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All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures
Reviewed by Mark S. Garland

Roger Tory Peterson was probably the best-known birder of the 20th Century and one of the true pioneers of contemporary nature education.  The accomplishments of his illustrious career are ubiquitous, and you can’t pick up a field guide without paying homage to this great man.  His artwork was also quite celebrated, his paintings gracing the halls of the Smithsonian more than once.

Peterson was also a fine writer, and Wild America, which he co-wrote with the British Naturalist James Fisher, is a touchstone for many writers and naturalists to this day.  This narrative of a journey the two men took in search of birds is a vivid and important portrait of an era – the 1950s.  Among his many attributes, Peterson is a grand story-teller, and the lively prose of Wild America has encouraged countless birders to take to the highways and back woods of North America in search of great birding adventures.

Later in life Peterson agreed to write a bi-monthly column for the magazine Bird Watcher’s Digest.  This column appeared for the last 12 years of Peterson’s life, from 1984 to 1996.  Bill Thompson, that magazine’s editor, has assembled these columns into a new book titled All Things Reconsidered.  Here Peterson the story-teller holds court, recounting many adventures from a long and active life.  There’s no new material here, it all appeared in the magazine, but it’s no less fun to read the stories again.  Collected into one volume, it’s a marvelous window into 20th Century birding.

The tales are diverse.  There are travel tales a-plenty.  A successful career gave Peterson the means to travel around the world, and his tales from Kenya, the Pribilof Islands, Antarctica, and other locales are fun to read.  Florida, Delaware Bay, and Cape May are also on the list (though I frown about his comment that, “Few places can be as birdless as the dunes at Cape May Point on an off day;” I know of plenty of places that are more birdless!).  Peterson also marvels at the changes witnessed in his lifetime, ranging from the protection of formerly persecuted birds of prey at Hawk Mountain to the many aspects of birding, bird watching, ornithology – and he tries to define these often-overlapping terms.  He pays homage to some of the greats of 20th Century birding and of conservation.

There are adventure tales, too.  He writes of being capsized while photographing seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, but also of days watching migrants pass over Manhattan.  Not all of the writing is from memory, as he also describes to readers the bird life observed around his chosen home of Old Lyme, Connecticut where he spent the last years of his life.

He leaves story-telling behind (well, not completely) in several essays focused on conservation.  There are chapters about extinctions, introduced species, and ecotourism.  We learn of his hopes for the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, an environmental education facility built in his childhood hometown.  All Things Reconsidered does indeed encompass a wide sweep of thoughts about birds and birding, and it’s an enjoyable read just for that.  But the book’s true value is that is provides a portrait of the senior Peterson through his own words.  I never met the man, but reading these pages make me feel like I did.  That, my friends, is a great gift.

Peterson, Roger Tory, Edited by Bill Thompson III.  All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures.  Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.  354 pages, $30.00 hardcover.  ISBN-10: 0-618-75862-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-618-75862-3.

To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder's Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.

Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share the World’s Greatest Destinations
Reviewed by Mark S. Garland

I think most birders are going to see this book sooner or later.  Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die is going to find a prominent spot at the neighborhood Borders or Barnes and Noble, and your non-birding family members and friends will buy you a copy as a gift.  Its author, Chris Santella, has had success with the format, having also written Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die, Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die, and Fifty Places to Sail Before You Die.  I am reminded of the series of books “For Dummies,” and also of the sad truth that in our country any successful idea will get repeated and copied well beyond reason.

I don’t think Santella is a birder, though he doesn’t pretend to be one.  Instead he interviews a rather random assortment of experts about places they like to go birding.  Some really are experts – Dr. Pamela C. Rasmussen suggests areas in India, a region of her expertise, and Kenn Kaufmann and David Sibley are also interviewed, choosing areas in Ecuador and Spain, respectively.  But the red flags were raised when I read that the Cape May “expert” was a book editor from New York, no doubt a colleague of the author.  The Cape May chapter has the World Series of Birding as its focus, though the “expert” admits to never having actually participated in the event.  Delaware Bay is mistakenly referenced as the Chesapeake Bay at one point, and the peak of raptor migration is listed as October and November; excuse me, but what about September?  Not only is this chapter inaccurate, it’s not even very enticing.  If I didn’t know anything about Cape May, I wouldn’t want to visit after reading this.

A number of experts are professional tour guides, and the always too-brief “If You Go” section of those chapters simply promotes their tours.  These are thinly disguised advertisements.  The selection of destinations seems completely random.  Some effort was made to include areas all around the globe (though Antarctica is omitted), and there’s no arguing that all of the included places would be fun to visit, but this wouldn’t be any birder’s “top fifty” list.  In the Iceland chapter, the expert is even quoted as saying the chosen location, “May not be the most fabulous place in Iceland to find a ton of different bird species, but it’s a great place to hike and has spectacular scenery.”  I love to hike and see great scenery, but why should those qualities place a location on this list?

It seems clear that this book was slapped together by a non-birder without much effort to check the facts.  Not many birders are going to buy this book for themselves.  It is a pretty book, however, with many nice photos, and the gimmicky title will get the book noticed.  When you receive it as a gift you’ll no doubt spend a little time glancing through it. You may even discover some cool places you didn’t know about -- But then it will find its way to a shelf (or the basket of books and magazines in the bathroom) and be quickly forgotten.

Quick now, somebody write the next one: Fifty Birds to See Before You Die.  Get the right photos and you’re sure to sell a bunch.

Santella, Chris.  Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share the World’s Greatest Destinations.  New York, Stewart, Tabori & Chang.  222 pages, $24.95 hardcover.  ISBN: 978-1-58479-629-9.

Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture
Review by Mark S. Garland

There’s a stereotype of the eccentric old university professor that is familiar to us all.  Many of us have known such characters.  You know, the one whose life seems completely wrapped around a chosen field of research, who will talk endlessly about the subject.  These professors certainly know the subject, and their lectures can certainly be entertaining and engaging, but typically they go on and on and on in endless detail, often punctuated by long asides.

Mike Hansell of the University of Glasgow seems to fit the stereotype to a T.  His new book, Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture, is a long and passionate lecture on the what, how, who, and why of animals that build structures and the structures that they build.  There’s a lot of fascinating detail here about a diverse set of creatures, ranging from leafcutter ants and mud dauber wasps to Cliff Swallows and Bowerbirds.  Along the way there are discussions of the binomial taxonomic nomenclature system, diatribes on the history of science (“Let us start by getting a couple of things clear.  Charles Darwin was not the originator of the idea that living organisms evolved over generations …”), the ventilation system of a mud shrimp burrow, and diagrams of the chemical structures of amino acids.  Hansell tells us about tool-using organisms, explains spider webs in detail, ponders whether esthetical considerations exist in the animal world, describes experiments where theories about ant behaviors were tested, and (my favorite story) explains the work that led to a scientific paper titled, “Wombats Detected from Space.”

All in all, it’s a thousand little stories and half as many asides all presented with dizzying but inconsistent detail.  This is not a casual Saturday night read.  This is not a book that will be embraced by the masses.  It’s hard to remember the main point at times after following an aside far beyond what’s necessary.  It took me a long time to work my way through the book, and it’s not a very long book.  Yet this volume does have its charm.

I always loved those eccentric and long-winded professors, especially if I wasn’t in need of a lofty grade in the class.  I find Hansell’s observations to be remarkably detailed, his thoughts to be very sharp, and his stories, by and large, delightful.  It’s fun to let the venerable man tell us of his passions, pouring out his scientist’s soul to any and all who will listen.  He must be one heck of a story-teller face-to-face.  But I’ll bet it’s hard to get him to stop before a few hours have passed.

Grab a copy of Built by Animals if you want to meet Mike Hansell.  Pick out the parts about certain creatures if you’re intrigued with the topic – and it certainly is an interesting subject.  Lots of animals build structures that we could never duplicate, and how they create these structures is certainly worth knowing.

Hansell, Mike.  Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture.  Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.  257 pages, $29.95 hardcover.  ISBN-13: 9780199205561; ISBN-10: 0199205566.