New Titles

 

1) Rashid, Scott. Northern Saw-whet Owl: The Deep Woods Gnome. 2021. Self-published. Paperback: 123 pages. Price: $34.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The diminutive Northern Saw-whet Owl is the smallest owl found in the east and one of the smallest in the west. Like the other small owls, Northern Saw-whet Owls are a secondary cavity-nesting species that prefer nesting in Northern Flicker cavities and also readily take to, and nest in nest boxes. Knowing this, I have built and placed more than 80 nest boxes for these owls, and placed them throughout the mountains of Northern Colorado. Having these boxes in place and finding several owls nesting in natural cavities, has given me the opportunity to study their nesting habits and food preferences. By trapping and banding the owls in the fall, has given me some insight into their movements after their nesting season has ended. Within the pages of Northern Saw-whet Owl (The Deep Woods Gnome) you will read about the bird’s natural history including their courtship, nesting, food preferences, and movements.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for those with a serious interest in the Northern Saw-whet Owl.

 

2) Meiburg, Jonathan. A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey. 2021. Knopf. Hardbound: 366 pages. Price: $30.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history.

     In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were "tame and inquisitive . . . quarrelsome and passionate," and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it.
 
      Almost two hundred years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they're very rare. He reveals the wild, fascinating story of their history, origins, and possible futures. And along the way, he draws us into the life and work of William Henry Hudson, the Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as an unsung wonder of the natural world, and to falconry parks in the English countryside, where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory and problem-solving. A Most Remarkable Creature is a hybrid of science writing, travelogue, and biography, as generous and accessible as it is sophisticated, and absolutely riveting.

RECOMMENDATION: Fans of Owls of the Eastern Ice should enjoy this book!

 

 

3) Dunn, Jon. The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds. 2021. Basic Books. Hardbound: 331 pages. Price: $30.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over three hundred wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their unsurpassed metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests, and subpolar islands. They are, perhaps, the ultimate embodiment of evolution's power to carve a niche for a delicate creature in even the harshest of places.

     Traveling the full length of the hummingbirds' range, from the cusp of the Arctic Circle to near-Antarctic islands, acclaimed nature writer Jon Dunn encounters birders, scientists, and storytellers in his quest to find these beguiling creatures, immersing us in the world of one of Earth's most charismatic bird families.

RECOMMENDATION: Lovers of hummingbirds will enjoy this book!

 

4) Sheldon, Ian and Tamara Hartson. Washington and Oregon Animal Tracks. 2021. Lone Pine. Paperback: 160 pages. Price: $10.95 U.S. 

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Washington and Oregon abound with many species of animals and this book will help you identify their tracks. Concise descriptions of the animals and their tracks are combined with detailed drawings of the front and back prints, stride patterns and other important identifying aspects. A perfect guide for teachers, parents, hikers and urban adventurers.

RECOMMENDATION: Other titles in this series include Rocky Mountain and Northern California. These little guides are now in color and will fit easily into your backpack or large pockets!

 

5) Page, Lawrence M. and Brooks M. Burr. Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes of North America North of Mexico (second edition). 2011. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Paperback: 663 pages. Price: $25.99 U.S.   

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: There are nearly 1,000 species of freshwater fishes in North America alone, and identifying them can sometimes be a daunting task. In fact, in just the twenty years since publication of the first edition of the Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes, the number of species has risen by almost 150, including 19 marine invaders and 16 newly established nonnative species. This second edition incorporates all of these new species, plus all-new maps and a collection of new and revised plates. Some of the species can be told apart only by minute differences in coloration or shape, and these beautifully illustrated plates reveal exactly how to distinguish each species.
     The guide includes detailed maps and information showing where to locate each species of fish—whether that species can be found in miles-long stretches of river or small pools that cover only dozens of square feet. The ichthyologic world of the twenty-first century is not the same as it was in the twentieth, and this brand-new edition of the definitive field guide to freshwater fishes reflects these many changes. 

RECOMMENDATION: The number of plates have increased from 48 to 57. The range maps are now in color. If you own the first edition you will want the second edition.  

 

6) Kemp, Christopher. The Lost Species: Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums. 2020 (2017). The University of Chicago Press. Paperback: 250 pages. Price: $21.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The tiny, lungless Thorius salamander from southern Mexico, thinner than a match and smaller than a quarter. The lushly white-coated Saki, an arboreal monkey from the Brazilian rainforests. The olinguito, a native of the Andes, which looks part mongoose, part teddy bear. These fantastic species are all new to science—at least newly named and identified; but they weren’t discovered in the wild, instead, they were unearthed in the drawers and cavernous basements of natural history museums. As Christopher Kemp reveals in The Lost Species, hiding in the cabinets and storage units of natural history museums is a treasure trove of discovery waiting to happen.

      With Kemp as our guide, we go spelunking into museum basements, dig through specimen trays, and inspect the drawers and jars of collections, scientific detectives on the hunt for new species. We discover king crabs from 1906, unidentified tarantulas, mislabeled Himalayan landsnails, an unknown rove beetle originally collected by Darwin, and an overlooked squeaker frog, among other curiosities. In each case, these specimens sat quietly for decades—sometimes longer than a century—within the collections of museums, before sharp-eyed scientists understood they were new. Each year, scientists continue to encounter new species in museum collections—a stark reminder that we have named only a fraction of the world’s biodiversity. Sadly, some specimens have waited so long to be named that they are gone from the wild before they were identified, victims of climate change and habitat loss. As Kemp shows, these stories showcase the enduring importance of these very collections.

      The Lost Species vividly tells these stories of discovery—from the latest information on each creature to the people who collected them and the scientists who finally realized what they had unearthed—and will inspire many a museum-goer to want to peek behind the closed doors and rummage through the archives.

RECOMMENDATION: This well received title is now available in paperback.

New Titles

 

 

1) Hilty, Steven L.. Birds of Colombia. 2021. Lynx Edicions. Flexibound: 608 pages. Price: $65.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: This addition to the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides series covers the birder's paradise that is Colombia. Not only have more species been recorded there than in any other country, but almost one-fifth of the world's birds occur in Colombia, packed into an area slightly greater than 1,100,000 km².

     Stretching east to west from the Orinoco River to the Pacific Ocean, and north to south from the Caribbean to Amazonian headwaters, the country's topography is remarkably diverse. Here, the Andes are separated into three ranges by two important valleys, the Cauca and the Magdalena, and there are two very important massifs, Santa Marta and Perijá, in the north of the country – in particular, the Santa Marta range is one of the great endemic hotspots in the world. In recent years, a series of standard birding routes has evolved, many of them focused on the country's privately and publicly owned protected areas, permitting keen birders to see nearly all of Colombia's many special birds, from extravagantly plumaged parrots and hummingbirds to skulking antpittas.

     Nevertheless, in South America the capacity to escape the beaten track and make novel findings is perhaps nowhere better than Colombia, as exemplified by the recent discovery of an apparently new species of antpitta close to the city of Cali.

      As with previous volumes, the taxonomy follows the Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Detailed texts cover status, habitat and behaviour, age, sex and geographical variation, voice, and confusion species. The guides draws on Lynx's vast image bank and includes almost 3000 illustrations covering all species and distinctive subspecies, birds in flight, males and females, juveniles and non-breeding plumages, where appropriate. Close to 2000 full-colour range maps show distribution for all regularly occurring species. For each species a QR code is included, linking to complementary audiovisual material. Well-marked subspecies groups receive full accounts, and the distributions of subspecies breeding in the region are clearly mapped and local species names included. In total, 2089 species and subspecies groups; 111 endemics, 85 near-endemics, 3 introduced, 69 vagrants are covered.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for anyone birding Colombia!

2) Eaton, James A. et al.. Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea (Second Edition). 2021. Lynx Edicions. Flexibound: 536 pages. Price: $55.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The first ornithological field guide covering the vast chain of the Indonesian archipelago has been completely revised following years of meticulous research. This second edition now encompasses over 2,800 illustrations, including 325 entirely new figures and nearly 500 alterations to the original artwork, supplemented by 1,350 maps of all regularly occurring species. The species are mapped with improved accuracy by including three magnified geographical regions, or by a larger archipelago-wide map frame. Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago describes all 1,456 bird species known to occur in the region, including 628 endemics, 106 vagrants, 4 introduced species and 10 species yet to be formally described. Together these represent over 13% of global bird diversity. Importantly, all subspecies are described in detail.

     Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago fully covers the biogeographic regions of the Greater Sundas (Sumatra, Borneo, Java and Bali) and Wallacea (Sulawesi, the Moluccas and the Lesser Sundas), plus all satellite islands. This region spans an arc of over 4,000 km along the Equator, including East Timor, Brunei Darussalam, the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak and most of the territory of the Republic of Indonesia.

     The authors' combined vast, unparalleled experience and knowledge of the region's birds brings together the latest taxonomic insights, knowledge of distribution, field identification features, vocalisations and more to create an indispensable reference for anyone with an interest in the avifauna of this fabulously diverse region. The additional attention to detail allows Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago to be used elsewhere in Asia as particular attention is paid to help the reader identify even the trickiest of species.

- Taxonomy follows an integrative approach based on bioacoustics, genomics and morphology, often based on the authors’ own peer-reviewed systematic work in the region.
- Detailed texts covering status, taxonomy, habitat and behaviour, all plumage variations, vocalisations, and similar species.
- 1,456 species, 628 endemics, 106 vagrants, 4 introduced and 10 undescribed species.
- Over 2,800 illustrations covering all species and distinctive subspecies, birds in flight, males and females, immatures and non-breeding plumages, where appropriate.
- 1,350 full-colour range maps for all regularly occurring species, spread across four regional map frames.
- List of all the bird names in Bahasa Indonesia, useful for travelling birders, researchers and to help interaction with Bahasa Indonesia speakers.
- A revised, more traditional and familiar index.
- Keeping within the taxonomic constraints, species accounts have been moved so that similar and/or regional species are on the same page, allowing for easier comparisons, and less time spent flicking between pages.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for anyone birding the region!

 

3) Cirigliano, Jim (editor). National Audubon Society Birds of North America. 2021. Knopf. Flexibound: 907 pages. Price: $49.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Developed by the creators of the best-selling Audubon field guides, this handsome volume is the result of a collaboration among leading scientists, scholars, taxonomic and field experts, photo editors, and designers. An indispensable reference, it covers more than 800 species, with over 3,500 full-color photographs of birds in their natural habitat, often with four or five images of each species. For ease of use, the book includes a glossary, an index, and a ribbon marker, and is arranged according to the American Ornithological Society's latest Checklist of North and Middle American Birds--[through 2019]--with birds sorted by taxonomic orders and grouped by family, so that related species are presented together. Range maps, reflecting the impact of climate change, accompany nearly every entry, along with a physical description and information on voice, nesting, habitat, and similar species. This guide also includes an important new category on conservation status and essays by leading scholars in each field who provide holistic insights into the world of birds. Whether trying to determine which owl is interrupting your dinner or successfully identifying all of the warblers that arrive in spring, readers will come to rely on this work of remarkable breadth, depth, and elegance. It is a must-have reference for the library of any birder, and is poised to become the number one guide in the field.

RECOMMENDATION: Best for intermediate level birders. 

 

4) Davis, Kate. Falcons of North America (Second Edition). 2021. Mountain Press. Paperback: 252 pages. Price: $28.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Bold and beautiful, falcons hold a special place in the hearts of people. In Falcons of North America, renowned raptor advocate and environmental educator Kate Davis opens a door into the lives of these extraordinary, enigmatic birds of prey.

Since the publication of the first edition 13 years ago, advances in technology have revolutionized the study of falcons. This updated and revised second edition contains completely new classifications of the six North American falcon species based on DNA studies. Population trends are explored, with discussions of the mysterious decline of the American Kestrel and the impact of global warming on falcons, particularly the arctic-dwelling Gyrfalcon. Davis also includes fascinating details on one of the greatest conservation success stories--that of the Peregrine Falcon--from a brush with extinction in North America to greater populations than ever before, even thriving as city dwellers across the continent.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for anyone with an interest in the falcons of North America!

5) Cirigliano, Jim (editor). National Audubon Society Trees of North America. 2021. Knopf. Flexibound: 591 pages. Price: $39.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: This handsome volume is the result of a collaboration among leading scientists, scholars, taxonomic and field experts, photo editors, and designers. An indispensable reference, it covers more than 540 species, with nearly 2,500 full-color photographs--including images of the bark, fruit, and flowers, as well as photos that illustrate leaf shape and seasonal color changes. For ease of use, the book includes a glossary, a robust index, and a ribbon marker, and is arranged according to the latest Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification system--with trees sorted by taxonomic orders and grouped by family, so that related species are presented together. Readers will appreciate the crisp detail of the photographs; range maps (reflecting the impact of climate change); physical descriptions; and information on fruit, habitat, uses, and similar species. The guide includes an important new category on conservation status and essays by leading scholars who provide holistic insights into the world of trees. Whether putting a name to the towering conifers spotted along a hike or getting to know the trees that grow in the backyard, readers will come to rely on this work of remarkable breadth, depth, and elegance. It is a must-have reference for the library of any nature lover, and is poised to become the number one guide in the field.

RECOMMENDATION: The most up-to-date North American tree guide currently available!