News

When the second edition of the “Big Sibley” was published last year, you knew it was just a matter of time before the smaller Eastern and Western regional guides were revised as well. And now, thanks to Amazon, we have a potential date: March 29, 2016.

There are no additional details, other than page count, at this time. But you can go ahead and place a pre-order:

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America: Revised Edition

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America: Revised Edition

Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest
by Kenn Kaufman, Kimberly Kaufman, and Jeff Sayre

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

The only field guide to bring along to identify the birds, mammals, trees, wildflowers, insects, reptiles, amphibians, fish, spiders, mushrooms, ferns, rocks, and sky of the Midwest.

Even if we focus on certain things in the outdoors, most of us are curious about everything else that might turn up. Serious birders, botanists, and entomologists all have their specialized guides, but this book is the guide to “everything else”—the one guide to take when you go out for a walk. Wow, that’s a cool-looking mushroom. Wonder what it is. Hey, look at that weird insect.

Birds, mammals, trees, wildflowers, insects, reptiles, amphibians, fish, spiders, mushrooms, ferns, grasses, even constellations overhead and rocks underfoot—it’s all here. With authoritative yet broad coverage, nontechnical language, and more than two thousand color photographs, this book is an essential reference for nature lovers living in or visiting Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

If you live in one of the states covered, or will be visiting and spending significant time outdoors, I would highly recommend having this guide close by. “Combo guides” such as this can be really valuable if done well, and this series is done very well.

Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest
by Kenn Kaufman, Kimberly Kaufman, and Jeff Sayre
Flexicover; 416 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0618456949
$20.00

Bird Ringing Station Manual
by Przemysław Busse and Włodzimierz Meissner

From De Gruyter:

In an attempt to standardise elements of the station routine, Bird Ringing Station Manual describes the procedures used in passerine and wader ringing stations. It offers a comparative analysis of versatile evaluation techniques such as measurements, orientation experiments and monitoring. The authors meticulously analyse different methods used to track birds, including catching passerines with mist-nets in land and wetland habitat, as well as the use of the Heligoland trap. Bird Ringing Station Manual, as a successful bid to establish a bird station routine that is favourable to both birds and ringers, will benefit all professional and amateur ringers.

Anyone involved in bird banding (ringing) should check this out. The hardcover book is expensive, but the eBook (either PDF or ePub format) is available for FREE from the publisher.

Bird Ringing Station Manual
by Przemysław Busse and Włodzimierz Meissner
Hardcover; 211 pages
De Gruyter; March, 2015
ISBN: 978-83-7656-053-3
$140.00

Peterson Field Guide to Finding Mammals in North America
by Vladimir Dinets

From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

To see a fog shrew, should you go to Muir Woods National Monument? If you’re planning to visit Yellowstone National Park, what animals can you expect to see? When should a photographer visit to get a shot of a gray fox?

A mammal finder’s guide (rather than an identification guide), this book tells you how to look, where to go, and what you are likely to find there. Two main sections provide a choice of looking up information by place or by species: The first includes regions of North America, highlighting the best places to look for mammals. The species-finding guide has accounts of more than four hundred species of mammals, including detailed directions to specific parks, refuges, and other locations; the best times of day (or night) to look; and much more information specific to each mammal.

A guide such as this was LONG overdue. This should prove useful both to those looking for specific mammals and those who want to know what to look for on their travels. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to get a lot of use out of this new guide.

Peterson Field Guide to Finding Mammals in North America
by Vladimir Dinets
Paperback; 368 pages
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0544373273
$19.95

Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce, and Conservation
by Paul J. Baicich, Margaret A. Barker, and Carrol L. Henderson

From Texas A&M University Press:

Today, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, more than fifty million Americans feed birds around their homes, and over the last sixty years, billions of pounds of birdseed have filled millions of feeders in backyards everywhere. Feeding Wild Birds in America tells why and how a modest act of provision has become such a pervasive, popular, and often passionate aspect of people’s lives.

Each chapter provides details on one or more bird-feeding development or trend including the “discovery” of seeds, the invention of different kinds of feeders, and the creation of new companies. Also woven into the book are the worlds of education, publishing, commerce, professional ornithology, and citizen science, all of which have embraced bird feeding at different times and from different perspectives.

The authors take a decade-by-decade approach starting in the late nineteenth century, providing a historical overview in each chapter before covering topical developments (such as hummingbird feeding and birdbaths). On the one hand, they show that the story of bird feeding is one of entrepreneurial invention; on the other hand, they reveal how Americans, through a seemingly simple practice, have come to value the natural world.

A history of bird-feeding? Yes, and it’s actually interesting.

Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce, and Conservation
by Paul J. Baicich, Margaret A. Barker, and Carrol L. Henderson
Flexicover; 319 pages
Texas A&M University Press; March 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1623492113
$27.95

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

The House of Owls
by Tony Angell

From Yale University Press:

For a quarter of a century, Tony Angell and his family shared the remarkable experience of closely observing pairs of western screech owls that occupied a nesting box outside the window of their forest home. The journals in which the author recorded his observations, and the captivating drawings he created, form the heart of this compelling book—a personal account of an artist-naturalist’s life with owls. Angell’s extensive illustrations show owls engaged in what owls do—hunting, courting, raising families, and exercising their inquisitive natures—and reveal his immeasurable respect for their secret lives and daunting challenges.

Angell discusses the unique characteristics that distinguish owls from other bird species and provides a fascinating overview of the impact owls have had on human culture and thought. He also offers detailed scientific descriptions of the nineteen species of owls found in North America, as well as their close relatives elsewhere. Always emphasizing the interaction of humans and owls, the author affirms by his own example the power of these birds both to beguile and to inspire.

Yes, another book about owls. But from what I understand, this is a good one.

The House of Owls
by Tony Angell
Hardcover; 224 pages
Yale University Press; April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0300203448
$30.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey
by Deborah Cramer

From Yale University Press:

Each year, red knots, sandpipers weighing no more than a coffee cup, fly a near-miraculous 19,000 miles from the tip of South America to their nesting grounds in the Arctic and back. Along the way, they double their weight by gorging on millions of tiny horseshoe crab eggs. Horseshoe crabs, ancient animals that come ashore but once a year, are vital to humans, too: their blue blood safeguards our health. Now, the rufa red knot, newly listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, will likely face extinction in the foreseeable future across its entire range, 40 states and 27 countries. The first United States bird listed because global warming imperils its existence, it will not be the last: the red knot is the twenty-first century’s “canary in the coal mine.” Logging thousands of miles following the knots, shivering with the birds out on the snowy tundra, tracking them down in bug-infested marshes, Cramer vividly portrays what’s at stake for millions of shorebirds and hundreds of millions of people living at the sea edge. The Narrow Edge offers an uplifting portrait of the tenacity of tiny birds and of the many people who, on the sea edge we all share, keep knots flying and offer them safe harbor.

The connections between Red Knots, Horseshoe Crabs, people, and, now, climate change are fascinating. It’s also something that we need to be aware of in order to prevent the extinction of this amazing bird, and possibly others.

The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey
by Deborah Cramer
Hardcover; 304 pages
Yale University Press; April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0300185195
$28.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock
by Stephen W. Kress and Derrick Z. Jackson

From Yale University Press:

Project Puffin is the inspiring story of how a beloved seabird was restored to long-abandoned nesting colonies off the Maine coast. As a young ornithology instructor at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, Dr. Stephen W. Kress learned that puffins had nested on nearby islands until extirpated by hunters in the late 1800s. To right this environmental wrong, he resolved to bring puffins back to one such island—Eastern Egg Rock. Yet bringing the plan to reality meant convincing skeptics, finding resources, and inventing restoration methods at a time when many believed in “letting nature take its course.”

Today, Project Puffin has restored more than 1,000 puffin pairs to three Maine islands. But even more exciting, techniques developed during the project have helped to restore rare and endangered seabirds worldwide. Further, reestablished puffins now serve as a window into the effects of global warming. The success of Dr. Kress’s project offers hope that people can restore lost wildlife populations and the habitats that support them. The need for such inspiration has never been greater.

This is truly an amazing story, and its success deserves to be proudly proclaimed.

Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock
by Stephen W. Kress and Derrick Z. Jackson
Hardcover; 376 pages
Yale University Press; April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0300204810
$30.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

Birding Hot Spots of Santa Fe, Taos, and Northern New Mexico
by Judith Liddell and Barbara Hussey

From Texas A&M University Press:

In their second guide to birding in New Mexico, Judy Liddell and Barbara Hussey share their experiences and intimate knowledge of the best places to find birds in and around Santa Fe and other areas in northern New Mexico.

Following the same format as their book on the Albuquerque area, the authors describe 32 sites organized by geographic regions. Along with a general description of each area, the authors list target birds; explain where and when to look for them; give driving directions; provide information about public transportation, parking, fees, restrooms, food, and lodging; and give tips on availability of water and picnic facilities and on the presence of hazards such as poison ivy, rattlesnakes, and bears. Maps and photographs provide trail diagrams and images of some of the target birds and their environments.

A “helpful information” section covering weather, altitude, safety, transportation, and other local birding resources is included along with an annotated checklist of 276 bird species seen with some regularity in and around Santa Fe.

This new bird-finding guide complements the authors’ previous Birding Hot Spots of Central New Mexico. This area is definitely somewhere I need to get to, especially if I’m able to find the cover bird!

Birding Hot Spots of Santa Fe, Taos, and Northern New Mexico
by Judith Liddell and Barbara Hussey
Flexicover; 304 pages
Texas A&M University Press; April 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1623492540
$27.00

Buy from Buteo Books
(based in the U.S.)

Buy from NHBS
(based in the U.K.)

Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature
by Nick Davies

From Bloomsbury:

The familiar call of the common cuckoo, ‘cuck-oo,’ has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos rather than their own offspring?

Early observers who noticed a little warbler feeding a monstrously large cuckoo chick concluded the cuckoo’s lack of parental care was the result of faulty design by the Creator, and that the hosts chose to help the poor cuckoo. These quaint views of bad design and benevolence were banished after Charles Darwin proposed that the cuckoo tricks the hosts in an evolutionary battle, where hosts evolve better defenses against cuckoos and cuckoos, in turn, evolve better trickery to outwit the hosts.

For the last three decades, Davies has employed observation and field experiments to unravel the details of this evolutionary ‘arms race’ between cuckoos and their hosts. Like a detective, Davies and his colleagues studied adult cuckoo behavior, cuckoo egg markings, and cuckoo chick begging calls to discover exactly how cuckoos trick their hosts. For birding and evolution aficionados, Cuckoo is a lyrical and scientifically satisfying exploration of one of nature’s most astonishing and beautiful adaptations.

While I’m sure that pretty much everyone is aware of the cuckoo’s habit of nest parasitism, I’m sure there’s much more to the story. I must admit that I don’t know all that much about these birds, but am looking forward to reading this book to rectify that.

Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature
by Nick Davies
Hardcover; 320 pages
Bloomsbury; April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1620409527
$27.00