From the editors:

This is the only comprehensive photographic field guide to the birds of the entire Indian subcontinent. Every distinct species and subspecies–some 1,375 in all-

-is covered with photographs, text, and maps. The guide features more than 4,000 stunning photographs, many never before published, which have been carefully selected to illustrate key identification features of each species. The up-to-date facing-page text includes concise descriptions of plumage, voice, range, habitat, and recent taxonomic changes. Each species has a detailed map reflecting the latest distribution information and containing notes on status and population density. The guide also features an introduction that provides an overview of birdlife and a brief history of ornithology in India and its neighbors. The result is an encyclopedic photographic guide that is essential for everyone birding anywhere in the subcontinent.

Covers all 1,375 subcontinental bird species

Features more than 4,000 stunning photographs to aid quick field identification

Includes up-to-date facing-page text and range maps

Contains concise descriptions of plumage, voice, habitat, and much more

Raptors of Mexico and Central America

This is a very nice book. Given that it covers only 69 birds (but comprehensively, because it has all the raptors in this raptor book) it is possible to have all the methods and modes used in one book. There are plates with multiple species, appropriately collected to make helpful comparisons, using drawing of the old Peterson style. If you use this book to identify raptors in the field, you’ll probably make your final decisions based on reference to these plates, as that is what they are designed for.

The bulk of the book are species essays, some several pages long (generally about two-three pages). Each essay has a prominent photo of the bird, other photos, a range map, etc. Details on behavior and ID are given, as one expects in a bird book, but with much more information than usual, making use of the space available. Variations of sex, morph, age, and molt, are very important with raptors, depending on the species. The species-level discussions of molt are fantastic.

The front and back matter is modest and appropriate.

William Clark is a photographer specializing in raptors and one of the leading authorities on this type of birds. N. John Schmitt is an artist who specializes in drawing birds of prey. You’ve certainly seen their work many times. The book Raptors of Mexico and Central America gives you 213 more color photos and 32 plates with many drawings per plate.

A few other books by these authors:

A Photographic Guide to North American Raptors (Natural World)
Birds Asleep (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)
A Field Guide to the Raptors of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa

This is the first and only field-ready photographic bird guide that covers every species in Europe. There are 2,200 photos covering 860 species. The West Asian and North African coverage is of all of the species there that have occurred in Europe, so think of this primarily as a European guide.

Critically important in this guide is the ratio between the above mentioned numbers. For every species, there are potentially several photographs. Sometimes, it is male and female. Some other morphological categories are illustrated. For some birds, especially raptors, there may be numerous views in flight.

The amount of information give per bird is minimal (this is a field guid) and the range maps are classic style and well done. Some books have dozens of pages of front matter, but this book has almost none. Other than the index and credits, there is no back matter. Yet, the book is well over 400 pages long. That’s a lot of birds in one book. If you want a European bird guide for the field, this is the one.

About the authors:

Frédéric Jiguet is one of France’s leading ornithologists and a conservation biologist at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He is director of the Centre de Recherches sur la Biologie des Populations d’Oiseaux (CRBPO), and serves on the editorial board of France’s premier bird-study journal, Ornithos. Aurélien Audevard has been studying birds for much of his life and has conducted several high-profile conservation studies for the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (LPO PACA). His photographs have appeared in many of Europe’s leading birding magazines, including Ornithos, L’Oiseaux, Birding World, and Dutch Birding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction 6
Species descriptions 12
Swans 12
Geese 14
Shelducks 21
Dabbling ducks 22
Whistling ducks 28
Diving ducks 28
Sea ducks 34
Stifftails 41
Vagrant and exotic ducks 42
Gamebirds 45
Divers (Loons) 55
Grebes 58
Shearwaters and petrels 61
Storm-petrels 66
Rare petrels and albatrosses 67
Frigatebirds 75
Tropicbirds 76
Gannets and boobies 77
Pelicans 80
Cormorants 81
Herons, bitterns and egrets 83
Storks 93
Spoonbills and ibises 94
Spoonbills and storks 96
Flamingos 97
Honey-buzzards 99
Buzzards 101
Snake eagles 105
Kites 106
Vultures 108
Harriers 113
Eagles 117
Osprey and Black-shouldered Kite 126
Accipiters 127
Falcons 129
Rails, crakes and gallinules 137
Cranes 143
Bustards 145
Oystercatcher and Turnstone 148
Stilts and avocets 149
Stone-curlews and coursers 150
Pratincoles 151
Plovers and lapwings 153
Sandpipers 162
Woodcocks and snipes 173
Dowitchers and Upland Sandpiper 176
Godwits 177
Curlews 178
Larger sandpipers 180
Phalaropes 185
Skuas (Jaegers) 187
Gulls 190
Terns 211
Auks 222
Sandgrouse 227
Pigeons and doves 229
Parakeets 234
Cuckoos 235
Owls 238
Nightjars 246
Swifts 248
Contents
Kingfishers 251
Rollers 253
Bee-eaters 254
Hoopoe 255
Woodpeckers 256
Larks 262
Swallows and martins 269
Pipits 274
Wagtails 279
Accentors 284
Wren and Dipper 286
Robins and chats 287
Redstarts 291
Stonechats 295
Wheatears 298
Rock thrushes 303
Thrushes 304
Bush warblers and cisticolas 311
Grasshopper warblers 312
Reed warblers 315
Tree warblers 320
Sylvia warblers 324
Leaf warblers 333
Crests 341
Old World flycatchers 343
Tyrant flycatchers 348
Penduline tit and leiothrix 350
Reedling and parrotbill 351
Long-tailed tit 352
Tits 353
Nuthatches 358
Treecreepers 360
Wallcreeper and Golden Oriole 361
Shrikes 362
Crows and jays 370
Starlings 377
Waxwings 379
Bulbuls and mynas 381
Sparrows 382
Introduced exotic finches 386
Finches 389
Buntings 404
Vagrant Nearctic passerines 417
New World warblers 433
Index 434
Photographic credits 444

Let’s start with the least-bird like book, one that will be a must have for anyone traveling to or studying Africa. This is The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals: Second edition. This is a newly produced edition of this now classic work, which pretty much replaces most of the other guides. However, be warned, the book is a bit big and thick. If you are going on safari, consider also getting something smaller and more pocket size such as Pocket Guide version of Kingdon or the more classic Dorst and Dandelot A Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa.

Kingdon is a naturalist and an amazing artist. The guide is detailed and has more species than any other guide. The maps are excellent and detailed. The drawings are both lifelike and designed to highlight key features. The text includes a lot of background on evolution and physical variation. This is just a great book. For African mammals, this is, these days, the guide.

A book with all the African mammals is fairly large. There are just enough carnivores in the world (excluding seals and their kin) to put them all into one book. Carnivores of the World (Princeton Field Guides) is just plain a lot of fun. It is a bit silly, perhaps, to have a field guide to all the carnivores, because where exactly are you going to travel and see all the carnivores? But it is amazing to see them all in one place, well organized, similarly treated.

Flight has evolved many times, and only some of those evolutionary events are visible in living form today. We have to assume that flight is one of the most useful adaptations, and at the same time, difficult to emerge. David Alexander’s On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight is a careful and intriguing look at the evolution of fully powered flight in the four major groups that achieved this ability.

While birds have received the majority of attention from flight researchers, Alexander pays equal attention to all four groups of flyers-something that no other book on the subject has done before now. In a streamlined and captivating way, David Alexander demonstrates the links between the tiny 2-mm thrip and the enormous albatross with the 12 feet wingspan used to cross oceans. The book delves into the fossil record of flyers enough to satisfy the budding paleontologist, while also pleasing ornithologists and entomologists alike with its treatment of animal behavior, flapping mechanisms, and wing-origin theory. Alexander uses relatable examples to draw in readers even without a natural interest in birds, bees, and bats. He takes something that is so off-limits and unfamiliar to humans-the act of flying-and puts it in the context of experiences that many readers can relate to. Alexander guides readers through the anomalies of the flying world: hovering hummingbirds, unexpected gliders (squirrels, for instance), and the flyers that went extinct (pterosaurs). Alexander also delves into wing-origin theory and explores whether birds entered the skies from the trees down (as gliders) or from the ground up (as runners) and uses the latest fossil evidence to present readers with an answer.

The following several books are bird books that have been available for a range of time (mostly not too new, at least one quite old) but that are either really nice books, or invaluable references.

Bird Guides

The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle is the definitive guide to warblers. It includes all the North American species, with excellent visuals and a lot of information about the birds and their songs, including sonograms designed to actually relate the visual image to the sound itself, as an aid in identification. Because, let’s face it, you are going to hear a lot more warblers than you are going to see. Which is why they are called “warblers” instead of “colorful little birds.” Perhaps unique among bird guides, this book has quizzes to make sure you are keeping up. There are piles of other information about warbler watching

All of the Crossley ID guides are fantastic. These are not pocket books, but they are car books. You put them in your car when you are out looking for birds. These guides are unique in the way the birds are depicted, giving you views of the birds as they actually look in the wild, including really far away or hiding in the bushes, or all the other things birds do. Everyone needs to have a couple of these.

The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds (The Crossley ID Guides) mirrors the typical Peterson type guide in its coverage. This is to be supplemented by the very valuable The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors for the hawks and such. There is also a The Crossley ID Guide: Britain and Ireland.

Some of the Crossley guides come in an alternative binding format

Bird Books About Birds (evolution, history, biology)

There is a handful of books that I tend to go back to again and again to learn things about bird biology, the history of bird research, or other things beyond field identification.

The first one I would recommend is The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds by Paul Elrich, David Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye.

This is an older book but little of the information is out of date. This is where you look up some bird you’ve been watching or wondering about and find out the real tale behind the tail. Since it is an older book you can obtain it for just a few dollars.

Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin by Tim Birkhead, Jo Wimpenny, and Bob Montgomerie is an authoritative, rich, well written, big, giant, tome that reviews the history of research, and the researchers, over many decades of bird study. Bird biology is a major part of organismic (meaning, not inside the cell or body, but outside) biology. So, in a sense, this book is a history of our understanding of how animals in general work. Again, because it has been out for a few years, you may find a good price on a used edition.

The next six books cover conservation, the intersection of birds and art, or expose detailed information about a single group of birds. They are all coffee-table level quality but rich in information and in some cases just plain inspiring. They are all current, but not right out of the publishing houses, so they can be obtained at a reasonable price, in most cases.

The World’s Rarest Birds (WILDGuides). There are something over 10,000 species of birds (thus the name of the famous blog). Of these, just under 600 are in very very serious trouble, some to the extent that we are not sure if they exist, others are so rare that we know they exist but there are no good photographs of them, others are merely very likely to go extinct. There are patterns to this rarity, having to do with what threatens birds on one hand and what makes certain birds vulnerable on the other, but the range of birds that are threatened, in terms of size, shape, kind of bird, habitat, etc. represents birds pretty generally. It is not just obscure frog-like rainforest birds of Borneo that are threatened. Chance are you live in a zone where there are bird species that have gone extinct over the last century, or are about to go extinct over coming decades, including birds that you will never see unless you are very very lucky.

Rare Birds of North America is the only extensive treatment I’ve see of the so called “vagrant birds” in the US and Canada. Most, or at least many, traditional bird books have a section in the back for rare birds, occasionals or accidentals, which one might see now and then. But when you think about it, how can five or even a dozen species in a bird book really do justice to the problem of spotting birds that are normally not supposed to be spotted?

Penguins: The Ultimate Guide is a beautiful coffee table style book full of information. All of the world’s species are covered (amazingly there are only 18 of them) and there are more than 400 excellent photos. The book covers penguin science (science about them, not by them). There is also quite a bit about their conservation.

The layout of the book is interesting. The last section of the book, by Julie Cornthwaite includes portraits of each species, and a compendium of interesting facts such as which is the fastest penguin, strange things about their bills, their odd moulting behavior, interesting color variants, how they “fly”, interesting mating facts, and what threatens them. Then there is a table organized taxonomically giving their status, population estimates, ranges, and main threats. Following this is a two page bird-guide type spread on each species, with a range map, photos, descriptions, information about their voice, breeding behavior, feeding behavior, etc. That is what you would expect in a book about penguins.

But the first, and largest, part(s) of the book provides its uniqueness. The first section, by Dui De Roy, covers penguins generally, or specific exemplar species or groups of species, to provide an overview of what penguin-ness is all about. The second section, edited by Mark Jones, consists of 17 essays by various experts on specific topics, such as how penguins store food, how they are tracked at sea, and penguin-human interaction. I would like to have seen more about penguin evolution (which is interesting) but the sparsity of coverage of that topic does not detract from the book’s overall quality.

Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as “Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin,” “Bare-necked Fruitcrow,” “Peruvian Plantcutter,” and “White-browed Purpletuft.” And certainly, you’ve heard of the Andean Cock-of-theRock. These birds and their relatives are THE famous colorful amazing birds of the Neotropics, the birds people who go to the Jungles of Central and South America go to see. “… the song of the Xcreaming Piha,… the loudest bird on Earth, is used by moviemakers to epitomize jungle soudns the world over, no just in its native South America,” we are told by the authors of Cotingas and Manakins, an amazing new book that you need to either add to your collection right now or give to your favorite birder.

How are birds related to dinosaurs, crocodiles, and pterosaurs? Where do birds live, and not live? How many bird species are there, and how many actual birds, and how does this vary across the glob? What about endemics?; Where ate the most local species found? Mike Unwin’s The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation covers this and more in a richly illustrated detailed global survey of Aves.

The image at the top of the post is by Analiese Miller. Ana is a fantastic bird photographer, and you can see some of her work either by visiting my house and looking at my wall, or by visiting this web site.

I’m reminded of one South African bird guide that has a half dozen penguin species listed in it. There is only one species of penguin in South Africa but a handful of others have shown up, almost always as a corpse floating around with other junk on the beach somewhere. I suppose when we’re talking penguins, that counts.

Anyway, Rare Birds of North America by Steve Howell, Ian Lewington and Will Russell includes 262 species illustrated across 275 plates, from the Old World, the New World Tropics, and the planet’s oceans. The first 44 pages or so are about rare birds, and the rest of the book is a morphologically-grouped compendium of the species. The species discussion run from page to page (unlike a typical modern guide). They include common name, binomial, basic size stats, then info on taxonomy, rarity, normal distribution, and as appropriate, subspecies Most of the plates have multiple illustrations showing various angles and flight vs. non-flight, sex-specirc, and other views. The illustrations are drawings and as far as I can tell are good quality. But since you never see these birds who the heck knows!?!?

An appendix includes brand new rare species not covered in the book. A second appendix includes species that may or may not have occurred. A third appendix lists the “birds new to North America” by year. This appendix and various data presented at the beginning of the book are analyzed in the work, but seem ripe for further Science by Spreadsheet!

This is a Hefty, thick-leaved, well made book (I reviewed the hardcover). Not a field guide but not a big coffee table book either. More like the bird-book-shelf and truck of the car style book.

Steve N. G. Howell is research associate at PRBO Conservation Science and is affiliated with WINGS, an international bird tour company. Hew wrote Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America. Ian Lewington a bird illustrator famous for the high quality of his work. Will Russell is cofounder and managing director of WINGS.

Well, now, we have a new book to play with: The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors. This new volume follows the same principle as the original Eastern Birds book, but with some important differences. A very large portion of Raptors is not images, but rather, very information rich species accounts along with pretty darn good range maps. The first half or so of the book consists of the usual Crossley style plates. Here, we have gone back to an old style layout: Text and details in one section of the book and plates in the other. Another important difference is that there are more images per species, for the most part, in Raptors, and in some cases, variants are given their own sets of plates.

Overall, there is far more information about each species than in the Eastern guide, which is of course exactly what we would expect from a more specialized volume such as this. There is also a handy comparison-of-everything graphic in the front cover with page numbers, a nice map in the back, and the other usual amenities found in most bird books these days.

I used some of these images to construct the quiz I put HERE (the winners of that quiz to be announced soon).

I can not do the images justice with inserts into a small format thing like this blog post, but here are a few examples to give you an idea:

This is not a book review, in that I’m giving you the negatives and positives of a particular book so you can decide if you want it or not. This is, rather, a notice that the book you want is available now.

While we are on the subject of raptors, you will probably want to check out this video of a red tailed hawk trying to get at the eggs or chicks of a bald eagle, but instead, becoming the eagle’s lunch. Caution: It is gruesome.

Enjoy your new bird book!

Well, now, there is also the The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors. This is the same thing but for Raptors. The book is coming out RIGHT NOW so Princeton has organized a major blogging tour, and right now, you’re on the tour! The other blog posts are as indicated here, on this schedule. I recommend visiting all the other entries. Some of them are giving away prizes, so especially check those out.

As a matter of fact, we’re giving away a prize here, right now, on this blog post, and you may be able to win it. Details are below. But first, a word about ….

… Golden Eagles …

Golden Eagles are a bit of a sore spot with me because they are rare and said to be hard to distinguish from immature Bald Eagles. This is not their fault. But when one claims to have seen a Golden Eagle the automatic reaction among most birders is to claim that you are wrong, that it was an immature Bald Eagle you had seen. This is especially true in Minnesota. If you look at bird books, they are sometimes not shown to be here at all, even as migrants, or otherwise, only rarely.

Stan Tekiela’s Birds of Minnesota Field Guide, Second Edition does not even list Golden Eagles. The Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America shows northern and central Minnesota as a migratory route, but the rest of the state is indicated as “rare.” Birds of Minnesota and Wisconsin indicates them to be an uncommon migrant or winter visitor in parts of the region. The Birds of North America and Greenland: (Princeton Illustrated Checklists) shows them as occassional winter visitor in only a small area to the West of Minnesota. National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Sixth Edition shows them only rarely in Minnesota, but more in the eastern part of the state. Hawks and Owls of the Great Lakes Region and Eastern North America shows them as an occasional winter species in Minnesota and a very large area of the plains and the eastern US.

The Kaufman Field Guide to Birds Of North America shows them totally absent in the state, but this book also has another interesting geographical observation. There is a huge area of eastern Canada with a dotted line around it indicating that they may or may not breed there. This is an interesting thing about Golden Eagles. When you look into it, you find that there is this large not very mountainous region in which this mountain bird seems to breed, migrate to and from, but is not observed within. Like they were hiding out there. The Birds Of The Great Plains shows them rare in Minnesota and more common to the west than the east.

Of course, one always wants to consult the bible in these matters. The Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guides) shows them totally absent in Minnesota, but also indicates the big mysterious region to the north where they may or may not breed.

Now that we’ve established that there is no agreement whatsoever on the distribution of, timing of, or even existence of, the Golden Eagle in Minnesota, let me tell you about two of our sightings of the bird (there’s been a few but these two are particularly interesting).

The firs sighting was about 10 years ago. Julia was about seven, and we were visiting the Minnesota Raptor Center in Falcon Heights. We were being given a tour of the cages, where various raptors were kept. These birds were all rescued from somewhere, generally with injuries. Some would be rehabilitated and released. Some would become ambassador birds, traveling around the area with experts from the Raptor Center for educational purposes. Some would simply remain in the cages forever.

As the tour progressed, the tour guide would say a few things about each bird as we approached the cage, then we would look at the bird for a while, then move on to the next cage. At once point, she said, “And here is the Golden Eagle. There are no Golden Eagles in Minnesota, not at all. If you ever think you are seeing a Golden Eagle, I assure you that it is merely an immature Bald Eagle. There are no Golden Eagles in this state.”

Then, as we stopped in front of the cage to look at the bird, Julia pointed to it and said, “There’s one!”

“What?” the guid said.

“There’s a Golden Eagle. It’s in Minnesota. So you’re wrong.”

I was fully expecting to find, on further inquiry, that this particular bird had been found injured along the highway in some other state and brought here to the Minnesota Raptor Center for treatment. So, I asked, “Where is this bird from?”

We were given a very precise location, along a road near a particular town. In Minnesota. In fact, within a one hour drive from where the bird was sitting in the cage. So, there you go.

The second sighting was up at the cabin. It was early fall and we were sitting on the deck overlooking the lake, to the north. Although we were located a short distance outside the Chippewa National Forest, which is known to have the highest number and highest density of Bald Eagles in the US outside of Alaska, the tree line across the lake was in the forest proper, and in fact, this was an excellent place to see bald eagles. A nesting pair lived in sight just a few hundred yards to the left, and hunted in this bay. Sometimes other eagles came by, and the pair often had a young one. If you want to see a bald eagle from that spot, all you had to do is look. If the eagle was not visible that instance, all you had to do was listen and you’d hear either the eagles themselves or some other bird complaining about the eagles. Indeed, that is the main reason for the local loons to holler. If you hear the loon going loony just look up. There will be one or two bald eagles reeling at altitude over the loon, sharing the fishing grounds.

Anyway, we were sitting there looking north when suddenly there appeared over the tree line to the north, across the lake, a bird that was clearly a very large eagle, and it was flapping its wings in powered flight going in a straight line right for us. We knew it was an eagle because of its shape and size. However, it was significantly larger looking than any of the bald eagles in the area. I should note that despite the large number and high density of eagles in Chippewa Forest, these Bald Eagles are smaller than the Alaskan kind. But this bird was whopping big.

Also, it was flying funny. Not only was it not soaring as eagles tend to do, it was flapping its wings in what looked like an unusual pattern. And, it was not a bald eagle. As it got closer, we watched it with binoculars and could see the field markings very clearly.

“That was a Golden Eagle, wasn’t it?” I said to Amanda.

“I guess so,” she replied.

“You could see a bit of white on the upper wings before it came over us.”

“Yeah, I saw that. You could see white on its tail shinning through with the sun.”

“It had a small head.”

“And a smaller bill.”

“I know, and that color was different than an immature Bald Eagle.”

“When it stopped flapping for a while its wings almost looked like a vulture.”

“I know. All the field markings seem to suggest a Golden Eagle, not an immature Bald Eagle.”

“Yeah, and you know what,” Amanda said.

“What?”

“We know what an immature Bald Eagle looks like. That wasn’t one of them.”

And now it’s your turn. The following illustration shows several raptors. Each is labeled with a letter. Some of these raptors are Golden Eagles, some are not.

Your job is to identify the Golden Eagles. Put a set of letters that represent only Golden Eagles in a comment. I will collect all the perfectly correct answers and send them to Price Waterhouse in a briefcase, where one of the correct answers will be randomly selected.

If you use a proper email address when you sign in to comment, then I’ll be able to contact you if you are chosen. Otherwise I’ll just mark the correct and chosen comment here on this blog and you can check back later, and if you were the winner we’ll work out how to send you your prize, provided by Princeton University Press.

The prize will be two pounds of Birds and Beans Coffee! It will be sent to you by the good people of Princeton.

Also note that Princeton has a contest in which you can win a pair of Nikon 8220 Trailblazer 8×42 ATB Binoculars and some autographed bird books. Details are HERE.

Happy Birding!

We’ll pick the winner on April 1st.

In case you were wondering, Laws’ name does not connect him genealogically to the famous John Muir; his parents named him that. But apparently, there is a connection between names and what people do, and John Muir Laws is in fact a naturalist.

This book covers all the usual methodology of illustration but with birds. There are a gazillion “chapters” each one or two pages or so in length, divided into sections: Bird Drawing Basics, Mastering Bird Anatomy, Details and Tips for Common Bird, Birds in Flight, Field Sketching, and Materials and Techniques.

In teaching physical anthropology, anatomy, or archaeology, I’ve found it to be very useful to require students to draw things. Even if they don’t become master scientific illustrators (that is a rare bird indeed) they learn about the objects that are central to the study in a more intimate and details way than possible by just looking. I would be willing to bet that the average bird watcher can improve his or her birdwatching skills by taking a bit of time drawing their quarry. In the old days, of course, this was done by first shooting the bird so it stops moving, then drawing it in the studio. This is no longer recommended, but that makes it harder. Instead, Laws recommends “spending time with living bird in natural conditions” which will “help you develop an intuitive feeling for and kinship with the living animal that you cannot get from photographs alone.”

By the way, of you need a source of photographs to help you in your drawing efforts, check out the blog 10,000 Birds, especially the Galleries section.

Laws is also the author of Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada.

Happy sketching.

But there is a book that can help you keep it all straight: Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build by Peter Goodfellow.

Peter Goodfellow is a lifelong birdwatcher who has also written Birds as Builders, Shakespeare’s Birds, and A Naturalist’s Guide to the Birds of Britain and Northern Europe.

I would consider Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build to be equivalent to a coffee-table book because it is full of beautiful pictures, a must-have for your non-field guide bird reference because it will help you understand bird nesting in a new way, useful for knowing what you are looking at in the field, as well as an excellent reference for a school library (what they call these days a “media center”) or nature facility because it is chock full of information.

It is interesting to consider the phylogenetic distribution of nesting behavior. Lots of insects build nests of one kind or another. Many fish nest (I’m thinking mainly of the Cichlids and the Centrarchidae). There are mammals that build nests but other than humans, elaborate nests are rare (though concentrated in certain groups such as Primates). Extinct dinosaurs built nests, and among them, the more elaborate forms seem to be among the same major group that contains the birds. Maybe (just an impression of mine). But nest building and use among birds is much more elaborate and diverse than among dinosaurs as far as we know.

Nesting in birds seems to be mostly built in (genetic) but there can be learning involved. Birds spend relatively little time in nest building, but it can be critical to their life history. Also, consider the fact that nest building, which must be done quickly and efficiently, is carried out with the beak, feet, and to a lesser extent, the body. This means that those features may be under selection for their role in nest building, not just flight or food getting.

Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build is divided into sections. Each section addresses a different dategory of nest, and provides a basic blueprint for that category, followed by a discussion and demonstration of features of each nest type, and example species, with those species being selected from birds across the world. (Certain nest types are non-exist ant or rare in certain regions, of course.) And again, the book is richly and very nicely illustrated.

Th categories of nests include but are not limited to: scrape nests, holes and tunnels, aquatic nests, edomed nests, colonial group nexts, courting nests and bowers, and finally, the one we have all been waiting for, edible nests (Your teenager might eat you out of house and home, but a woodpecker eats its way into house and home!).

Do you have a birder in the family? This is a good present. I’m thinking of giving one to my sister, don’t tell her.

The photograph is a social weaver nest and some other birds, in the Kalahari, South Africa. Photo by Greg Laden.

I’m lucky in that I often get to blog from a very excellent bird watching location. Depending on which way I point, I can observe an evergreen treeline on a bluff sporting a bald eagle nest; a protected semi-island where loons nest; a marsh inhabited by transient migrants such as tundra swans or Canada geese and used by local wandering predators such as herons but owned by the blackbirds; open water with minnow filled shallows and some serious depths over which the eagle hunts, on which the loons cruise, and across which terns and gulls soar; a rocky shore ideal for kingfishers; a bit of prairie and mixed woodland with multiple species of woodpecker, warbler, titmouse; a shallow embayment for waders and the occasional wood duck; a thicket with thrushes and their kin; a looming, nearby pine forest with a whole other set of raptors. Right now the loons and their chicks are ten feet off shore in one direction, and I’m 20 feet in the other direction. If I type loudly one of them may look up to see what the sound is.

From this perspective, it is easy to make note of the science connections, and a handful of these connections have come to mind recently.

In this habitat, in my range of sight on a given day, there are a lot of species of little brown bird that eat seeds, and in some cases, they are closely related and very similar to each other, yet there is only one large raptor that eats fish. Gulls and terns fish from the sky, as do osprey, but the presence of a pair of eagles (often with one offspring) using a nest overlooking the 200 acre bay excludes those other birds almost all the time. There are several osprey in the area; I can get in the car and see osprey nests in five minutes, and on a good day find some of the actual osprey in a couple of spots around here, but I’ve only very rarely seen one here in close quarters with the eagle, and then, the osprey do not stay long. I can see terns or gulls in the distance, but rarely do I see them feeding under the eagle’s nest. So, obviously, seeds are abundant and tiny, and as a food source, diverse in the traits that make them easy or hard to find, the degree to which they are palatable, or some other features that allow many individuals across many species to feed on them. But, six to 12 inch fish feeding near the surface, while seemingly abundant, are actually somewhat ephemeral and hard to get. While certain seeds actually “want” certain birds to harvest them (the seeds may benefit through dispersal) the fish are not likely to volunteer to be dragged high into a pine tree and fed to a baby eagle. So, fish eating birds may experience more competition with each other and be more limited in number in a given habitat.

So maybe birding is all about making lists of species you see (I would argue not, but for many this is at least part of it). Well, competition for things like food and nesting sites shapes our list of observed species.

At a larger scale, the very existence of more or fewer species in a region on a continent matters and can be explained by scientific inquiry. Why do we have one species of hummingbird here in Minnesota, but far more in Northern Mexico or southern California? Going back to the fish eating raptors vs. the seed eaters, consider this: We have two species of nuthatch and the chickadee, all pretty closely related, searching for seeds, but only the bald eagle eating fish, under our watchful eyes at the cabin. But at the larger scale, there are many many more species of seed eating “little brown birds” but the list of species of large fish eating raptor, as we look farther afield, grows very slowly. Furthemore, as we expand our territory of investigation, the large fish eating raptor species list grows in large part by adding species that are not really different species, in a sense. Across most of North America, we have the Bald Eagle. When we include Iceland and Greenland we can add the fish eating raptor known as the ern. What is an ern? Well, its a bald eagle with a slightly different distribution of coloration. When we go further east and include Europe, we get the fish eagle. What is a fish eagle? Well, its a bald eagle with slightly different coloration…

What this means is that I can observe the birds eating the seeds off the feeder on the dead birch tree and think about the concept of species radiation and co-evolution of plants and animals; I can observe the eagle soaring over the bay and think about the concept of ring species; and, not yet mentioned but related, I can observe the four species of ‘woodpecker’ that we’ll see or hear on a given day and think about the concept of adaptive convergence (there are ‘woodpeckers’ across the world, doing essentially the same thing, but some of them are not even birds!)

Here is a handful of other questions that arise from basic observation, each leading to a potentially rich investigation of scientific writing on birds:

• Why do the males and females look so different in some species of birds, but identical in others?
• Why are seed eaters small and fish eaters big?
• Why is it that when a pair of hairy woodpeckers comes to the suet on my feeder only the male takes the suet directly, but every other bite he takes, he passes on to the female, who waits inches away?
• Why does the pair of loons have one or two (or zero) offspring a year and avoid nesting anywhere near any other loons, while the mergansers each have at least a half dozen offspring, and often travel in groups with multiple parents of multiple chicks?
• How can the presence of eagles, terns, gulls, loons, osprey and kingfishers not affect the walleye fishery in these northern lakes, but the presence of cormorants have such a negative effect on that species of fish?
• What is that dog doing swimming after a pair of Canada geese and their young? OMG, gotta go… stay tuned, we’ll get to all these topics and more. Eventually.