Summer Reading


When the days get too hot for man or bird try relaxing with these books reviewed by Stephen J. Bodio in Living Bird.


Bird Coloration, by Geoffrey E. Hill (Na- tional Geographic)


Bird Coloration


Bird Catcher, by Laura Jacobs (St. Mar- tin’s Press)


Regulations such as those mentioned in the above review actually bear on the plot climax of The Bird Catcher, a novel by Laura Jacobs about Manhattan, love, birds, and art. Margret, a Manhattan “arts” woman, dresses windows at Saks and as- sociates with the gallery scene at night. But she also shares her lifelong habit of birding with her husband, a professor at Columbia. Both


author and character share a birder’s (and an artist’s) mind. Margret on field guides: “Roger Tory Peterson’s was the guide she grew up with, but the draw- ing was static. And though she loved the charming Golden Guide, its Black- burnian looked like a dutiful student. National Geo’s male was brilliantly col- ored but forlorn. Kaufman, a new guide with photos, was invaluable for jizz, but it was Pough, a guide from the forties, which got the closest.”


When her best friend, an alpha-


female gallery owner, suggests a show, Margret becomes an overnight suc- cess—and, of course, a violator of fed- eral wildlife law. I won’t tell you more about the tragicomic denouement, but Margret, and even her stuffed birds, come through well. Read this fine novel, even if books about Manhattan society aren’t your “thing”; it is full of trea- sures. (Complete review at http://goo.gl/I2WXa)


starts off boldly. Across from a stunning full-page photograph of a handsome bird with a cape of iridescent multi- colored hackles, the caption an- nounces, “There are no orange, green, or blue pigments in the feathers of this Nicobar pigeon.” Hill announces the book’s aims: to tell us the whats and whys of bird coloration, and “to communicate in prose accessible to non-scientists what scientists know about the coloration of birds.” (Much later, he raises the possibility that color may have “no function at all,” though he more or less manages to shoot that one down.) (Complete review at http://goo.gl/6fcgk)


Prairie Spring, by Pete Dunne (Houghton Mifflin)


Prairie Spring: A


Journey into the Heart of a Season is a typical Pete Dunne book—its effortless and breezy manner looks casual but deals with vital mat- ters. His rationale is a perfect example: “So if your ambition is to write a book


to entice a strange audience to explore an exciting, overlooked, and now alien environment (i.e., the natural world that surrounds and supports us) and you are searching for some common ground to give them a familiar footing, where might you start? Please say ‘the seasons.’ And


which season would you choose?” (Com- plete review at http://goo.gl/M8dkz)


Feathers: the Evolution of a Natural Miracle, by Thor Hanson (Basic Books)


Book subjects come in waves; the publishing world is now full of books on feathers, but this may well be the best. Thor Hanson, a field biologist, claims that the subject chose him. If so, it chose well; I love nothing better than scientists who can write. Hanson’s book covers every aspect of feath- ers—evolution- ary, structural and functional, and finally cultural, show- ing all the ways that humans as well as birds use them. He ranges in time from the lithographic shale of the Jurassic to the present, and geographically from China to Maine to Las Vegas. (Complete review at - http://goo.gl/S16Ny)


Dog Days, Raven Nights, by John & Colleen Marzluff (Yale University)


Dog Days, Raven Nights is a delight- ful, slightly schizoid book that attempts to answer the question that it poses on virtually the first page: “Can you make a living from the love of natural science?” Or maybe, can you still? The schizoid nature of the book comes from its three inextricably braided themes: the Marzluffs’ research into the behavior of ravens in Maine, con- ducted under the direction of Bernd


Heinrich; life in Maine; and, believe it or not, sled dog racing, Colleen’s diversion from the stresses of raven work. (Com- plete review at http://goo.gl/3y2Su)


Page 4


Audubon News


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5