Yes, storks

A highly abberant stork? Only in California!

“Handbook of the Birds of the World” (HBW for short) is a gargantuan encyclopedia in 17 volumes describing all living species of birds known to science. That´s about 9,000 of them! The first volume was published in 1992, the last one just a few years ago. There are also two extra volumes containing extensive checklists of…well, all the birds previously described. This is a review of the second volume, published in 1994. It seems I missed to comment it during my illicit reviewing spree at Amazon.com, which ended in Jeff Bezos personally purging me in 2018. OK, not really, but it seems it wasn´t on sale in Bezosland and therefore couldn´t be properly fake-reviewed by yours truly, so here I go on my blog instead!

Somewhat surprisingly, Vol 2 only covers two orders, the “classical” Falconiformes (diurnal birds of prey a.k.a. ditto raptors) and Galliformes (chicken and their allies a.k.a. gamefowl and half a dozen other aliases). I admit that I didn´t dig *that* deeply into the section on the galliforms, but it doesn´t seem to mention the bantam breeds, so perhaps that´s a plus for chicken fanciers, who often positively hate the poor little things, or so I´ve been reliably informed. Instead, I went straight for the main course, the Falconiformes. In HBW´s version, or rather their 1994 version, the raptor order consist of New World vultures, the Osprey, Hawks & Eagles (presumably including the Old World vultures), the Secretarybird, and Falcons & Caracaras (called “falconids” in this work). That being said, all wasn´t well in raptor space back in the 1990´s. The exact taxonomic position of the New World vultures was especially contentious.

HBW argues that New World vultures may actually be closer to storks (yes, storks) than to other birds of prey. The idea of a Californian Condor really being a highly aberrant stork does have a certain intrinsic appeal. Some of the similarities between Cathartidae and Ciconiiformes are absolutely stunning: “For example, both groups of birds keep cool by squirting their legs with urine, which then evaporates off to leave the legs sometimes looking as if they have been white washed”. The genera within Cathartidae may not be closely related either. We also learn that there used to be Old World vultures in the New World until 10,000 years ago and New World vultures in the Old World 20 million years ago (not sure what made them leave). Even on the species level there is confusion. Or was back in ´94. The good ol´ Turkey Vulture, well known from spaghetti western flicks, might actually be several different species. It´s difficult to know since all museum specimens look the same – the skin color (a distinguishing mark for subspecies and species) fades after death!

In this volume, the “falconids” are relatively firmly anchored in Falconiformes (as the diurnal birds of prey are called when they do include them – otherwise it´s Accipitriformes) due to their “external morphology, internal anatomy, behaviour, feather parasites, and moult patterns”. DNA studies suggested the same thing, but today scientists believe on the basis of new research that falconids aren´t closely related to accipitrid raptors at all, rather they are a sister group to parrots and passerines! Interestingly, one M Jollie suggested already in 1977 on non-genetic morphological grounds that falconids are polyphyletic (google it!) and are closer to owls, cuckoos, plantain-eaters and indeed parrots than to other diurnal birds of prey.

Otherwise, everything is pretty much as usual as far as HBW volumes are concerned: detailed family presentations followed by species presentations and range maps, and a lot of color illustrations and ditto photos – one of the reasons why these books are so prohibitively expensive. Yes, I looked it up in a library, thank you! That being said, the species presentations are quite short compared to later volumes in the series with their complete information overload on every small and obscure tropical songbird. Nor are there any additional chapters on mostly unrelated topics, also a feature of later volumes.

Perhaps transcended by current research?