birth to eggs and live young—Howard reveals untold stories of great diversity and majesty to shed light on the huge impact that egg science has on our lives.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in this aspect of evolutionary biology.

New Titles

 

1) Barnes, Keith et al.. Birds of Greater Southern Africa. 2024. Princeton University Press. Paperback: 640 pages. Price: $45.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The vast region of Greater Southern Africa—which includes Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—is home to a truly extraordinary diversity of birds. This spectacular field guide covers all of the region’s bird species—resident, breeding, migrant, and vagrant.

• Covers all 1,198 species recorded in the region, including details of all the plumages and races likely to be seen
• Features 272 color plates with more than 3,300 illustrations
• Includes concise species accounts that describe key identification features, racial variation, status, range, habitat, and voice
• Provides an up-to-date distribution map for each species

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone birding Southern Africa!

2) Drewitt, Ed. Bird Pellets: A Complete Photographic Guide. 2024. Pelagic Publishing. Paperback: 250 pages. Price: $40.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: This book is the first comprehensive guide to bird pellets, the undigested remains of food that form together into a ball or sausage-like shape and are regurgitated. It showcases the range of pellets that different bird species produce, including owls, hawks, falcons, corvids such as ravens and magpies, as well as waders – and even garden birds! The common items found in them, such as small mammal skulls and bones, are analysed in detail, with the discussion accompanied by numerous colour illustrations.

     The book progresses methodically from an introduction to pellets, covering what they are and how they are formed, to instructions on dissection and analysis and how this can be used in research, followed by a closer look at the pellets of each bird species in turn – from the golden eagle to the dipper. We learn how to identify the remains of small mammals including bats, as well as reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and of course other birds.

     Dissecting bird pellets and identifying what is inside can be an important tool for discovering what birds are feeding on as part of more detailed diet studies. It is also an activity often delivered at family-friendly events or in schools by wildlife organisations. Extracting information from pellets also has sound scientific value: while it does not capture everything a bird has been eating, it still goes a long way in revealing the diet of birds and how this may change over time, in different habitats and different parts of the world.

RECOMMENDATION: Although this book features species from Britain and Ireland, it's a well written and illustrated overview of bird pellets.

 

3) Pietsch, Theodore W. et al.. A Field Guide to Fishes of the Salish Sea. 2023. Chatwin Books. Paperback: 346 pages. Price: $36.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Small, lightweight, and easy to use, A Field Guide to Fishes of the Salish Sea is a beautifully illustrated guide to identify the saltwater and anadromous fishes of the inland marine waters of Washington State and British Columbia. A must have for any backpack or home library! The most comprehensive and up-to-date work of its kind. Covering approximately 6,948 square miles of sea surface, the Salish Sea is home to 260 species of fish. The fish species are arranged phylogenetically—representing the evolutionary history and relationships between groups—beginning with the jawless hagfishes and lampreys and ending with the bizarre Ocean Sunfish. With an introduction that describes the “Salish Sea”, how it got its name and its general geographic features, the guide gives accounts of the 80 fish families represented in the Salish Sea before moving on to cover the 260 individual species that have been recorded in Salish Sea waters. The authors generally avoid the use of ichthyological jargon, instead substituting common, everyday descriptors for the often-difficult terminology routinely used by professional ichthyologists. And for those who think the cold-water ichthyofauna of the Salish Sea might be drab, the guide’s incredible illustrations by Joseph Tomelleri, with their astonishing and true-to-life colors, and assumed by many on first glance to be photographs, are ample cause to reconsider. 

RECOMMENDATION: This is the field guide version of the three volume set, Fishes of the Salish Sea, by the same authors/artist that was published in 2019. Joseph Tomelleri's artwork highlights this book! This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in the marine fishes of the region! The book can be ordered here.

 

 

4) Wilson, Larry et al.. Salamanders of the Eastern United States. 2024. University of Georgia Press. Flexibound: 495 pages. Price: $35.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Describing more than 120 species of salamanders occurring in the eastern United States, ecologists Whit Gibbons, Larry Wilson, and Joe Mitchell, provide us with the most comprehensive and authoritative―yet accessible and fun-to-read―guide to these often secretive, always fascinating wonders of nature.

     Gibbons, Wilson, and Mitchell enumerate the distinguishing characteristics of salamanders, including how they are different from other amphibians and from reptiles, especially lizards. Also discussed are distribution, habitat, behavior and activity, reproduction, food and feeding, predators and defense, conservation, and taxonomy. Accompanying each account are photographs illustrating typical adults and variations and distribution maps for the eastern U.S. and the United States as a whole.

     Given that a high percentage of the world’s species of salamanders live in the Southeast and Northeast and the scientific and popular concern for the worldwide decline in amphibian populations in general, Salamanders of the Eastern United States will appeal to people of all ages and levels of knowledge interested in natural history and conservation. The guide will help foster the growing interest in salamanders as well as cultivate a desire to protect and conserve these fascinating amphibians and their habitats.

     FEATURES:

Conservation-oriented approach.
More than 400 color photographs.
More than 80 distribution maps.
Clear species descriptions and photographs.
Sections on biology, worldwide diversity, identification, taxonomy, habitats, and conservation.
“Did You Know?” sidebars of interesting facts.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone with an interest in the salamanders of the Eastern United States.

New Titles

 

 

 

1) Tveit, Bjørn Olav. A Birdwatcher’s Guide to Norway: Where, When and How to Find Scandinavia’s Most Sought-after Birds. 2024. Pelagic Publishing. Flexibound: 460 pages. Price: $50.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: A Birdwatcher's Guide to Norway helps you find all the birds of Norway and Svalbard, and guides you in detail to more than 350 of the best birdwatching sites in this beautiful and wild but still highly developed and civilised country.

     The book explains in detail: where and when to go, what species to expect and hope for! The best tactics to approach each site, how to use tower hides and observation shelters and other animals you may encounter.

     Norway offers some of the most sought-after species in Europe, including King Eider, Steller’s Eider, Gyrfalcon, displaying Capercaillie, Jack Snipe, Ruff and other Arctic shorebirds in full breeding plumage, singing Little Bunting and Arctic Warbler, and many more. The country can be referred to as 'an easily accessible part of Siberia'.

     Packed with 265 photos, 95 maps and comprehensive information about each site, A Birdwatcher's Guide to Norway an essential travel guide essential for anyone planning a trip to watch birds in Norway or Svalbard.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone birding Norway! 

 

2) Callahan, David. Where to Watch Birds in Southeast England: Essex, London and Kent. 2024. Helm. Paperback: 335 pages. Price: $40.00 U.S. 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: From the deep forests of Kent to the low-lying mudflats, beaches and saltmarshes of the Greater Thames Estuary, this ecologically rich area of England attracts vast numbers of wildfowl and waders. The region boasts many internationally and nationally important reserves including Rainham Marshes and Cliffe Pools, while Dungeness in Kent is one of Britain's best known birding hotspots for vagrant species such as Penduline Tit and Kentish Plover. London itself contains numerous birdwatching sites including Barnes and Woodberry Wetlands, along with some of the best spots in Britain for scarcities such as Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Black Redstart. From Marsh Harrier and Firecrest to Curlew and Lapwing, there is plenty for birdwatchers to enjoy while exploring the parks, wetlands, woodlands and coast of southeast England.

     Written by life-long birdwatcher David Callahan, this is the definitive guide to the birding highlights of the region. It contains a comprehensive review of all the major sites and many lesser-known ones, with maps, notes on access, and information on target species and when to visit. Where to Watch Birds in Southeast England is indispensable for any birder exploring the region, or anyone in London wanting to head out to the countryside and enjoy a slice of our rich avian heritage.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone birding Southeast England!

3) Feltner, Linda Miller. Drawing Nature: The Creative Process of an Artist, Illustrator, and Naturalist. 2024. Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 264 pages. Price: $35.00 U.S. 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Drawing Nature presents the creative process of an acclaimed nature artist, guiding readers from field sketches to finished art and demonstrating how science and the close observation of nature can be integrated into the artist’s work to create dynamic, meaningful images. With chapters that flow from drawing basics to more advanced methods and concepts, this beautifully illustrated book is like a look inside the artist’s sketchbooks to discover their secrets.

Linda Miller Feltner demonstrates how observation and recording are sparks to creativity. Her journey from loose sketches and drawings to a completed work begins with observing a natural process, object, or interaction between organisms. Her curiosity generates scientific inquiry that, when researched, helps her to answer a question or make broad, often surprising connections. Blending examples of her stunning artwork with invaluable insights into time-honored art techniques, Feltner illustrates how sketching, developing an image, and scientific accuracy are essential to her art and encourages each of us to cultivate our own powers of observation and discover anew the world around us.

Drawing Nature enables us to look at nature through an artist’s eyes, draw inspiration from a place or a moment, and give expression to its beauty.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone that appreciates nature art! 

 

4) Taylor, Michael. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion. 2024. Liveright. Hardbound: 475 pages. Price: $32.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country’s southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the “first” ichthyosaur, and over the next seventy-five years―as the science of paleontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited radical new theories of evolutionary biology, and as scholars began to identify the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures―everything changed. Beginning with the archbishop who dated the creation of the world to 6 p.m. on October 22, 4004 BC, and told through the lives of the nineteenth-century men and women who found and argued about these seemingly impossible, history-rewriting fossils, Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind’s place in the world.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the history of science!

 

New Titles

 

1) Dunne, Pete and Kevin Karlson. The Shorebirds of North America: A Natural History and Photographic Celebration. 2024. Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 293 pages. Price: $35.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: A lavishly illustrated, large-format reference book by two preeminent experts on North American shorebirds.

     More than half a century has passed since the publication of The Shorebirds of North America (1967), Peter Matthiessen’s masterful natural history of what is arguably the world’s most amazing and specialized bird group. In the intervening decades, our knowledge about these birds has grown significantly, as have the threats to their populations and habitats. Pete Dunne and Kevin Karlson celebrate Matthiessen’s classic book with this updated and expanded natural history of North American shorebirds. This elegantly written book begins by introducing readers to the unrivaled splendor of shorebirds and goes on to cover topics ranging from their biology and habitats to courtship and breeding, flight, the perils of migration, and conservation. Detailed accounts convey the richness and variety of the five family groups, with incisive, fact-filled descriptions of all 52 species of shorebirds known to breed in North America.

     Featuring hundreds of breathtaking images by Karlson and other photographers and drawing on the latest science, The Shorebirds of North America is a worthy tribute to Matthiessen’s enduring work and an indispensable reference for bird lovers everywhere.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone with an interest in the shorebirds of North America! 

2) Dubb, Sarah T.. Birding with Benefits: A Novel. 2024. Gallery Books. Paperback: 314 pages. Price: $18.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Newly-divorced, almost-empty-nester Celeste is finally seeking adventure and putting herself first, cliches be damned. So when a friend asks Celeste to “partner” with his buddy John for an event, Celeste throws herself into the role of his temporary girlfriend. But quiet cinnamon roll John isn’t looking for love, just birds—he needs a partner for Tucson’s biggest bird-watching contest if he’s ever going to launch his own guiding business. By the time they untangle their crossed signals, they’ve become teammates…and thanks to his meddling friends, a fake couple.

     Celeste can’t tell a sparrow from a swallow, but John is a great teacher, and the hours they spend hiking in the Arizona wilderness feed Celeste’s hunger for new adventures while giving John a chance to practice his dream job. As the two spend more time together, they end up watching more than just the birds, and their chemistry becomes undeniable. Since they’re both committed to the single life, Celeste suggests a status upgrade: birders with benefits, just until the contest is done. But as the bird count goes up and their time together ticks down, John and Celeste will have to decide if their benefits can last a lifetime, or if this love affair is for the birds.

RECOMMENDATION: A unique romance novel that birders will love! 

3) Webb, Richard and Jeff Blincow. A Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of South America. 2024. Princeton University Press. Flexibound: 488 pages. Price: $49.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: South America’s wide range of habitats support a tremendous diversity of plants and animals, including more than 400 species of larger mammals—those the size of a guinea pig or bigger. Many are truly iconic: Jaguar, Puma, Ocelot and numerous other beautiful cats; the fantastic Maned Wolf; the incomparable Giant Anteater; and an incredible variety of extraordinary primates. This groundbreaking guide provides detailed coverage of these and many other wonderful mammals, including porcupines and peccaries; squirrels, sloths, skunks and seals; opossums, olingos and otters; armadillos, agoutis and Andean Bear; and viscachas and Vicuña—not to mention tapirs and river and estuarine dolphins. 

     The species accounts include a description of key features and information on subspecies, comparisons with similar species that overlap in range, details of the habitats in which the species occurs, a summary of its distribution in South America and information on its conservation status. Each species is illustrated with carefully selected photos, or artwork where suitable photos were not available.

• Detailed coverage of 420 species
• Showcases over 550 stunning photos, many of rarely photographed species
• Features specially commissioned artwork for almost 100 species, including comparative plates of all marmosets and titi monkeys
• Includes up-to-date distribution maps

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a MUST-HAVE for anyone with an interest in the mammals of South America! 

 

 

4) Taylor, Emily. California Snakes and How to Find Them. 2024. Heyday. Paperback: 193 pages. Price: $22.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias in the world, yet step into any local zoo and you'll find the snake pit to be among these menageries' greatest attractions. In this entrancing ode to the charms of California's legless reptiles, rattlesnake wrangler Emily Taylor shares her knowledge, enthusiasm, and advice for getting to know our slithering neighbors, dispelling the usual misapprehensions that surround them and celebrating their striking biological traits along the way. 

     Featuring profiles of the nearly 50 fork-tongued species that burrow and coil in California's diverse habitats, and containing tips for serpent seekers—including identification guides and handling advice—California Snakes and How to Find Them delves into the longstanding myths and latest natural history research on our ophidian friends of the West. Taylor showcases the biodiversity of California's snakes, from the Common Garter to the fetchingly pink Rosy Boa to the elusive Alameda Striped Racer, illustrated with more than 100 detailed photographs. Supported with critical insights—such as what to do during a venomous encounter, and an exploration of the seemingly simple question, What is a snake?—this guide is the perfect companion for both the seasoned naturalist and the budding snake enthusiast.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in California snakes!

 

5) Grant, B. Rosemary. One Step Sideways, Three Steps Forward: One Woman’s Path to Becoming a Biologist. 2024. Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 331 pages. Price: $29.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The story of the unorthodox and inspiring life and career of a pioneering biologist.

     Scientist Rosemary Grant’s journey in life has involved detours and sidesteps—not the shortest or the straightest of paths, but one that has led her to the top of evolutionary biology. In this engaging and moving book, Grant tells the story of her life and career—from her childhood love of nature in England’s Lake District to an undergraduate education at the University of Edinburgh through a swerve to Canada and teaching, followed by marriage, children, a PhD at age forty-nine, and her life’s work with Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos islands. Grant’s unorthodox career is one woman’s solution to the problem of combining professional life as a field biologist with raising a family.

     Grant describes her youthful interest in fossils, which inspired her to imagine another world, distant yet connected in time—and which anticipated her later work in evolutionary biology. She and her husband, Peter Grant, visited the Galápagos archipelago annually for forty years, tracking the fates of the finches on the small, uninhabited island of Daphne Major. Their work has profoundly altered our understanding of how a group of eighteen species has diversified from a single ancestral species, demonstrating that evolution by natural selection can be observed and interpreted in an entirely natural environment. Grant’s story shows the rewards of following a winding path and the joy of working closely with a partner, sharing ideas, disappointments, and successes.

RECOMMENDATION: This memoir is a must-read for anyone with an interested in evolutionary biology and/or women in STEM.