Meanwhile, down at the lake

 

- My dear evolutionary cousin, I assumed you lived in East Africa all year long! What on earth are you doing here???

- Actually, my dear grebe, I grew up in a zoo in Atlanta, but decided to go AWOL because of the solar eclipse. You know, those naked and not very gentle apes who currently think they control this planet know surprisingly little about astronomy, and I fear they might go completely mustang! 

- Yes, you are right, I mean, any self-respecting phoenicopterimorph knows that it´s simply the Moon temporarily covering the Sun due to differences in distance!

- Exactly. So I decided to hide out at your Swedish birdlake for at least a week or so...

- You´re welcome!

Cladistic art

 

If you know, you know. 

Not so ugly ducklings

A review of Lars Jonsson´s "Birds of Lake, River, Marsh and Field" 

This is the third volume in a five-volume series of field guides written and illustrated by Lars Jonsson. This volume covers typical birds found in or around lakes, rivers, marshlands and agricultural landscapes. The geographical range is Northern and Central Europe, north of the Alps but south of the "taiga". Ducks, shorebirds, grebes and rails are prominently featured, as are assorted passerines. We also get to meet the crane, the kingfisher and the swift.

Personally, I think that this series is rather idiosyncratic. Birds are not usually connected to a distinctive biotope, I mean they do fly! I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of birds around the average European lake not included in this slender little volume. Indeed, Jonsson later published a one-in-all volume called "Birds of Europe", covering the entire continent from Iceland to the Bosphorus.

However, as a work of art in its own right or a birthday gift to a bird-lover, even the third volume of the original series works just fine. These ducklings sure aint ugly! Four stars.

An odd job

This is the revised edition of "Seabirds - an identification guide" by Peter Harrison. The author, who actually looks like an old fashioned sea captain, and his wife Carol spent seven years on the world's oceans to gather information for this field guide to end all field guides. Gee, don't these guys have day jobs? Maybe they do, after a fashion: Harrison worked as a deckhand aboard trawlers and crayfishing boats to more easily study and sketch seabirds. I wonder what his crew mates made of that!

As you might have guessed, "Seabirds" is illustrated by deckhand Harrison himself. Personally, I'm a bird book-watcher rather than a birdwatcher, so I tend to buy bird books for aesthetic reasons. I admit that Harrisonian aesthetics weren't really to my liking, but then, I'm a Jonsson aficionado. The selection of species is also somewhat arbitrary: very few shorebirds, but a whole lot of pelicans, cormorants, loons and grebes. Even grebes that don't live anywhere near the sea have been included. The exceedingly rare Atitlan Grebe can be found only in one lake in Guatemala (if you're lucky). That's a seabird? As for ducks, a representative selection has been included, but only in an appendix with illustrations in black-and-white. Do crayfishers have a secret conflict with eiders?

Otherwise, "Seabirds" looks like most field guides are supposed to look like. There's an extensive colour plate section, and in the main text section we get information on distribution, juveniles, various plumages, similar species and some special tips concerning identification. A problem is that the maps are tucked away in a third section at the back of the book. The colour plates don't indicate distribution. I was somewhat surprised to learn that both the Northern and the Southern Giant Petrels are confined to the South Atlantic, and that the "southern" species have a more northern range! Any explanation? Or just one of those "odd jobs"?

Still, I don't doubt that this is the field guide if your favourite haunts include South Georgia, Kerguelen, Antarctica or...Lake Atitlan. Four stars!

A handbook of exciting birds

"Handbook of the Birds of the World" (HBW) is a 13-volume encyclopedia whose ultimate aim is to describe and illustrate *all* living species of birds. Three more volumes are projected. The series began in 1992, and the last volume won't be published until 2011.

This is the first volume, and it covers many exciting bird groups, including pelicans, tropicbirds, frigatebirds, penguins, flamingos, albatrosses, and the non-flying birds, such as the ostrich and the emu. It also covers a more boring bird group, namely the ducks! Each section begins with a general introduction, followed by species presentations. These include color plates and range maps. Unfortunately, the color plates are quite bad. The birds often look caricatured, even ugly, and some of the plates are poorly printed. Thankfully, the book also contain hundreds of photos, all in color, and these are much better. Despite its high price (265 dollars), the book is well-worth buying if you are seriously interested in these particular bird groups.

As already mentioned, this is just the first volume in a 13-volume series. Naturally, a work that takes almost 20 years to publish, will tend to change over time. I noticed this when I leafed through the other HBW volumes at my local university library. The first volume looks like a regular encyclopedia. Anyone with a general interest in birds can read it. The later volumes are superbly illustrated, with much better color plates, but the text feels heavy and technical. These later HBW volumes also suffer from total information over-load. Essentially, the HBW has been transformed from a regular encyclopedia to a scientific reference work for ornithologists.

Be that as it may, I give this first volume of the HBW four stars, for the text and the photos. Had the color plates been better, I would have given it five stars. The entire series also deserve five stars, despite becoming progressively more difficult to digest for ordinary mortals, since it's extremely well-produced.