Know Your Bird Sounds: Common Western Species
Reviewed by Mark S. Garland
At first glance, Know Your Bird Sounds: Common Western Species just looks like another of those nice little photo books that includes too few species to be really useful. The sense is that this one is just a little different because it includes recording. You frequently find these books at park visitor centers, hoping to tempt the casual nature observer with lovely photos. I think a lot of these books are just collections that a photographer wanted to share, and the selections are based on which pictures the photographer could obtain. Sometimes I imagine these are just the result of friends telling a photographer, “You should put those great photos into a book!” Books of this genre are pretty, yes, but not ones that birders are likely to pick up.
This book features 60 species, all shown an classic, sharp, close-up photos. It’s telling, however, that the photographer, Brian E. Small, isn’t even listed as an author. In truth, this publication is not a book. It’s an audio CD with a small book attached, the presence of the book probably an afterthought. To the credit of the authors and the publishers, the book is attractive, the pictures are great, and the brief information accompanying each photo is accurate and concise.
Now, to get to the heart of this project, listen to the CD. This is an audio tour of the western United States, moving from habitat to habitat and featuring some of the most characteristic bird sounds from each region. The recording quality is superb. Distracting human sounds are avoided, yet the clips include other natural sounds, ranging from background bird noise to the pounding of the surf. This adds welcome reality to the recordings. The clips are long, almost all over a minute in length, resulting in a very enjoyable audio tour that lasts over an hour. I think anyone who has spent time recording bird sounds will be completely delighted with the quality of sound captured by Kevin Colver. This is great work.
The narration, by Lang Elliott, is kept to a minimum, identifying habitats and the birds with just a modest amount of other information. Elliott, a celebrated collector of nature sounds himself, occasionally sounds like he’s talking to a kindergarten class (does it help to hear him say, “Ruddy Ducks may have been the inspiration for the character Daffy Duck,” or “Ever been on a Snipe hunt?”), but generally his narration is clear, concise, and useful without being obtrusive. You’ll probably recognize Elliott’s voice, as he has narrated a number of other recordings, including those in the Stokes series.
I love birding the American west, visiting the diverse habitats and experiencing many birds that aren’t part of the eastern avifauna. Pop this CD into the stereo on a chilly, winter night and it’s easy to imagine yourself out west, in spring or summer, surrounded by birds. Great fun. I almost wish there was no narration at all.
I do wonder how well this package will sell. Are there enough ornitho-audiophiles to buy the volume because the recordings are so good? Does the casual park visitor really want songs to go along with the picture book? Do birders ever want a guide, visual or audio, that isn’t complete? I doubt that I would have given this book a look or listened to the CD had it not come across my desk. But while the concept may have limited appeal, the product is certainly well done.
Colver, Kevin & Lang Elliott. Know Your Bird Sounds: Common Western Species. Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2008. 72 pages, 1 audio CD, $19.95 paper. ISBN-10: 0-8117-3446-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-3446-2.
A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America
Reviewed by Mark S. Garland
There are a lot of butterflies in tropical America. In a country like Mexico, there are way too many to fit into a field guide, right? That’s the conventional wisdom. But if you eliminate all of the text, and cram 8 to 16 pictures onto every single page, it can be done. Jeffrey Glassberg, prolific photographer and chaser of butterflies, has done just that in the ambitious, if dizzyingly busy, A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America.
I’ll admit right off that I’m a fan of field guide texts. I learn a lot from the introductions. I benefit from written descriptions, and I learn better when the differences between images are pointed out to me. Glassberg’s short introduction is useful, and many images have a few words plastered onto them to point out key differences between look-alike species. But what I like most of all about many field guides is that they help me understand something about the creatures I’m seeing in the field. This book doesn’t give me any of that information; it strictly helps an observer put a name to a butterfly that’s been seen and photographed. If you’re playing butterfly bingo in Mexico, you’ll need this book.
Admittedly, the sort of information I seek simply couldn’t fit into a field guide for any tropical country. The author states his goal straightforwardly: “The purpose of this book is to help people to identify Mexican butterflies.” It meets its goal, and since there are so few resources available about identifying butterflies of the neotropics, the book is likely to sell well. Glassberg, Founder of the North American Butterfly Association, has long encouraged butterfly enthusiasts to turn “butterflying” into a competitive, compulsive listing game, comparable to some aspects of birding. This is a publication designed for those who have heeded his call.
Myself, I think he’s trying to emulate some of the least attractive qualities of birding. While I’m sure I’ll use A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America to identify butterflies I see in tropical America, I’m disappointed by the lack of information. The name of a creature just begins the process of learning, understanding, and appreciating. For the users of this volume, it’s assumed that learning the name (and, by implication, ticking it onto the lifelist) is the only goal.
I am eager to see how many species of Costa Rican butterflies are covered by the book, as that’s my Central American country of choice. So yes, I’ll dream of the ideal book, the one that tells me the life story of every butterfly, illustrates it lavishly and perfectly, and yet fits in my pocket. Until the age of the electronic book is really upon us, such a dream just isn’t possible. Glassberg has chosen to publish a book with as many pictures as humanly possible into a manageably small volume. Begrudgingly I’ll admit that it’s an impressive feat, and an impressive, eminently useful book.
Glassberg, Jeffrey. A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America. Sunstreak Books, 2007. 266 pages, $34.95 paper. ISBN-10: 1-4243-0915-8; ISBN-13: 978-1-4243-0915-8.
Cape May: The Informed Traveler’s Guide
Review by Mark S. Garland
Guidebooks are always useful, though generally not exciting to read. When traveling away from home, it is certainly convenient to have lots of facts on hand, so that as a visitor you can know what the locals know. You simply can’t beat a guidebook written by a local.
It’s curious, therefore, that Stackpole Press’s new guidebook, Cape May: The Informed Traveler’s Guide, was written by a writer from Bordentown, a good two hour drive away from Cape May. While the text is lively (for a guidebook) and written quite clearly, alas, the book is filled with mistakes and contradictions. Catching several in the first few pages, I decided to make notes on significant errors. I stopped after counting 14 in the first 34 pages. Goodness gracious, does nobody fact check anymore?
At one point Vanthia’s restaurant is moved from its proper place in West Cape May to the Cape May City waterfront next to the Convention Center (where, in actuality, Tisha’s is located), though later it’s back at Broadway and Sunset in West Cape May. The concrete ship is alternately called a freighter and a battleship, and it’s described first as famous and later as infamous. Dune grass is erroneously called eel grass, which is a submerged aquatic plant that could never grow on the sand. Perhaps most egregiously, if you follow this book’s directions into town from the Garden State Parkway, you’ll end up going to Wildwood Crest.
It goes on and on. The beach at Cape May Point State Park, which faces the Atlantic, is described as being on Delaware Bay. The author mistakenly states that the littoral drift of sand along the southern New Jersey shore moves from south to north; it moves the other way. It is suggested that some Cape May establishments have phone numbers with the area code of 856; you’ve got to go to Vineland for that code, it’s certainly not used in Cape May. Even Uncle Bill’s Pancake House has its name changed to “Uncle Billy’s.”
Okay, I’ll admit that a lot of the mistakes are trivial, but they do make me wonder about the veracity of everything else in the book. I’m afraid I even find the specific guidebook listings lacking. Good guidebooks are complete, or nearly so. Cape May: The Informed Traveler’s Guide includes a curiously small number of shopping, eating, and lodging establishments. The author lavishly praises most of the businesses that are included, making me wonder if this isn’t just a book of advertisements. Cape May certainly has more than 10 restaurants, 22 lodgings, and 13 retail establishments, but that’s all that are listed here.
Even the section on festivals and special events is incomplete. Just about every offering of the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts is included (I’m surprised their catalog wasn’t listed in the bibliography – oh yeah, there is no bibliography), but the two annual jazz festivals, the annual film festival, NJ Audubon’s Autumn Weekend / THE Bird Show, and many other major events are missing from this guide. Birds and nature are barely mentioned at all. Cape May Bird Observatory? Missing.
So what’s here? A bit of lore about the town is included, along with some info about a seemingly random selection of Cape May events and businesses, and a bunch of pretty pictures (many provided by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts – what a surprise!). Call it the “Marginally Informed Traveler’s Guide.” Change the back cover blurb from describing the book as an “Insider’s guide,” to the “Outsider’s guide.” It’s certainly hard to justify the back cover claim of this volume as, “An essential companion for every vacationer.” Oh well, since the directions don’t actually get you into Cape May, I guess the users of this book won’t find anything to criticize.
Roberts, Russell. Cape May: The Informed Traveler’s Guide. Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2008. 160 pages, $19.95 paper. ISBN-10: 0-8117-3375-0; ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-3375-5.