A Look Ahead in 2011

2011 has the makings of a great year for bird books. It’s just the end of January and there are already several that I’m anxiously awaiting. Here’s a little of what we have to look forward to.

I always look forward to getting the latest field guide. I like to see what new features and innovations the authors have incorporated. In that regard, this year’s new North American field guide – The Crossley ID Guide – will be a doozy. Crossley’s digitally created plates, incorporating photos of birds from many different angles and distances, are groundbreaking. Hopefully they will be useful as well.
February 21, 2011; Princeton University Press
I generally enjoy “big year” books, so Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year caught my eye. The author, Lynn Barber, is an ABA board member, and contributor to their blog.
March 19, 2011; TAMU Press
Hawks at a Distance: Identification of Migrant Raptors is Jerry Liguori’s followup to his excellent Hawks from Every Angle. According to the book’s description, this will be “the first volume to focus on distant raptors as they are truly seen in the field”. Sounds like a must-have for any hawk watcher.
March 30, 2011; Princeton University Press
Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding has long been a required book for anyone wanting to come to grips with gulls, flycatchers, and other difficult-to-identify groups of North American birds. I’m sure his updated Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding will be just as indispensable.
April 19, 2011; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
After the Crossley guide, Peter Goodfellow’s Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build is probably the book I’m most looking forward to this year. How birds are able to build such marvelous structures has always been a mystery to me. I’ve been waiting a long time for a book that could explain and demonstrate the process. Hopefully that wait will be over shortly.
May 26, 2011; Princeton University Press
Just today I ran across this title – Binocular Vision: The Politics of Representation in Birdwatching Field Guides. The title piqued my curiosity; I had to find out what this was about. The publisher’s catalog says:

By putting field guides into direct conversation with concerns about species conservation, environmental management, the human alteration of the environment, and the problem of toxic pollution, Binocular Vision is a field guide to field guides that takes a novel perspective on how we think about and interact with the world around us.

As someone who loves bird books and books about bird books, this sounds interesting to me.
July 31, 2011; University of Massachusetts Press
Arctic Autumn: A Journey to Season’s Edge is the third book in Pete Dunne’s series on season and place. The first two were great, but I’d be excited regardless because it’s Pete freakin’ Dunne!
September 21, 2011; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Last, but certainly not least, is the final volume in the landmark series – Handbook of the Birds of the World, Volume 16. This will be “the first work to verbally and visually portray each member of an entire Class of the Animal Kingdom”. I’m especially excited due to the families covered: Tanagers, Cardinals, Buntings and New World Sparrows, and New World Blackbirds.
October, 2011; Lynx Edicions