Books for Summer
Reading in 2005
(This 744th Buffalo Sunday News column was first published on July
3, 2005.)
Easily the most spectacular new book is Butterflies
of the East Coast: An Observer's Guide by Rick Cech and Guy Tudor
(Princeton). This will surely become the standard text on butterflies for the
states that border the Atlantic. (Sixteen plus West Virginia are in the
geographic area covered.) An introductory section discusses where and when to
find butterflies as well as how to look for them and what to look for. Then
each of the 234 species merits a full page on which beautiful illustrations
show both upper and under wing views sometimes of both sexes, range maps and
the species' primary host plant. After several general paragraphs the species
text includes sections on identification, habitat, host plants, occurrence and
ecology. I found especially interesting supplementary pages on topics like
specialized diets of giant swallowtails and blues; the importance of waste
areas, mountaintops and prairies; the occurrence of tropical strays and the
status of some questionable species. This coffee table book will not substitute
for a good field guide but it will provide rich background for an increasingly
popular avocation.
Perfectly timed with the announcement of the
rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, Tim Gallagher's The Grail Bird (Houghton
Mifflin) provides the full story of not only the recent sightings and
photography but also the earlier history of this exciting species. The author
was one of the first to see the ivory-bill in 2004 and his observation led to
the quest that finally resulted in the photographic evidence that has confirmed
the bird's continuing fragile existence. Gallagher is editor of "The Living
Bird" for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the high quality of his
writing is on display in this new book.
Bill McKibben is this state's premier
conservationist. His The End of Nature ranks only
slightly below Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in its analysis
of our nation's environmental problems. Now he has written a brief account of
his hike across what he calls "America's most hopeful landscape: Vermont's
Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks." The small size of his book, Wandering
Home (Crown) makes it perfect for a hiker to carry in a
backpack. Having spent a week last summer riding my scooter through much of
this same territory, I thoroughly enjoyed this story. While McKibben recognizes
the many threats to this region, the best feature of his account is his
positive view of its present and future.
Later I hope to write a full column about Donald
Kroodsma's The Singing Life of Birds (Houghton
Mifflin) but I must include it among the books I recommend for summer reading.
Most birders rely heavily on bird song for identification so this book is an
important contribution to their understanding. It goes much farther, however.
It represents the compilation of a scientist's life work studying bird song
consistency and variation. Kroodsma goes well beyond Aretas Saunders 1951 book
that incorporated song diagrams to provide not only sonograms but a CD of
recorded songs. No matter how rich your background is, you will learn something
new on every page.
In Landscape with Reptile (Lyons) Thomas
Palmer offers a spirited defense of rattlesnakes in what he calls "an
urban world" near Boston, Massachusetts. Despite his scary chapter,
"A Worst Case Scenario", a hypothetical story about a snakebite
victim, I join Palmer in voting the snake not guilty. Turn to any page
and start to read: you'll have trouble putting this book down.
Bill Thompson III, editor of Bird Watcher's Digest, with his
journal colleagues has written, Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common
Birding Identification Challenges (Houghton Mifflin). If you have
trouble telling apart those look-alike shorebirds, gulls, sparrows, or the
house and purple finches at your feeders, this is the book for you.
Too briefly noted: Douglas Smith and Gary Ferguson, Decade
of the Wolf (Lyons) about their return to Yellowstone; Hans
Kruuk, Niko's Nature (Oxford) about behaviorist Niko Tinbergen; Roger
Newton, Galileo's Pendulum (Harvard) an historical survey of the measurement of
time; and Susan McCarthy, Becoming a Tiger (HarperCollins)
with its instructive stories about young animals'
learning.-- Gerry Rising