Review by New York Times Review
ON NOV. 7, 2017, a group of bird-watchers spotted a chunky brown bird foraging on the grassy edge of Ocean Parkway in Cedar Beach on Long Island. The dumpy chicken-like creature with a rufous shoulder patch was a corn crake (Crex crex), a meadow-dwelling relative of the cranes from Europe. Corn crakes usually migrate to spend the winter in the grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa. Though they can show up in North America, it's with startling irregularity. The Cedar Beach bird was only the second corn crake recorded in New York State since Grover Cleveland was president. The following day, hundreds of birders from as far as North Carolina, Michigan and Minnesota came to see the corn crake, which was lucky for them because he soon died, hit by a car on the busy parkway. For each lucky birder who saw the Cedar Beach corn crake, there are thousands of others who wish they had, myself included. Each of us has nurtured our own private dreams of someday encountering it. As a Connecticut birder, Paul Desjardins, put it, "It only took me 58 years to see this bird." Where do birding dreams come from? Mostly, they come from books. Next to high-quality optics, the most important resources for a birder are books. Behind every birder is a library - a privately curated collection of dozens - even hundreds - of volumes, including field guides, bird-finding guides and specialized monographs on specific groups like warblers, sparrows or gulls. And, just as seed catalogs induce a gardener's visions of glorious future harvests, there are bird books whose goal is simply to inspire dreams about birds, the love of birds and plans for future birding trips. Simon Barnes's "The Meaning of Birds" is a book of essays that explore the biology of birds and our abiding fascination with them. Barnes is the former chief sportswriter for The Times of London, and the author of more than a dozen books on sports, horses and horse racing, cricket and bird-watching. Loosely organized as a series of conceptual chapters, the book is passionate, inviting, even lyrical. In the opening passage, Barnes shows us that the angels carved into the ceiling of an ancient church in East Anglia fly on the wings of marsh harriers - the same charismatic raptor we can observe in American wetlands today. He compares the effortless buoyant flight of the harriers to the graceful presence of the angels, and brings us closer to the bird-loving artisans who carved them long ago. Having never imagined angel wings as coming in any variety other than generic swan white, I was grateful to Barnes for opening my eyes to the ornithological inspiration for angels. Barnes's book is like a lively, meandering pub conversation with a birdy companion - chatty, but often choppy and a little repetitive. Few topics are sustained for more than a page or two, and we never wade into the depths. Barnes can also be a bit sloppy with biological details. For example, there is no evidence that the tubes in an albatross beak function like pitot tubes to measure their air speed; rather, these nasal channels are for the outflow from their salt glands and allow them to survive in a high-sodium, oceanic environment. Before one conjecture, Barnes suggests that the reader may "miss this bit if you have taste for scientific rigor." Although I felt that way at times about the whole book, Barnes provides a companionable view of why we love birds, their lives and futures. Bernd Brunner's "Birdmania" is a cultural history of the varieties of human ornithological obsession. Much like Barnes's book, "Birdmania" is also a series of choppy vignettes organized into topical chapters. However, Brunner focuses more on the mania than the birds. To Brunner, birdmaniacs are mostly an odd, selfish and even cruel bunch. The English bird illustrator and publisher John Gould is described as an "unscrupulous profiteer." The travelogues of Hugo Weigold, a pioneer bird bander in the early 20th century, are described as "full of coldblooded arrogance." The pioneering American bird-watcher Phoebe Snetsinger, who traveled the world to observe 8,674 bird species before being killed in a traffic accident during a birding trip in Madagascar, is presented as an example of "wealthy people who cut themselves off almost completely from their partners, children and other family obligations... just to add one entry or another to a fervently kept list of bird sightings." To make sure his pessimistic message is right up front, a third of Brunner's 19 chapters focus on famous liars in ornithology. We meet the French ornithologist François Levaillant, who cribbed some illustrations for his "Natural History of the Birds of Africa (1805OS)" from other sources, and incompetently (or deviously?) included numerous species not found on the continent. We are also introduced to the 20th-century aristocratic British ornithologist, spy and sociopath Richard Meinertzhagen, who switched tags among bird specimens to support his hypotheses and who might have shot his first wife to hide the deception before running off with his children's nanny. Brunner has a special gripe against the scientific collectors of birds. Yet he never acknowledges, or perhaps comprehends, the vital contributions that museum collections make to our understanding of the biology of birds. Of course, birdmaniacs are people, too, with human foibles and faults. But Brunner makes little attempt to understand the cultural or intellectual contexts in which these historical birdmaniacs lived and loved birds. Even if some of his harsh judgments are accurate, "Birdmania" does not portray birdmania as very attractive. Perhaps the censorious tone is exaggerated by the translation from the German original, but I was left wondering whether Brunner actually likes birds, bird people, or even people in general. Noah Strycker's "Birding Without Borders" is a firsthand account of a serious case of birdmania. In 2015, at age 28, Strycker set out to see as many bird species as he could in a single calendar year. This feat of extreme birding is called a Big Year, and it can be pursued on the local, state, continental or global scale. Strycker's goal was to be the first person to see more than half the world's roughly 10,100 species of birds in one year. Starting in Antarctica on Jan. 1, Strycker took 112 plane flights and traveled through 41 countries on all continents to observe 6,042 species of birds, smashing the previous record of 4,341. The birding travelogue genre was invented in 1955 by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher with the publication of "Wild America," a sort of ornithological "On the Road" about their year bird-watching across North America. "Birding Without Borders" is an updated, global birding travelogue for the modern age. Strycker is a digital native, and his is a decidedly digitally enabled Big Year. Strycker used the internet to find local birders to guide him in every country he visited. Throughout the year, he tallied his observations on eBird, an electronic birdsighting database, and posted daily descriptions of his adventures on a blog maintained by the Audubon Society. When Strycker finds himself on Christmas night in Western Australia just 30 birds shy of 6,000, he uses eBird to calculate which country he should visit last to maximize his remaining week. (The answer? Northern India!) "Birding Without Borders" is lighthearted and filled with stories of exotic birds, risky adventures and colorful birding companions. You don't get deep insights into why Strycker did this, but you get the sense that he would be fun to bird with. I would have liked deeper discussion about how to plan the best Big Year route. Of course, I would love to have heard Strycker's stories about what it was like to see specific birds that I have dreamed of, like the white-necked rockfowl in Ghana, and the sapayoa in Panama. To really appreciate Strycker's book, readers must have moved beyond merely enjoying local birds to dream about the dizzying diversity of the birds of the world, and have imagined how rewarding it may be to see them all. It's a beautiful dream.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 11, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
Our winged friends get a whole lot of love from nature writer Barnes (Ten Million Aliens: A Journey through the Entire Animal Kingdom, 2015) in this brisk and informative tour of avian facts. The volume is packed to the gills with nuggets that can deliver a winning edge in Trivial Pursuit. Why are blackbirds altruistic? Why are eagles considered powerful? Were doves associated with religion even before Christianity? Why did we start eating chickens, and when? These and myriad other questions are answered in this lively treatise. Barnes also helps us parse the difference between a birder and a twitcher, and salivate over optical glass for binoculars. He hops around periodically, so the information is digested pretty easily, though some readers may wish for a little more depth. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining peek into the world of birds and birding that is sure to delight nature lovers.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British novelist and nature writer Barnes (How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher) infuses this playful, conversational exploration of the relationship of birds to humanity with a sense of well-informed wonder. He demonstrates patient attention to the world around him, combining thoughtful scholarship with a skill for conveying particulars in accessible language. At the book's core is Barnes's belief that "you impoverish yourself if you accept only science, just as you impoverish yourself-perhaps more greatly-by ignoring science." Barnes covers a mix of bird-watching topics, including song and coloration; functional topics in human-bird interaction, such as the development of falconry; and more metaphorical topics, including musings on birds as symbol or as markers of time and place. He also ably shares personal experiences without moving the lens too far from plumage to person. Barnes doesn't present any individual profiles, seeing fellow bird watchers as a collective even while thinking of songbirds as unique personalities. Chapters about extinction, conservation, and species diversity express a mix of optimism and pessimism, but Barnes's mood remains one of profound, though not overbearing, appreciation for his avian cotravelers. Line drawings from 19th-century birding guides give this book a contemplative feel. This is a generous volume in which Barnes unabashedly shares his affinity for "anyone with birding in the blood." Illus. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Barnes is a former sports writer for the Times (London) and author of several books, including Birdwatching with Your Eyes Closed: An Introduction to Birdsong. His newest work takes a wide-ranging, philosophical look at the significance of wild birds in our lives, past and present. Barnes considers the many facets of birds, whether in food, re-creation, mythology, music, hunting, conservation and migration, the feather trade, and as the subject of scientific studies. Unfortunately, the book lacks an introduction and references and has a British bias. For the attractive illustrations, which appear to be from 19th-century sources, one has to look in a few places before finding the limited captions that also lack any attribution. But Barnes, although a polymath, is an experienced birder and explores the influences of birds on us, something of a virtuoso performance, including his own anecdotal experiences. Verdict Optional reading for those with a very general interest in natural history, science, and bird-watching.-Henry T. Armistead, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Glowing praise for birds from the prolific nature writer and novelist, who is filled with great affection and admiration for our feathered friends.Former Times (London) chief sportswriter Barnes (Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom, 2013, etc.) writes that these gravity-defying winged creatures of flight are what we humans want to be. Besides delighting our eyes and ears, they help to give meaning to our lives. "Birds," he writes, "more than any other group of living things, draw us into the world beyond humanity." They teach us not just about flight ("flight envy is part of the human condition"), but also about color (feathers), music (songs), time and place (annual migrations), and killing and death (raptors). They pervade our myths and stories as powerful symbols (the eagle, the dove), and they have long provided us with sustenance. Chickens, writes our knowledgeable, eloquent, and opinionated guide, tell the story of mankind, from the beginnings of civilization to the gruesome technology used by the fast-food industry. Throughout, beautiful black-and-white illustrations, many taken from a variety of 19th-century sources, complement the author's witty, conversational prose. Besides arguing that birds have helped us understand our lives and our worlde.g., the birds that clued Charles Darwin in to the idea that species could alter; new migration patterns that demonstrate climate changeBarnes writes with urgency that birds need us more than ever. In the final chapters, the author discusses extinctions and near extinctions and threatened bird populations that have been rescued by human actions. Yes, writes Barnes, birds need people, but people need birds, too.Previously published in England, the book may have greater resonance with those more familiar with the birds, organizations, and conservation efforts there, but the core message of this delightful book will appeal to birders everywhere. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
