|
A review by Frank Izaguirre
Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names, by Stephen Moss
Faber & Faber, 2018
368 pages—softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14980
Birders love talking about bird names. Who among us hasn’t scrolled through the new AOS proposals just to see what the most absurd name change proposal was, [read more…]
A review by Caitlin Kight
A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing, by Richard Smyth
Elliott and Thompson, 2017
208 pages—softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14983
Between my sophomore and junior years in college, I worked as a field ornithologist for the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP). I had been [read more…]
A quasi-review by Ted Floyd
Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America, by Rick Wright
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019
434 pages, hardcover
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 14934
As I was sitting down to write this not-exactly-a-book-review, one of my kids asked me a question about the mathematical details of the orbit of the moon. I [read more…]
A review by Capper Nichols
Mozart’s Starling, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Little, Brown, and Company, 2017
288 pages, softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14944
Out in the California desert, a dozen starlings perched in the branches of a spindly honey mesquite. The tree grew out of a concrete island at a roadside oasis, [read more…]
A review by Julia Zarankin
The Meaning of Birds, by Simon Barnes
Pegasus Books 2018
208 pages—softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14938
The first time I went birding, I ended up in a park on the western edge of Toronto face to face with a flotilla of ducks. According to my fellow birdwatchers, we [read more…]
By Jeff Gordon, on March 29, 2019
These are my friend Bill Thompson III’s shoes. Actually, this is just the tip of his footwear iceberg—he owned and wore a lot of shoes. I photographed these as they sat by his front door the day after I, along with members of his family, watched him fly free of his cancer-ravaged body. [read more…]
A review by Caitlin Kight
Woodpecker, by Gerard Gorman
Reaktion Books, 2018
180 pages, softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14922
Gerard Gorman’s Woodpecker is the latest volume in Reaktion Books’ Animal Series, a handsome collection of lavishly illustrated books that explore the natural and cultural history of a range of iconic animals. By examining [read more…]
A review by Lori Potter
Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds, by Bernd Brunner, translated by Jane Billinghurst
Greystone Books, 2017
292 pages, hardcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14791
The book jacket of Birdmania advises that its contents are “quirky.” Soon enough, we learn that this disclosure is not misleading. The book’s quirkiness [read more…]
By Michael Retter, on November 23, 2018
The 2018 issue of Birder’s Guide to Gear is now being mailed. If you’re an ABA member, you should find it in your mailbox in the next couple weeks. But you don’t have to wait until then to see what’s inside. And neither do non-members. You can see the entirety of this issue of [read more…]
A review by Corey C. Husic
Urban Raptors: Ecology and Conservation of Birds of Prey in Cities, edited by Clint W. Boal and Cheryl R. Dykstra
Island Press, 2018
320 pages, softcover
ABA Sales / Buteo Books 14851
Humans have long lived in proximity to raptors, with stories dating back centuries of Red Kites pestering [read more…]
|
“Ask Rick Wright”—Thoughts on Being Birderly
A quasi-review by Ted Floyd
Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America, by Rick Wright
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019
434 pages, hardcover
ABA Sales–Buteo Books 14934
As I was sitting down to write this not-exactly-a-book-review, one of my kids asked me a question about the mathematical details of the orbit of the moon. I [read more…]