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| 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?
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