Category: Book & Film Reviews

Bird: Exploring the Winged World
Phaidon Press, 2021

Bird: Exploring the Winged World presents more than three hundred examples of artful depictions of birds. It covers a vast span of time – from an Archaeopteryx siemensii fossil (p. 26) dating back one hundred and fifty million years to an ancient Egyptian fresco of geese (Bean, Greater white-fronted, and Red-breasted) (p. 77) to a 2020 painting (Black and Part Black Birds) by Kerry James Marshall (p. 36). Most of the works, however, date from after about 1500, and a good number are modern or contemporary. There are representations from many regions of the world: West Africa (Bird (Sejen), p. 139), Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe Bird, p. 206), Iran (Habiballah of Sava’s Concourse of Birds, p. 79), Japan (Ohara Koson’s Egret in the Rain, p. 135), Australia (Quail Petroglyph, p. 276) and Peru (the Hummingbird of Nasca, p. 109). But it must be said that these are so dominated by works from Europe and the United States that they feel tokenized.

There are famous, even iconic works: Albrecht Dürer’s Wing of a European Roller (p. 166), Carol Farbritius’ The Goldfinch (p. 209), Jan Asselijn’s The Threatened Swan (p. 97), John James Audubon and Robert Havell’s American Flamingo (p. 177), and Pablo Picasso’s The Dove of Peace (p. 187). Peeter Boel’s Study of a Crowned Crane (p. 161), on the other hand, is — for me — a welcome surprising discovery. While these are all paintings, drawing or prints, there are also works made of silk, metal, glass, wood, even x-radiographs (Arie van ‘t Riet’s Kingfisher Feeding, p. 231). Among the more dazzling (for different reasons) uses of media are Wallace Chan’s The Lark (p. 149), a brooch made of diamonds, sapphires and garnets, and a Greater bird of paradise (p. 213) sculpted entirely of paper by Diana Beltrán Herrera in a bravura display of trompe l’oeil. 

For the most part, these are arranged as juxtaposed pairs which share something in common, whether it be a type of bird (Jakob Bogdány and Frans Lanting’s Scarlet macaws, pp. 10–11) or a visual similarity (Henry W. Elliott and Robert Ridgway’s Seedeating Birds and Duke Riley’s The Filmmakers, pp. 54–55). Some of these pairings work particularly well. Giacomo Balla’s painting Flight of the Swallows is paired with Étienne-Jules Marey’s Bird Flight, Duck Landing, a photograph that inspired it (pp. 262–63).  Nick Cave’s Soundsuitplays off a seventeenth century musical plate (pp. 72–73).  Lyette Yiadom-Boakye’s Strip Lit considers Robert Rauschenberg’s Canyon (pp. 188–89). Less obvious, but quite poignant, are Fred Tomaselli’s Bird Blast and Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s The White Duck (pp. 322–23) both of which speak to the fragility of life in complex ways. Brief essays accompany each image, providing background on the artist, the artwork and/or the birds.

This is a lovely book to leaf through, with a clean and simple layout of striking images and short, easily digestible texts. Many people will enjoy it that way, and that is the intention of the creators.

I say “creators” because this is a book without an author; it was put together by commissioning editor Victoria Clarke whose previous projects include Map: Exploring the World and The Modernist House. Clarke gathered numerous people, primarily art historians and ornithologists, to make contributions. But, perhaps because of that construction process, those parts never meld into a whole with a distinctive point of view. Thus, this is ultimately nothing more than just a lovely book that could have been much, much more.

I truly admire artists who work economically, using the simplest means to achieve spectacular effects. This requires masterful technique, demonstrated here by such works as Saul Steinberg’s Birds (p. 15) and Josef Albers’ Owl (II) (p. 83). But there is an enormous difference between being economical and taking short cuts. The latter seems to have been the modus operandi of the committee that put together this book.

In part, it is a matter of the generic versus the specific. Think of the difference between looking out on a lake and seeing a bunch of ducks rather than seeing Mallards, American Black Ducks, Gadwalls, Northern Pintails, Northern Shovelers, and a Blue winged Teal. And then there is an American Coot that kind of looks like a duck and kind of swims like a duck but is not a duck (not being a member of the family Anatidae, itself comprised of several genera).

The title of the book could not be more generic and in no way tells the potential reader what might be inside. How are we, per the subtitle, “exploring the winged world?” Perhaps a more descriptive name would have been something like “Aves: Birds in Art from Pre-History to Now.” The fact that the title parallels an earlier project by the editor suggests a kind of branding of this genre of book, intended for a pre-existing audience. The cover, a vibrant Big Bird (p. 94) yellow, is certainly eye catching; the central design, a wing made of a variety of feathers, is not one of the images inside. The book is large but, at 352 pages, not overly hefty.

The introduction by Katrina van Grouw, the author and illustrator of the intricately observed and dryly witty Unfeathered Bird (Princeton University Press, 2013). Her delightful presentation for the Linnaean Society in November of 2013 was fascinating and memorable. However, this essay is rather bland and reads as if she is writing it as a favor.

The images that comprise the core of the book are in no particular order. The arrangement is not chronological nor taxonomic nor geographic nor “functional:” feathers, advertisements, migration, symbols or human interaction. This is deliberate, but possibly someone thought at the last minute that it would not be obvious; thus, a disclaimer — strangely located on the copyright page – states this outright.

A large number of the works are either in private collections or exist in multiples: photographs, prints and printed books. Another big group is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were likely ones for which getting images and the rights to print them were quite straightforward. As the images are not divided into sections, there is no need to have groupings of roughly equal length; what could easily be found could be used.

What is omitted from any selection is as telling as what is included, as it speaks to decisions that have been made. There is a cautious avoidance of the potentially controversial. For example, while there are some gorgeous objects made of feathers – a hummingbird aigrette by Joseph Chaumet (p. 18), Zen der Eiule by sculptor Rebecca Horn (p. 147), and a Brazilian Ray crown (p. 199) — we do not see the quetzalāpanecayōtl known as “Moctezuma’s headdress,” currently in Vienna’s Museum of Ethnology, an object about which an entire book could be written. (Images of this and others mentioned here are easily found on the internet.) The text on Irving Penn’s photograph Woman in Chicken Hat mentions modern restrictions on the trade in feathers but not that such millinery mania led to the extinction of the Carolina Parakeet.

The images are strictly PG. There are no provocative human nudes such as Gustave Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot at the Metropolitan Museum, Dosso Dossi’s Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, or Bronzino’s Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante at Palazzo Pitti. Included is Peter Paul Rubens’ Abduction of Ganymede (p. 50) but not his much more (literally) visceral Prometheus Bound at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While there are images of dead birds, including the previously mentioned Oudry as well as a painting by Williem van Aelst (p. 132) and a macabre assemblage by Polly Morgan (p. 40), none have the grim weight that Francisco de Goya’s Dead Turkey and Dead Fowl at the Prado would have.

Also missing are openly Christian symbols, a rich topic specifically mentioned by van Grouw in her introduction. There are innumerable examples of pelicans piercing their breasts to feed their young with their own blood and of goldfinches grasped by infant Jesuses, emblems of the Passion because they eat thorny plants. We do not get Giotto’s avian audience to the preaching of St. Francis nor Raphael’s vigilant cranes watching the Miraculous Draft of Fishes. By keeping the majority of the works after 1500, they can easily stay in secular territory.

As this is a book meant to be looked at rather than necessarily read, the design is a crucial aspect. Flipping through, the “compare and contrast” layout (a staple of traditional art history courses) gets monotonous; when there is a single image spread out over both pages, such as Katsushika Hokusai’s Phoenix screen (pp. 52–53) it is a relief.

All the essays are almost exactly the same length, arranged in three columns each ten lines long. Some of the writers very neatly and almost exactly fill the space, but most were able to complete at least half of the last column. Sometimes that required stringing together virtually unrelated facts to make up the length. The essay on William Holman Hunt’s The Festival of St. Swithin (The Dovecote) (p. 37), bounces from influences on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the use of dove dung as a fertilizer in ancient Iran to folk traditions of weather prediction. Only the texts on Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Let Go) (p. 182) and Milton Glaser’s Birds (p. 248) fall short. This uniformity of text length makes design much simpler — the text, like the images, can just be dropped into a template — but also monotonous, like a print version of Instagram.

At the end are shorter sections (essentially appendices) which literally seem like after thoughts. While the ones by Jen Lobo on bird classification and orders and on bird topography and bill morphology are clear and concise, similar information can be found in any bird guidebook, most of which are smaller and thus much less awkward to use as references. There are mini-biographies about some of the makers of the works, though not for Barbara Kruger nor Milton Glaser about whose works so little was written. For these, consult Wikipedia. The short and wildly uneven glossary chooses only sixty-three words including “apotropaic,” “feather,” “psittacofulvins,” and “wingspan.”

Two of the appendices stand out in a good way. The essay on urban bird watching by David Lindo aka The Urban Birder gives useful advice to those who might be inspired to look at some actual birds. He manages to link his charming essay to ten birds depicted in the book that an urban birder might see.

The timeline appendix — a world history of humans studying, depicting, and interacting with birds — is well researched and highly creative, for me, the highlight of the whole book. This could have been the basis of a really interesting book, but it is not tied back to the main images except (rarely) referring to a page number. The author of this section, Rosie Pickles, is one of the few contributors not to get her name in bold, so I am doing that here.

The winged world and the art world are both far richer and far stranger, more beautiful and more brutal than what is presented here. That is what allows them to be life-long passions. Enjoy browsing through this book as you would enjoy a walk along a lake looking at ducks. But, over there, is an American Coot, and they are fascinating.

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Jean Dommermuth, a Linnaean member, is a lecturer at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a paintings conservator in private practice in New York. She is a recent recipient of the Susan Deal Booth Rome Prize, for which she spent extended time in Rome, Italy studying Sixteenth Century Florentine canvas painting.

van Grouw Response to Bird Review

I was the external expert—on both birds and bird art—brought in to help the full-time Phaidon staff with the selection of images and to advise on the accuracy of the text of Bird. As the Consultant Editor it was my job to write the book’s Introduction—which was the part I’d been looking forward to most! 

Unfortunately for me, it turned out that Phaidon expected the introductions to this series to conform to a rigorously strict house style. The subject of each individual paragraph was set out in stone. With the entire Introduction virtually dictated to me, I had to fight—really fight—to preserve the little flourish of expressive writing in the last few paragraphs as it reaches its climax with Archaeopteryx lithographica, lithographic limestone, and the joy of birds. It was a test of diplomacy vs. tenacity and, under the circumstances, I think I did rather well! 

I’m in full agreement with much of the reviewer’s assessment of Bird. Nevertheless, the suggestion that this was because I didn’t care about it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m grateful for the reviewer’s high opinion of my other writing. However, an off-target guess at the reason for the disappointing writing is not fine. I was not compromising—I was being compromised. I cared, and still do care, a great deal. 

— Katrina van Grouw, July 2023

The Rise of Birds: 225 Million Years of Evolution
Sankar Chatterjee
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997

Riddle of the Feathered Dragons: Hidden Birds of China
Alan Feduccia
Yale University Press, 2012

My journey with The Rise of Birds by Sankar Chatterjee began innocently with an act of kindness by a friend. During a conversation with Rochelle Thomas, then Vice President of The Linnaean Society of New York, about finding a speaker for the Society who would discuss bird origins, she mentioned Sankar Chatterjee. She had picked up The Rise of Birds at the previous Annual Meeting of the Society and was willing to loan it to me. I had no way of predicting the twists, turns and complications that would arise as a result of reading Chatterjee’s book, but it led directly to Alan Feduccia and his Riddle of the Feathered Dragons. While these two works cover most of the same material, the conclusions drawn by the authors, with one major exception, are polar opposites. They cannot be reconciled. I didn’t know any of this when I began the Rise, but my fate was sealed, my journey begun.

Since becoming a birdwatcher over twenty years ago I have been curious about the origin of birds. Various articles in magazines and newspapers along with some science shows on television provided most of my information on the topic. Many conflicting theories were put forth by very credible scientists, but all of them contained guesses to make the connections that fit their theories. Bipedal dinosaurs with clawed, grasping hands and heavy tails supposedly sprouted feathers and lifted off the ground as the result of a fast run in a strong wind. Quadrupedal dinosaurs climbed trees, sprouted feathers, and jumped, mostly to their deaths, leaving the few survivors to improve upon the use of feathers to soften the impact at the bottom of the jump. Upon closer examination neither theory is correct or complete, but both got one thing right: birds had their start in dinosaurs. But never was there a consistent, supported version of how it happened. Recent discoveries in China, India, and Texas have filled in the holes and closed the discontinuities. Now it is possible to follow the narrative from earliest beginnings to the present. Chatterjee’s The Rise of Birds is that history, splendidly presented in minute detail.

Chatterjee’s presentation is clear and comprehensible. He makes no presumption that the reader has any prior education in paleontology. Further, he devotes entire sections to explaining the mechanics of the anatomical elements under discussion. The evolution of flight is a telling demonstration of the level of detail found in the text.

Flight is a much broader subject than one might suppose. Using excellent drawings to explain and clarify the text, Chatterjee describes how that single defining element, the feather, evolved from a wad of insulating fluff to become the light, flexible, replaceable, differentiated load-bearing element of flight called an airfoil and now found on birds. He explains airfoils, too.

More importantly, he makes clear the step-by-step path that allowed a two-legged tree climber to fly. Of the various general classifications of dinosaurs, it was the group called theropods that, in Chatterjee’s telling, gave rise to birds. Theropods didn’t suddenly grow a variety of feathers and take to the air. The beginnings were adaptations that helped the animal stay in the trees and move between branches. Feathers would improve accuracy by allowing a bit of in-air correction of the direction travelled. Next came parachuting to the ground. With brain growth and reorganization to better control feather disposition, aim improved even more. Landings became less of a hazard. With time and experience the target destination got farther and farther away. Jumping had become several kinds of gliding. With yet more brain power to control muscles and feathers, refined food processing, more oxygen intake to fuel the muscles, and more muscles to power the whole process, gliding became flight.

To understand and follow this fascinating evolution requires a considerable kit of scientific knowledge, a kit I don’t pretend to possess. I know some of the vocabulary and have a good understanding of mechanical things. But were it not for the bounty of excellent drawings and Chatterjee’s clear, concise and direct way of describing his topic, most of this book would have been incomprehensible to me. That said, I found it captivating.

Chatterjee starts in Pompeii to explain in human terms what happened to living animals that made them become the fossil record underlying the story. Preserving bones or teeth is hard enough. It requires an extensive string of just-so conditions that doesn’t usually happen. For a corpse to become a fossil it has to stay pretty much undisturbed long enough for chemical changes in the bones to turn it into stone. Most of the time a storm, a flood, an earthquake, or some hungry beastie comes along and puts an end to the process. To preserve feathers, skin, stomach contents or other soft tissue is nearly impossible. For that you need a very long stretch of very good luck. Yet, the fossils exist.

The complete story of birds requires input from many interrelated sciences. Geology, biology, physics, aerodynamics, evolution, extinction, and others are all present. Twice in the history of birds the equivalent of a musical grand pause has occurred. The first, about 225 million years ago, gave us dinosaurs. The second, about 67 million years ago, nearly put an end to the entire story. The explanation involves volcanism and a quasi-contemporaneous double meteoric impact. In the west, Chicxulub made the huge crater in the ocean floor near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The effects on climate, weather, and the biome we inhabit were dramatic. And although its existence is not as well established, at about the same geological time, a million years give or take, a meteor called Shiva, forty times as large as Chicxulub, landed, exploded, in India. Dust blocked sunlight for years. Greenhouse gasses spewed in incalculable amounts, raising the earth’s temperature and changing not only weather, but climate. Sulphur compounds in the ejecta acidified the rain resulting in wide scale elimination of plants and animals at the base of the food web. Potable water ceased to be readily available. Much water that could be found was contaminated and toxic. It was an instantaneous event which gave no warning and allowed no time for adaptation. But these devastating events occurred about two thirds of the way through the story. Chatterjee takes us back another 160 million years when archosaurs—the progenitor of dinosaurs—morphed into other species, giving us a variety of dinosaurs, especially theropods, and ultimately birds. 

Chatterjee describes the remarkable skeletal similarity of two fossil species found in the same limestone beds in Solnhofen, Germany: Archaeopteryx lithographica and Compsognathus. They obviously are from the same mold, but speciation had begun. One group stayed on the ground and grew larger and heavier to give us T. rex, among other bipedal raptors. The other grew lighter, more agile, and climbed trees. Both groups had feathers. Neither could fly. The tree climbers ultimately became birds. With time and habitat specialization the differences grew in nature as well as extent. Novel changes in the climbers anatomy favored life in the trees, as you would expect. One at a time, Chatterjee describes the effects these changes in morphology permitted and, sometimes, required.

Early feathers, fluffy, unconnected barbules on weak stems, provided some thermal insulation and might have been a sexual attractant, but did little else. There was neither form nor strength that could provide aerodynamic benefit other than perhaps a slight slowing of the descent of the creature if it fell out of the tree. When the barbules started linking together the rachis, or stem, grew stronger. The feathers also began to differentiate in form. Aerodynamic properties began to emerge. Taking advantage of these new properties required the development of muscle groups and mental abilities to both power and control them. Flight was still a long way off.

Bones and organs were also changing. The long, bony tail wasn’t prehensile. It helped with balance on the ground, but was mostly a cumbersome interference in the trees. Over time a shortened version took its place. Several of the bones fused into a tapered lump at the end to provide a base for attachment of early true flight feathers. Jumping between branches to catch prey or avoid being captured became easier and more accurate. The development of differentiated feathers on the forelimbs, along with some reorganization and fusion of some bones, began turning arms into wings. Jumping from between branches became controlled gliding. Aerial travel to a different tree, to the ground, or to lunch became an efficient mode of mobility, but it was still gliding. To get back into the canopy the animal still had to climb the tree. Still, true powered flight was a long way off.

During all this time, bodily changes increased structural strength yet reduced weight. Over time the tail got even shorter and the tapered point became a rounded disc called a pygostyle, which served as a strong, mobile place to attach and control tail feathers. Some forelimb bones disappeared while others fused to provide light, mobile and strong attachments for true flight feathers. A thick membrane called the patagium stretched between the shoulder and wrist. It had some possible early aerodynamic properties similar to the skin in a bat’s wing. It presumably provided the same benefit that the structure provides to modern birds.

Huge muscles are required for powered flight, both for the down or power stroke as well as the upstroke or return of the wing to its starting position. This required a place to attach the muscles to the skeleton.  All that tree climbing probably began increasing the size of the keel or ridge on the sternum which became that attachment place for flight muscles later in birds. Changing the spatial relationship of the humerus, clavicle and coracoid bones made the upstroke mechanically possible.

Technically, the pectoralis, the power stroke muscle, is attached to the sternum on one end and the humerus on the other. It contracts to pull the wing downward and forward, providing lift as well as forward motion. The supracoracoideus, the upstroke muscle, is mounted just forward of the pectoralis and is attached to the dorsal side of the humerus after passing through the foramen triossium, which is a passage created by the ends of the three previously named bones. A tendon passing over this notch like a rope over a pulley allows the supracoracoideus to pull the wing up and back when it contracts, even though it is located below and forward of the wing. With more time and more changes, the flight mechanism was perfected, or at least greatly improved.

If that last paragraph came to you as an undecipherable message from the spirit world your tool kit is similar to mine. And these are the easy words, but fear not. The drawings give clear physical shape and function to the parts and processes being discussed and the descriptions are clear and understandable, too.

Huge changes in metabolism were also under way. Large muscles require lots of fuel and lots of oxygen to burn it. A flow-through respiratory system with storage space in many air sacs located all over the body, even inside some bones, made plenty of oxygen available. Food intake was modified in a few ways. The process of lightening the body included shortening the snout and losing some, eventually all, teeth. A horny sheath, the rampotheca we call a bill or beak, became the multi-use food getting tool. A tough internal organ, the gizzard, took over the job of chewing the food.

Skull bones were lightened and reorganized. Some fused for strength. Others were repurposed to create new mobilities. Early birds, like the primitive archosaurs, opened and closed a mouth full of teeth on a single hinge. The new anatomy included an elegant triple pivot mechanism to actuate a new hinge between the dentary, or upper jaw, and the cranium. With this mechanism the bird opens its mouth by rotating the quadrate forward, which swings the mandible downward and a little forward while simultaneously raising the dentary. There is also a kind of push rod between the quadrate and the premaxillary which allows further opening of the tip of the upper bill. 

These changes, 160 million years’ worth, were some pretty impressive stuff, requiring the modification, movement, and reconnection of lots of bones, while the brain and eyes were also growing, changing, and moving. By the time Chatterjee brings us to 67 million years ago, our little tree-climbing theropod had come pretty close to becoming a modern bird. In the process we readers learned something of plate tectonics, aerodynamics, speciation, structural differences in skeletal elements, feather origins and functions, cursorial versus arboreal lifestyles, and the interrelatedness of all the variations and specializations relative to changes in habitat.

Then, when avales (the early birds) had moved into just about every habitable niche save dwelling on the deep ocean floor, Chicxulub and Shiva came to call. While Chicxulub was a very controversial theory when it was introduced, it is now well documented and well accepted. The Shiva meteor, a bolide forty times larger and much more destructive, is Chatterjee’s theory and not yet on solid footing.  This was already a highly active volcanic period. The Deccan Flow, just off modern day India, had begun oozing lava a couple million years before Chicxulub, but the double blow of both meteors “rang the earth like a bell,” activating even minor and dormant volcanoes. Whether it was one meteor, two, or more yet to be discovered, the damage was global. It was a death blow to much of what lived on the planet. 

Though survivors were few, two lines of near-modern birds continued. The Hesperornithines were foot propelled divers, analogs to modern loons and grebes. They had teeth, were heavily built, and were secondarily flightless. These were all good adaptations for hunting slippery prey in water. Icthyornithes, the other line of survivors, were smaller, lighter, and had a keeled sternum. They could fly. This is the clade, or group of similarly structured animals, from which all modern birds evolved.

You might think that, with all Chatterjee had given, this would be the penultimate chapter in the book. The sun has risen and we can see what we could only guess before. Birds are evolved dinosaurs! But Chatterjee is not one to waste the daylight. From the true avian ascendancy during the Cenozoic Era to modern birds, he discusses systematic classification using morphological as well as molecular determinants. He traces avionics from biplane to monoplane design in both aircraft and birds. He discusses brain configuration to allow the progression from leaping through gliding and flapping to true, powered flight. Eggs are described, as is their evolution from a leathery reptilian sack to a multi-membraned, hard-shelled container that allows respiration. The various bill configurations and their functions are covered, too. There seems to be nothing relating to the evolution or the existence of birds left out of this work.

Chatterjee ends this masterful treatise with mankind’s relationship to birds and the effects we have on them. Extinction is not a minor element in this discussion. As with any topic which preceded this chapter, Chatterjee explains and supports what he claims. I came to expect nothing less. At the outset of my experience with The Rise of Birds I was taken aback by the complexity of the response to my simple question: where do birds come from? I felt like the complaining person in the old chestnut “Ask him what time it is and he tells you how to build a watch.” In the process of reading the book I discovered that I really wanted to know how to build that watch. Time lost any importance. Chatterjee had taught me how to build a bird. 

This masterwork is not casual reading. As in the appreciation of any complex subject or idiom, education is requisite to comprehension as well as appreciation. I think I have learned much from The Rise of Birds, but if I claimed to have understood and assimilated a third of the material I would be overstating my accomplishment. That said, I read page after page with the rapt interest of a child in a garden full of butterflies. It was much more than a pleasant experience. It was a thirst finally quenched or a hunger well fed. If you, like me, want to know where birds come from, The Rise if Birds is a very good place to start learning. The answer is well worth the effort of the journey.

—  HOWEVER  —

There is another opinion about the evolution of birds that needs to be considered. Alan Feduccia, in his Riddle of the Feathered Dragons discusses at least six different ways to interpret the fossil evidence. Or, as he sees it, misinterpret it. You will not get the impression that Feduccia agrees with the currently popular theropod theory of bird origin. His position is that birds and theropod dinosaurs separately evolved from the same line of archosaurian progenitor.

Like Chatterjee, Feduccia lays out a good background for the discussion by providing a history of paleontology, with a focus on avian pre-history. He touches on all the big names: Huxley, Darwin, Owen, Marsh, Ostrom, Mayr, and many others. Current researchers in the field—Bakker, Currie, Sereno, Norrell, as well as Chatterjee and Feduccia himself—are all present. His descriptions of the progression of fossil discoveries include the state of “scientific knowledge” in which they are to be interpreted and he shows how this influences their interpretation. While Feduccia’s commentary is not intended to be complimentary, neither is it derisive or mean spirited. Throughout the book he makes his case without rancor, but neither does he pull any punches.

There is another interpretation of the fossil evidence, however. Feduccia, along with several other scientists of note, finds the theory and the corollary—that flight developed from the ground up—to be a misinterpretation of the fossil evidence, biased by the shortcomings of the cladistics method. That is the method of classification that tries to determine how closely related different species might be based upon the type and quantity of their shared characteristics. We, all living things on earth, have a common ancestor, or several, in the line of life that evolved into the tree of life. That doesn’t mean that we are closely related to a sponge or a deer tick, but we do share an origin. To make his case, Feduccia methodically describes the fossils, the analytical methods used to interpret their meaning, and what he considers to be the erroneous conclusions that others, including Chatterjee, have put forth.

To describe the evolution of birds it is important to know what constitutes a modern bird. Here Feduccia and Chatterjee completely agree. It would be difficult to do otherwise with the number of living species available for study. Enter the Urvogel, Archaeopteryx lithographica, found originally in the limestone beds of Solnhofen, Germany. Full disclosure: That term is somehow attractive and is used whenever any bird paleontologist has an opportunity to include it. I like it myself. It connotes more than a mere beginning. The power of this single species’ existence is latent in the term. It is widely, but not unanimously, agreed that Archaeopteryx was the first modern bird.

Feduccia, like Chatterjee, furnishes the reader with many fine drawings showing the elements being discussed. The depictions of fossils in “as found” condition show somewhat articulated skeletal remains with partial information loss and some displacement or disorientation of the fossil elements. It’s more than bones. Gizzard stones, feathers or “proto feather impressions,” and integumentary elements are included, but are somewhat distorted by the process of fossilization. Interpretation of some of these graphic representations was difficult for this layman even though the elements were well labelled. I have seen more orderly piles of bones in the trash bins of restaurants where remains of birds, fish, sheep, pigs, goats, and cattle are all in the same pile. Yet, order is found and made clear to the reader. Kudos to the paleontologists who prepared and studied these fossils. 

One anatomical element or process at a time, Feduccia describes, compares, and explains how well or poorly it supports the theory of origin. First comes the pes, or foot. There are three types that matter in the discussion. A cursorial foot, built for walking or running, is fairly flat-bottomed with only a slight curvature in the claws. In contrast, an arboreal foot has highly curved claws which can be articulated to allow walking, but find their true function in grasping limbs and branches as well as prey. A scansorial foot lies somewhere in between the two, but also has one digit which is, or can be, projected sideways for a better grasp on surfaces too large to grip, for example, tree trunks. Modern birds can have any of these three foot configurations as well as some others. The importance of this anatomical element to the origin of birds lies in Feduccia’s discussion of the origin of flight. But first we must understand the current theories of those origins that Feduccia questions. It has to do with dinosaurs.

That birds evolved directly from theropod dinosaurs became a widely held opinion in the late 20^th century. Feathers and “proto” feathers were being discovered on many newly found fossils, the great bulk of which were found in Liaoning, China. Texas and a few other locations also contributed to the body of evidence. Bipedal skeletons of earlier dinosaurs, Compsognathus, for example, were quite similar to Archaeopteryx in many aspects. But they were bipedal, had a tail, and so got lumped together with apparently similar theropod dinosaurs without the careful scrutiny Feduccia deems mandatory.

The discovery of feathers on the new additions to the theropod clade triggered a radical change in understanding what constituted a dinosaur. To some, feathers imply endothermy, and endothermy in turn implies increased intelligence. These conclusions brought a new interpretation of intelligence, mobility, and color to these relatives of the physically and mentally slow lizards.

Articles on this “new truth” proliferated at the end of the last century. Many books, magazines, and videos (TV shows then) showed “possible” looks and “artists’ interpretations” of warm blooded, feathered theropod dinosaurs of various sizes and origins. Scientific journals were not immune to the wave of acceptance. Neither were institutions like colleges and museums. The charisma of a brightly feathered T. rex was as irresistible as it was ubiquitous. The tautology was complete. Feathered fossils were considered theropods, so other theropods must have had feathers. Since only theropods had feathers then, and only birds have feathers now, birds must have evolved from theropods. Underneath all the hoopla, marketing and celebration were a handful of small voices in the wilderness saying “but, what about …..?” Feduccia’s was and is one of those voices.

Defining the clade Theropoda is high on the list of “But, what abouts…”. Theropods are cursorial (walking, running, ground dwelling) bipeds with heavy, muscular legs, flat-bottomed feet, and a well-developed bipedal skeleton including shortened forelimbs. They were ground bound animals. Bird ancestors are not. As soon as the bird progenitor began scrambling up the trunks of trees natural selection began preferential pruning and trimming to make that easier to do. The cursorial foot became more scansorial in design and the claws on both hand and foot started becoming more curved.

The shortened forelimbs of a theropod, about 40% shorter than the expected length typically found in quadrupeds, is beneficial to the cursorial biped. There is still enough forelimb left to grasp and manipulate food, prey, or a mate during copulation, but the weight loss is considerable and allows for a lighter tail to balance the center of mass over the hips. This makes for a lighter, faster, and more agile runner or walker, but it would be a detriment to the tree climber. The span of the climber’s grip would be lessened, making it less stable and weaker. Birds don’t have the shortened forelimbs that were so useful to theropods. 

Furthermore, for birds to have evolved from theropods, a staple of evolutionary theory would have to be violated. Louis Dollo, French born Belgian paleontologist, proposed in 1893 that “[a]n organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors.” This statement, Dollo’s Principle, has been supported by later research and is generally considered to be true. For birds to be evolved theropods would constitute either an exception to, or a negation of, Dollo’s Principle. The shortened forelimbs—the wings-to-be— would have had to become longer again.

That would be misleading. One might think that the shortened forelimbs and large thighs of the movies’ velociraptors, a type of theropod, were the ancestors of a modern roasted chicken’s scrawny wings and big, meaty thighs and drumsticks. They weren’t. The muscles which power those scrawny, but not short, wings are found elsewhere on the skeleton, specifically the breast. It is a wonderfully practical design. The part that moves, the wing, is light, strong, flexible, and articulable.  Some muscle is present for that articulation, but the immense power required for flight comes from the pectoralis and supracoracoideus, a.k.a. the breast muscles. Put even half of the breast mass on the wings and the best a bird could do when flapping its wings would be to flop around on the ground. 

Return that mass to the middle of the bird, however, and attach one end to a raised ridge, or keel, and some miraculous things can happen. The bird becomes more aerodynamic. Changes in attitude and direction become nearly instantaneous. The rate at which a power stroke can occur is greatly increased because the muscle isn’t waving and shaking all over the place. The big powerful pectoralis muscle merely contracts, pulling on tendons that move the wing downwards and a little forward. Then, the supracoracoideus, a somewhat smaller muscle but still a large one, contracts, pulling on a tendon which passes over the triossial notch to pull the wing back to its starting position. This also stretches out the pectoralis and makes it ready for the next contraction.  Each muscle rests while the other is working. If ever there was an argument for intelligent design, this is it. Theropods don’t have this marvelous adaptation. Their forelimbs aren’t used for locomotion. Consequently, their forelimb and breast musculature was much smaller and less sophisticated.

The full list of differences between theropods and birds is lengthy and better left described by Feduccia, but some additional high points are worthy of notice. Theropods and Archaeopteryx have bony tails. Birds don’t. Well, this isn’t exactly correct. Over evolutionary time the ancestral species to birds developed progressively shorter tails. The weight loss aided mobility and shorter tails interfered less in the canopies where they lived. Several of the caudal vertebrae fused into a pointed lump at the end, which allowed stronger muscle attachment and let the involved feathers become more aerodynamically useful. Eventually the pointed lump became a disc called a pygostyle, which allowed the useful fan shaped tail found in modern birds. This evolution brought the function of the tail to its current efficient maximum. So birds do have a bony tail, but it is designed for flight, not running.

Two aspects of the avian skull are noticeably different from theropods. First, flight doesn’t happen just because wing and tail structures are in place. Along with their development came changes in the brain and the inner ear. Most birds have weak senses of smell and taste. This is the result of the diminution of the large olfactory lobe of the brain. It decreased as the cerebral cortices moved ventrally and increased in size. The optic lobes grew as well and moved closer to the eyes. Smell and therefore taste became considerably weaker senses, but the loss was more than compensated by increased visual and cognitive abilities. Smell and taste aren’t very useful in flight, but visual acuity and complex thought are. Theropods don’t have this brain development. 

The inner ear, organ of hearing as well as of balance, was modified to better process information about attitude and acceleration. Both are crucial for controlled flight. The fluid filled sacs in the “flight brain” function much as the semi-circular canals do in humans but were honed for the demands of flight. That humans share this type of balance organ with birds should come as no surprise. We both lived in trees at some point. Inner ear abilities were selected for those with better ability to judge direction and acceleration. That is, those with weak skills missed the intended branch and fell to the ground. If they survived they might have been able to again climb the trunk and try again. But, if they were wounded the probability was greatly diminished, especially if a hungry predator was nearby.

As plumage became more aerodynamic, the individuals who missed the branch but controlled the descent path and velocity, even to a small degree, must have had a greatly improved survival rate. Leaping to a distant branch was only an early choice. Parachuting to the ground—falling with style if you are a fan of Buzz Lightyear—made exiting a tree a matter of choice, not the result of bad judgement or poor skills. Neither Feduccia nor Chatterjee mention it, but just as an early bird might aim for a spot with good conditions for landing, I have to think some used the technique to aim for a higher probability of food. Aerial predation might have predated powered flight.

As flight skills improved, claws (hands) became a less efficient means to deal with locomotion or procuring or manipulating food. The claws became superfluous. The very mobile bill, or beak, replaced them for all but climbing, which also was greatly diminished in frequency. Although I have seen a parrot use its bill as a hand to pull itself up an angled branch, the ability to function as tongs, nutcracker, pliers, or shears made the bill a most versatile tool. The bony structures underlying all these functions differentiates birds from theropods, too.

Unlike dinosaurs, crocodiles, lizards, turtles or any other species with a simple jaw hinge, or quadrate, birds developed a much more sophisticated mechanism. The quadrate pivots at the top where it is hinged to the cranium. In dinosaurs, there was another pivot at the bottom of the bone, which allowed the mandible to come open as well as move a little forward as the quadrate pushes it. Birds have all of this plus a band of flexible material at the base of the maxilla, upper bill, which allows it to rotate upward in relation to the skull. This is achieved by a push rod, the jugal bar, connecting at a third pivot point on the quadrate. As the quadrate rotates forward the jaw drops and the upper bill is pushed upward. This process, called prokinesis, allows a wider gape to accept larger food while keeping the cranium immobile. 

There is also rynchokinesis. This is the ability to open just the tip of the bill. By keeping the mandible closed, or nearly so, and rotating the quadrate, those same push rods apply force to the tip of the maxilla just beyond another flexible zone. Just the tip of the upper bill rotates upward! This phenomenon is not often seen, but serves as a good explanation of how a shorebird, a dowitcher, for example, can grasp food without trying the nearly impossible task of opening its bill while it is stuck in the mud.

 While Chatterjee more fully explains all of this, he does not show that any of the presumed theropod ancestors to birds had these capabilities. It might be considered a minor point by paleontologists, but to this layman such a sophisticated and complex mechanism doesn’t seem irrelevant. There is even a foot in the door for Feduccia’s conjecture that some of the supposed theropods were birds that had become flightless. From the theropod drawings in both books, it appears that there could have been some independent movement of the premaxilla using a similar if not identical method. This bolsters Feduccia’s claim that these bird-ancestor “theropods” might not have actually been Theropods!

Otherwise, the differences between theropod dinosaurs, however actually defined, and birds are sufficiently extreme to make the theropod origin of birds highly unlikely, or even impossible. 

1. Theropods are obligate bipedal ground dwellers. The entire hip structure is heavy and designed for walking. The hip socket, or acetabulum, differs from that of birds in that there is no antitrochanter, or bone ridge, to keep the legs under and in line with the major axis of the body. Instead, theropods have a facet probably used for attaching some of the powerful muscles required to move the massive legs and feet.
   
2. Theropod forelimbs are approximately 40% of the length expected in a quadruped. This shortening didn’t happen in birds, whose forelimbs underwent a different change to create surfaces where flight feathers could be attached and controlled.
   
3. Bird brains, a.k.a. flight brains, show several characteristics not present in theropods. The reduced olfactory lobe was the trade for much better sight, balance, and a larger, more complex cortex for rapidly processing information. For birds this was no great loss. The sense of smell is not very useful in flight. One exception to this is the Turkey Vulture–Black Vulture mutualism. The Turkey Vulture has a considerably better sense of smell and the Black Vulture has a more acute visual capability. The Black Vulture tags along with the Turkey Vulture as it sniffs its way up the cone of odor given off by carrion which could be several miles away. When they get close to the corpse, the Black Vulture locates the meal visually and leads the way for the Turkey Vulture. Both eat. 
   
4. Inner ear enhancement is a telling difference, too. While spatial awareness is important to all mobile life, it is imperative for flight. The changes likely began when the basal archosaur at the top of this evolutionary chain started clawing its way up tree trunks to get a meal or to avoid becoming one. From there, selection had its effect. Those with better balance and more curved claws fared better than the rest and over generations, made their way into the canopy. Life there is very different from life on the ground. The abilities to judge distances, grasp branches, and jump from one to another are mandatory. Second chances are rare, so adaptations are to be expected.
   
5. The heavy long tail of a theropod has a very useful function on the ground: balance. This weight helps compensate for the neck and head to keep the center of mass over the legs. The hips are the fulcrum of this teeter-totter. When the compensating mass is missing, i.e., the other kid jumps off the teeter-totter, the remaining mass quickly drops to the ground. Musculature and energy consumption to compensate for the function of the tail would be extreme.
   
   But in the canopy, a long, heavy, meaty tail is a handicap. It provides no advantage in balance or locomotion in the trees, but it does provide a handle for would be predators to grasp. The shortening would be expected and the modification came with a bonus! The handicap became a useful tool to hold and articulate feathers. From parachuting, to gliding, to powered flight, the shorter, feathered tail became a huge asset for determining direction as well as orientation.
   
6. Birds also moved the fulcrum forward a bit. The legs of a theropod pivot largely at the hip and are straighter than bird legs. Birds point their thighs forward and walk by pivoting at the knee. What we see as the backward bending knee is actually the modified ankle. The “shin” is the tarsometatarsus, or modified arch of the human foot. Bird “feet” are only the toes.
   
7. This modification of the legs and feet is parallel to the changes in the forelimbs in birds. The distal ends are light, strong, and flexible, but lack the bulk and brute strength of a theropod leg. In both cases the main mass of the limb is concentrated near the center of mass of the bird. This allows faster changes in orientation, which is another useful flight adaptation. The classic demonstration of the principle for humans is the spinning skater whose rotation rate increases as arms, mass, are brought closer to the body, the axis of rotation. It’s a pitiful example compared to watching any bird dart and dodge through the branches to avoid capture by a predator. 

With these many examples of the differences between birds and theropods, it would have been reasonable to expect Feduccia to stamp Q.E.D. on the last page and go his merry way. But all this description and comparison is but preamble to what Feduccia sees as the cause of the misinterpretations and wrong conclusions. The cladistic method is the culprit.

Cladistics is the grouping of species by the frequency of shared characteristics. At first it makes a lot of sense. Species which share high numbers of the same attributes would seem to have some link or connection. In general, is not a bad starting point, but there are weaknesses in cladistic analysis that must be considered.

First, not all characteristics have equal analytical weight. Plumage color is a good example of weak or no association. If all birds with red feathers were considered a clade, Scarlet Tanagers, Northern Cardinals, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Red Phalaropes along with several woodpeckers some finches, some redpolls, Pine Grosbeak, Red Crossbill and Rose-breasted Grosbeak would be considered more closely related than each species’ actual congeners. Obviously, this is a weak way to determine relatedness. Diet and geography are about as good.

Things which are difficult to modify, like pelvic structure or joint configuration, make much better determinants. The differences between Avian and Theropod pelvises are quite telling. The lack of a supraacetabular shelf, that ridge of bone theropods use for muscle attachment, is one of several defining structures found missing in Archaeopteryx. Without it, the bird could not be a theropod.

One especially weak area in the cladistic method is the inability to discover, let alone deal with, convergence. Convergence is the tendency for animals that do the same things and live similar lifestyles to develop similar body parts better suited to the tasks before them. There is usually a best way or suite of best ways to achieve a particular mechanical goal. Body parts tend to be selected in favor of the design which works best. “Works best” usually means getting more food, water, or shelter, as well as avoiding predators and attracting mates. Whatever may be required to survive—a large bill, stronger teeth, smaller hips, or whatever—will become the norm regardless of any prior connection. However, a waxwing, a finch, and a sparrow with the same adaptive feature will be no more closely related than before the similar adaptation.

Neither does cladistic analysis deal well with heterochrony or neoteny. Both of these developmental effects deal with the timing of different growth processes. Heterochrony is a change in timing or order of particular kinds if growth. Neoteny is the persistence and retention of stages of development. Both can change the appearance and function of an individual making it look like a separate species when it is just an abnormal individual.

With all this evidence contrary to the currently popular theropod origin theory you might expect Feduccia to state his own theory, claim victory and, again, go his merry way. But he does not. At no time in Riddle does Feduccia claim to have an answer other than an admittedly unprovable conjecture that birds and theropods shared some kind of archosaur ancestor. But that is his point. We don’t know and may never discover definitive proof of avian origins.

To quote Feduccia (p.189) “Yet the debate is not and never has been about ‘whether  or not birds and dinosaurs share a close evolutionary heritage’ since both sides of the debate have almost always agreed on that issue. The real question is whether Aves is nested within Theropoda and whether flight evolved from earthbound dinosaurs”. Chatterjee and Feduccia are in complete agreement about flight. Both argue convincingly that flight evolved in the canopies, not on the ground. Their disagreement is about whether birds came from theropods or whether Theropoda and Aves both descended from the same earlier progenitor.

The Chinese discoveries made a real mess of contemporaneous research and theory. For most, the supposed theropods with flight feathers was the end of the discussion. Anyone who did not see the obvious and simple “truth” of the new “facts” was either a fool or a troublemaker. Keep in mind that Theropoda is a weakly created grouping that Feduccia critiques in the book. Also note that the Chinese fossils were lumped with theropods because of similarities to other creatures that had previously been lumped incorrectly with other theropods. This failure of cladistics created the schism which followed. Here, Feduccia reveals a surprising but also valid interpretation of the feathered “theropods”. To quote Feduccia: “of course, the real problem was that the authors had actually described two secondarily flightless birds.”

My jaw dropped. I didn’t know if I had just entered a paleontological Twilight Zone or if everything I had just read, with relish, was unproven, misinterpreted conjecture. I have come to the conclusion that, with two exceptions—the theropod origin of birds and the Shiva bolide—everything else in Chatterjee’s Rise is well documented and should be considered good science. Feduccia punches too many holes in the theropod origin theory for me to accept it as proven. That evidence might never be found. The same can be said of the super meteor Shiva. There is a remnant of an impact crater off India which might bear the proof of Chatterjee’s theory, but much research will be required to decide the validity of that conjecture.

Feduccia’s admittedly unsubstantiated suggestion of a common ancestry suffers the same lack of proof. Yet, all current ratites—flightless birds like ostriches, emus, cassowaries, and kiwis—have been shown to come from volant (flying) ancestors. Assuming the same was true for early birds, the idea that a basal archosaur, currently undiscovered, was the origin of birds allows enough time for birds to have developed both flight and secondary flightlessness. In other words, it could be true.

While I am swayed by Feduccia’s arguments and therefore, cannot share the joy of knowing where birds come from, I still enjoyed Chatterjee’s The Rise of Birds. The material greatly overlaps, as would be expected, but Chatterjee makes some anatomical features easier to comprehend. I also like his invocation of the Shiva meteor as a cause of global near extinction. Chicxulub never did seem large enough to me to explain what happened. I hope one day to hear of the missing proof.

I cannot choose one book over the other. If you would read either, you must read both. Both are excellent and jam packed with a delight of bird information. That’s brain candy for me and, I suspect, many others. At base, I still don’t know exactly where birds originated, but I do have a good idea what the current opinions are. I did finish with a strong feeling that I could make a bird with two boxes of toothpicks, some glue, and my pocketknife. Maybe I’ll try it sometime.

Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees
William Bryant Logan
W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, severe winds, earthquakes and avalanches are all capable of destroying trees.  Whole sections of forest can seem to be wiped from the face of the planet. Yet a significant number of trees will survive to flourish once more.  About 2,000 years after the end of the last ice age, roughly 9,700 years ago, Mesolithic humans noticed this persistent nature of forests and started to intentionally damage trees with fire or stone axes to direct and encourage new growth.  With experimentation and practice early humans learned they could make forests produce stems, branches and foliage better suited to their needs, but without killing the trees.  The science of arboriculture had begun.

Two tree management techniques, coppicing and pollarding, emerged and were honed and developed.  Both involve severely cutting back a tree’s growth, but they differ as to where and how.  A coppice is cut close to the ground leaving what is called a stool.  New twigs will sprout around the circumference and grow with vigor, largely because they have ample sun and are being fed by a root system large enough to supply the whole previous tree.  But coppiced trees have an inherent problem.  Both wild and domesticated animals find the young shoots to be delicious.  A hungry flock of sheep or goats, or a herd of deer, can consume a large number of them in a very short time, making an entire season’s labor disappear.

At some point, someone thought up pollarding, a very successful way to get similar results from the trees while also keeping the new growth safe.  The tree is cut six to eight feet above ground, high enough that foraging animals can’t reach the new growth.  Obviously, this wouldn’t work where giraffes or other tall browsers were plentiful.  A wooly mammoth, which was nine to eleven feet tall at the shoulder, could break off or uproot even a substantial tree.  Fortunately, these two tall species were not everywhere, and even tall deer would take easier provender if it were available.  This periodic cutting in the same place changes the appearance of the tree because the top end of the trunk, variously called a knuckle or a cat’s head, thickens over time. 

With these two techniques humans were able to get more and better production from trees.  Trees had become an agricultural product of widely varied uses.  The size of the desired branch determined when the harvest should take place.  Yearling or two-year shoots, some up to six feet long but with little or no branching, would be used to bind coarse work like fencing and walkways, or dried and hardened to make good, straight arrows. They could also be split into thirds lengthwise, then ninths to make fine long strips for weaving baskets or even clothing.  Older growth, three to six years, depending upon the species of tree and the growing conditions, might become axe, rake, or hoe handles, spears, fence rails or support for thatching in animal shelters.  Later, as shipbuilding became more science than guesswork, entire trees were trained and formed to stable shapes that matched the demands of the design.  For ribbing in a large ship’s hull several decades or even several generations might be required.  They weren’t so much hewn from large trunks as they were grown to the task.  It took less time, created less waste and was a more stable piece of wood to work.  It stayed that way in use unlike the pieces cut from trunks of much larger trees.  Even the harvesting of an entire trunk and branch for shipbuilding left a coppice if done properly.  Very little went to waste.  The fine twigs and branches bearing leaves became “winter hay,” food for livestock and, sometimes, a survival diet to sustain the people through a very tough winter.  It is a very efficient and parsimonious way to produce wood.

With each harvest the process began again.  Different areas would be cut for different purposes and harvested at different intervals.  Whatever forest type an animal might prefer or require, there would be a patch or a region nearby in that stage of growth.  This variety of habitat types allowed for a much broader range of species diversity as well as healthier plants and animals overall.  A better way of living within nature had been created.  Instead of harvesting entire trees, or now entire sections of forest, man had learned to address his needs by making things from what trees would grow, not from pieces he could shape from trunks and large branches.  Agriculture in this form more closely resembles symbiosis than predation. 

William Bryant Logan, who sets all this out with clarity and verve in Sprout Lands, is a pretty big name in the world of arboriculture. He is on the faculty of the New York Botanical Garden.  He is a Certified Arborist.   He has been awarded both the Senior Scholar Award and the True Professional of Arboriculture Award from the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA).  He is also an award-winning author.  Three previous books, Oak, Air and Dirt helped the shine on his escutcheon with Quill and Trowel Awards from the Garden Writers of America. You might say he takes trees seriously.

Logan grew up in San Francisco.  His exposure to trees that had been coppiced or pollarded began there, but was not extensive.  He learned more about the two practices in his training for professional certification, but neither technique was a significant part of his work as owner of Urban Arborists, Inc.  When it came time for the Metropolitan Museum of Art to do something about their trees, his company was asked to submit a bid.  Urban Arborists, Inc. got the job, but Bill Logan wanted more and better information.  He returned to the West Coast to get it, but didn’t find what he needed if he were to do the first-rate job his personal standards required.  Much more research was going to be necessary.  This dearth of information probably planted the seed of the idea that a book would emerge if the research went well.  

For his research, Logan traveled to the British Isles. There he found more than techniques.  He found a deep history that confirmed what he suspected, that trees and humans had interacted to their mutual benefit for a very long time.  He used his book advance to fund the research project.  Sprout Lands is the story of his journey to recapture this ancient knowledge.  He found it – in spades!  He also found a history of human interaction with trees going back eight to ten millennia and evidence of how this symbiosis shaped human culture.

Sprout Lands is a non-fiction first person narrative, not a thesis or a proof.  Logan recounts his discoveries and relates his interactions with the people he encounters on his journey.  His writing style is open and clear.  You won’t find footnotes or citations supporting his claims.  Neither will you be looking for them. The reader can see clearly through Logan’s eyes. He provides plenty of drawings and photographs.  So when he claims the Ents in Tolkein’s Hobbit trilogy weren’t imagined, but seen, you know why he can make that conjecture.  The same is true about “[t]ill Burnham Wood remove to Dunsinane” in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (5.3.2). Certainly, those thousands of long, straight branches would have been available.  For his claim that trees benefit from the husbandry, the text provides the required evidence.

In a section mostly devoted to Logan’s conversations with a California Chukchansi-Mono basket maker named Lois Conner Bohna, the historical descriptions of the beneficial effects of her clan’s use of fire coppice and pollard are compelling.  Weeds, invasive trees, and insect pests were all controlled by this method to the point that these people could depend upon a sufficient mast harvest every year.  That is remarkable in light of the oak tree’s annual habit, if left untreated, of alternating bountiful acorn harvests with weak ones. Tragically large forest fires are also mentioned.  They didn’t occur where coppice was practiced.  They couldn’t.  There was never enough fuel on the ground, and the trees were not jammed tightly together to make a canopy fire likely or even possible.

In the Basque region of northern Spain, Logan spoke with people so involved with arboriculture that their entire way if life was shaped by it.  He describes the many products the trees provide, some of which supplied the needs of a now defunct iron industry, but also a very human love for competitive sport as entertainment.  It is inevitable that woodcutters will challenge each other in contests of skill.  It still happens today with the chainsaw, but in Leitza, Spain the tool of choice, both for work and contest, is the axe.  For millennia these people have been master woodcutters.  Yearly a woodcutting contest draws competition from the rest of Europe.  The men of Leitza were usually the victors.  But there was an exception.  One year some French cutters arrived with a new form of axe.  It proved superior to the less advanced form used by the Basques.  After testing and studying the new blade, the village smith copied it.  The woodcutters of Leitza adopted it and went back to winning the woodcutting contests.  This change appears to have been the only significant change in the Leitza way of life in a very long time, probably centuries. 

To discover all this rich history Logan had to travel the planet.  Each chapter in Sprout Lands is the story of how people in a particular region used coppice and pollard to direct and control the harvest from trees, and how those trees helped shape the local culture.  His travels took him to the British Isles, Spain’s Basque region, Japan, California and other regions with the shared practices.   He met generous people willing to share their knowledge and their culture.  What emerges from the text is that these disparate and geographically separated groups shared elements of the same culture.  One has to ask if this similarity is the nature of man or a product of the trees.  The obvious answer is this culture emerges as a result of a symbiosis of humans with trees.

Sprout Lands has a wider significance than one would first guess.  Logan collected his information from current masters of the practices still largely living in a relationship with trees that has proved successful for 10,000 years.  He learned technique, but also an attitude of respect for people whose way if life is old, but not primitive.  Consequently, there is information in Sprout Lands for people with an interest in trees as a harvestable crop, trees as a significant part of the environment, and trees as a shaper of human culture.  Interaction with trees is an example of the direction our human population must go if we are to strike a sustainable balance with nature as a whole.  I strongly recommend Sprout Lands to anyone who might be interested in a tree, or many trees.  You will enjoy the journey.

American Birds: A Literary Companion
Edited by Andrew Rubenfeld and Terry Tempest Williams
Library of America, 2020

Published by the Library of America, American Birds: A Literary Companion presents a fascinating and rich selection of writing inspired by personal encounters with birds. From Native American songs to the contemporary obsession with Big Year birding, its 250 or so pages sparkle with accounts from titans of American ornithology and doyens of American literature. 

The companion’s horizon is broad—with diversity in the chronological extent of the work, the breadth of species featured, and the context in which they are written about. The result is a dynamic pace, moving between longer reflections and shorter poems without ever jarring. 

The book opens with a foreword from Terry Tempest Williams and an introduction by Andrew Rubenfeld. Of the two, it is Rubenfeld’s that establishes the most personal connection to the endeavor. From the efforts of his first day of birding to a careful mapping out of the literary landscape of each period covered, Rubenfeld’s comprehensive statement is required reading as prelude to what follows. He provides the connective tissue for what is, of necessity, a varied assemblage. 

Tackling American Birds from start to finish on first reading brings great reward. Of course, it is perfectly suited to dip in and out of—to inspire efforts on a crisp spring morning in Central Park, or in advance of a trek in the High Sierras. But to follow the book’s chronological path at least once is to better appreciate changing styles of writing, and shifts in the prevailing concerns of those who have felt compelled to record both the wonder and the malaise of the American environment as charted by its birds. 

We walk alongside Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as they journey west, and search for birds and flowers with Emerson and Thoreau near Walden Pond. We read Audubon’s detailed description of the behavior of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, ending on the rather macabre observation that the bird’s claws “remain cramped to the spot for several hours after death.” And there is the magic of Walt Whitman’s “Birds Migrating at Midnight,” describing something that we all might know is happening but would struggle to describe with such facility and clarity. 

A by-product of any well-set anthology are the discoveries and new connections it can inspire. In particular, reading of the “warped night air” in Richard Wilbur’s “Barred Owl” from 2000 reminded me of the equally dark memory described in George Cary Eggleston’s “Midnight” from 1874—both poems managing to balance the winsome with the terrifying.  

In this, and other ways, American Birds truly helps to establish an entirely new perspective on my fascination with birds and the environment we share with them. I found myself looking back on particular species in a new light, and recalling some of the wilder Californian landscapes I had the good fortune to walk with a greater sense of connection, respect, and—dare I say—fondness. Indeed after my own first reading, I was left in a state similar to that described by John Haines in the closing lines of “If the Owl Calls Again”: “And when the morning climbs / the limbs / we’ll part without a sound, / fulfilled, floating / homeward as / the cold world awakens.” 

There is just one break with the book’s chronological protocol. W. S. Merwin’s “Unknown Bird” of 2001—though technically preceding Noah Strycker’s efforts in unpicking the vagaries of American airline scheduling—appears last. The positioning is far from accidental. In the closing piece, Merwin describes the single “fluted phrase” that is gone as suddenly as it appears. It perfectly describes what ought to be the true joy of birding—that all is not knowable—that the heard but unseen can be as rewarding as the photographed and assigned. Accepting the possibility of the unsolved ornithological mystery is key to the joy of birding, driving our determination to discover, and our joy in doing so. 

The book too is a joy—an escape on a wet weekend upstate, respite on a long flight overseas, or as a prompt to the greater riches of American environmental writing—of which this book is but a snapshot. It is also a reminder of the existential crisis we find ourselves in. And it is because of this that American Birds should be required reading for many different audiences. For birders, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the history of their pursuit, charted by its pioneers. For historians, it follows the ebb and flow of American history, charted by some of the nation’s most unexpected and unsung heroes. And for us all, it offers salutary lessons through journal, poetry, and prose of the importance of protecting our fragile earth. 

Birds of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama 
Andrew Vallely and Dale Dyer
Princeton University Press, 2018

Imagine that you are walking through a humid broad-leaf forest in the Panamanian Darién, completely soaked. You don’t know if your clothes are waterlogged from sweat or precipitation, but probably both. It’s been over an hour since you’ve even seen a bird, and the heat of the late morning is starting to wear on you. You’re about to sit down and enjoy a granola bar when you hear a few chip notes. In seconds the vegetation around you abounds with birds. Tanagers dart between toucanets in the canopy, antwrens and foliage-gleaners work through vine tangles, and the understory is alive with brush-finches. You drink in these creatures through your binoculars, making a mental note of every field mark, foraging maneuver, and call note. Within three minutes most of the mixed-species flock has vanished into the forest, leaving you with the task of identifying everything you just saw. Field guides exist for just this purpose: to help naturalists identify species by studying them before they actually see them, and placing their observations in the context of known biodiversity after an encounter. Birds of Central America, by Andrew Vallely and Dale Dyer, enables students of ornithology to identify the birds of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama and think about them in the context of a regional avifauna like never before. 

Creating a field guide to birds of Central America (the landmass between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Darién Gap) is no easy task. Nearly 1,200 species have been documented in the region, providing prospective authors with the challenge of adequately incorporating them into a book. The vast literature on the region’s avifauna has tackled this problem in different ways. Classic texts like Stiles and Skutch’s A Field Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica (1989) and Howell and Webb’s Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (1998) treat each species they include with immense visual and descriptive detail, yet limit the geographic scope of their books to political and biogeographic subsets of the Central American avifauna. However, these books are physically cumbersome, and the separated plates and text require patience for contemporary users. Others, like Ber Van Perlo’s illustrated checklist Birds of Mexico and Central America (2006), cram sloppy illustrations with minimal information into a tiny book that’s hardly useable as a field guide or reference material. 

A plethora of field guides bridge this spectrum of quality, and evade the challenge of discussing and depicting all birds in Central America by focusing on specific countries or regions. Richard Garrigues and Robert Dean’s The Birds of Costa Rica (2006) is a popular example of this middle ground. The book is fairly small, and conforms to the modern format of having the plates opposite the text and range map on a single spread. However, it only has one or two illustrations for each species, and the text about habitat and distribution is fairly abridged. These features make Garrigues and Dean very user friendly, especially for visiting tourists who may not have prior experience with tropical birds, but it lacks the oomph of top field guides, such as Sibley (2000), Svensson et al. (1999), and Jaramillo et al. (2006). Granted, the regions covered in these field guides (North America, Western Palearctic, Chile), have species that have been extensively studied for centuries, allowing for very detailed species accounts, but the last few decades have seen such a development in our understanding of field identification and life histories of Central American birds that not including such information in modern, popular literature seems like a crime. 

Similar books have followed Garrigues and Dean, such as Angehr (2010), Fagan and Komar (2016), and Chavarria-Durriaux et al. (2018), which have more detailed species accounts and quite a few helpful vignettes, but remain handicapped by their recycled illustrations by Robert Dean. Dean’s illustrations are quite good, but often fall short of lifelike depictions of structure and behavior, and the extent of geographic variation in species across Central America. However, recycling illustrations enables authors to produce field guides fairly quickly—hence the slew of books featuring Dean’s work released in the last few years.

Creating and organizing new illustrations for every species in Central America is a massive undertaking, yet Valley and Dyer rose to the challenge, spending ten years in the American Museum of Natural History’s study skin collections and in the field. The payoff from this decade of work is remarkable, with all nearly 1,200 species represented. 

Readers are immediately drawn to Dyer’s rich paintings, which reflect his experience as a professional illustrator and formal training as a fine artist. Rather than the crisp, hyper-realistic illustrations in Svensson et al., Dyer’s work is soft and rich. His care in creating and depicting color is top-notch, excellently capturing the subtle browns and greens of challenging groups like woodcreepers and forest flycatchers, which many tropical field guides struggle to accurately depict. Life-like shading makes his best illustrations emerge from the page in a more realistic way than Dean’s fairly flat images, and Guy Tudor’s, whose images pop because of strong highlighting rather than smartly constructed colors and shadows.

Dyer also excels at depicting birds’ postures and structure—nearly all of his perched birds have a well-defined and developed center of gravity. I especially like the antbirds, whose varying foraging niches can often be inferred from their illustration. Dot-winged Antwrens are shown crouched on thin perches, necks extended and tails cocked, enabling the reader to imagine them flouncing through a flock or probing a cluster of dead leaves. Bicolored Antbird is hunched on a vertical branch, enabling one to imagine an army ant swarm crawling below it. Perches and foraging behavior are also frequently shown: on a single plate, a Worm-eating Warbler extends its bill toward a cluster of dead leaves, and a Swainson’s Warbler has two feet firmly on the ground while an Ovenbird walks with one leg in the air. These smart depictions allow readers to imagine birds in their element before consulting the text on the opposite page, becoming familiar with a species before they encounter it in the field. Additionally, most species are represented by multiple images, painting a picture of intraspecific variation due to season, sex, polymorphism, or geography. 

Having plates by a single artist contributes to the visual continuity of the book, giving it an edge over Birds of Peru (Schulenberg et al. [2007]) and Birds of North America(Dunn and Alderfer [2017]). Studying the variation in Dyer’s illustrations is a fascinating endeavor, allowing the reader to see the evolution of an artist over a decade. Some early illustrations in the book (i.e., Chlorophonias) lack the nuance of later work. Several tanagers, orioles, euphonias, and other passerines also have a slightly exaggerated hook at the tip of the bill, a feature some of Dyer’s paintings show in Birds of Peru. And while birds’ structure is usually spot on, a few groups stand out as not quite right, such as slightly rotund swifts, large-headed screech-owls (which strikes me as weird since the nightjars are exceptional), and oddly proportioned Pterodroma petrels. 

In spite of a few challenging groups like seabirds and swifts being a hair off, Dyer depicts many species in flight through vignettes, illustrating pigeons and raptors particularly well. The Buteogallus plate is one of my favorites I’ve seen of the genus, showing confusing variation between similar species in a concise yet thorough way. More illustrations of birds in flight would be welcome, particularly for more passerines. 

Additional vignettes augment the plates, depicting specific field marks such as tail patterns (i.e., Myiarchus and nightjars), displays (manakins, cotingas), and foraging (I love the Red-headed Barbet peering down a leaf). More vignettes and entire pages depicting birds at a distance, in bad light, and strange angles would significantly improve the quality of this guide. For example, woodcreepers are a challenging group for beginners and experts alike because they have similar plumages, and are difficult to get a good look at as they cling vertically to tree trunks, often high up or far from the observer. One vignette shows a single image of a Spot-crowned Woodcreeper from behind at a 45-degree angle, with a note on the plate about how difficult woodcreepers can be to identify in the field. An entire plate showing the eighteen species of Central American woodcreepers at this angle, and discussing the structural and plumage features that can be used to identify species given a poor look, would be groundbreaking for tropical field guides. 

Composing the thousands of vignettes and “standard” illustrations into organized plates is an additional art form that the authors have given substantial thought to. They explain their methodology in the introductory text, showing drabber plumages on the left side of the plate, and brighter ones on the right. Northern subspecies are placed above southern ones, western subspecies are on the left, and eastern on the right. However, conforming to a specific format is not always practical for vastly different taxa, which have unique features that need highlighting. The additional constraints of printing logistics further influence the authors’ decision-making processes. The resulting plates vary in their format, some with twenty images (Yellow Warblers do have a lot of variation to show), and others with five (the “Cling” rail complex). More standardized arrangements would improve the book, resulting in the continuity that has contributed to the success of books like Sibley (2000) and Svensson et al. (1999). Whether dense or sparse, all species on a given plate are shown to scale, with the scale-percentage printed in the upper right-hand corner. 

The book’s text is as worthy of praise as its illustrations are. Vallely excels at conveying complex and detailed information concisely. As the plates are, the species accounts are well organized. They begin with a broad description of the birds’ global range, thereby providing context to the variation addressed within Central America. Distributions within Central America are very well described, with up to four sentences reviewing the species’ status within the major habitat types and biogeographic regions outlined in the introduction. Citations in the status and distribution section are nice to see, referring readers to more detailed discussions of occurrence in the published literature. Elevational distributions are also provided for most species for which they are relevant, which makes a handy quick reference for similar parapatric species. Microhabitat use is described in the “habits” section, with descriptions of behavior that aid in identification and inform the reader on the species’ ecology and life history. Field marks are described succinctly and accurately, with the most important features italicized. Structure and flight style are also adequately discussed, though not necessarily consistently across families. Another inconsistency in the species text is the lengths of birds, shown on the upper-right of the account. Most species have a single measurement listed, though a range of lengths is given for a few. Fortunately, different lengths are provided for species with strong sexual dimorphism. It would have been nice for the authors to include additional morphological metrics, such as wingspan and mass. The space between the species’ Latin name and the margin seems to allow for this. 

Descriptions of vocalizations and other sounds are also well done, with transliterations of the sound modified by descriptions of syntax and pitch. Multiple types of songs and calls are described for each species, and often compared to similar sounds made by different species. This is quite welcomed, as the majority of field guides fail to make this very useful comparison. 

The introductory material is also well written, outlining the objectives of the book and explaining the authors’ methodology and decision-making process. Good additions to this section are two neat tables, one defining species status terms (common, uncommon, etc.), and the other describing the habitats later used in the species accounts. Six pages are dedicated to discussing the biogeography of Central America, entailing a quick summary of a region: where it’s located, a description of its contemporary vegetation, what representative bird species live there, and even a bit of geologic history. These summaries provide context for the diversity of birds in the book, and help teach readers how to think critically about habitat and distribution. 

Large political and topographic maps in the introduction also help readers visualize the biogeographic patterns discussed, and provide a reference for the smaller maps in the species accounts. Depicting species distributions in field guides is particularly challenging in the Neotropics, where ranges are often confined to specific elevations and tiny valleys—features difficult to show well on a small map. Furthermore, much remains to be learned about bird occurrence, with new records and range expansions constantly being discovered. To account for these nuances, the authors use four different symbols to depict localized populations, vagrants, historic records, and uncertain distribution. These symbols complement the coarser range maps that are color coded by seasonality. One could complain that these maps are too coarse, and don’t reflect the actual distribution of the species and the habitats it occupies. Several maps in Fagan and Komar (2016) used GIS to produce very fine-scale maps of specific habitats (i.e., Pine-Oak forest for Ocellated Quail), but it can often be difficult for a reader to know exactly where they are in relation to the small, pink squiggles, which may not make the extra work to create these tiny, intricate figures. Preparing the reader to assess habitat and think about biogeography relative to their location is arguably more important. 

Other helpful features in the book include an index for the families on the jacket flaps, an annotated list of “marginal, dubious, and hypothetical” species, and notes about taxonomy. The book closes with an extensive bibliography of over 600 references, further reflecting the decade’s worth of homework the authors have done.

The wealth of information described above fits nicely into a book that is on the larger and heavier end of a field guide. It weighs in at three pounds, and measures slightly shorter and not as wide as the big Sibley (2000), but is a hair thicker. While it is admittedly cumbersome relative to the smaller country guides illustrated by Robert Dean, it is a feather for those used to schlepping Howell and Webb (1999) or Hilty and Brown (1986). Readers who are concerned about weight may prefer the Dean series for carrying in the field, but anybody living in or preparing for a trip to Central America would be cheating themselves if they did not prioritize Vallely and Dyer for consultation. 

Another logistical consideration is the digital media currently available to aid field identification. Several apps of varying quality have been released on the birds of Central America, though they are admittedly focused on Costa Rica and Panama. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s app “Merlin” is also an excellent option, now offering a paragraph of identification and natural history information, range maps, photos, and recordings for virtually all of the species in Central America, available for free. These apps make great supplements to big field guides. Valley and Dyer is also available for Kindle, making it more portable. I have not reviewed the Kindle edition, so cannot comment on how the digital format affects its utility. 

All things considered, Vallely and Dyer is a must for any amateur or professional tropical bird enthusiast. The book demonstrates the payoff of ten years of hard work by two dedicated authors, ranking alongside the field guides to the birds of Peru (Schulenberg et al. [2007]) and New Guinea (Pratt and Beehler) as the best representations of a tropical avifauna. Aside from at least one minor typo (the range maps for Blue-throated and Turquoise-browed Motmots are switched), the only things that would make it a better field guide would be more vignettes and identification discussions of difficult families and field scenarios, and slightly more standardized arrangements of illustrations on the plate. I also look forward to seeing an edition in Spanish. Whether or not you live Central America or will be traveling there, perusing Vallely and Dyer is like taking a trip there yourself. Look a little harder and you can almost taste the mossy cloud forest air.

Jacob Drucker 
Victor Emmanuel Nature Tours
January 2019

Birdwatching in New York City and on Long Island
Deborah Rivel and Kellye Rosenheim
University Press of New England, 2016

This is a must-have book for anyone who watches birds in the New York City area. Authors Deborah Rivel and Kellye Rosenheim have thoroughly investigated key sites—from birding hotspots to smaller parks and lesser know locations—offering an abundance of natural and cultural history as well as choice bits of arcana and advice.

Consider Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn: “one of the first rural cemeteries in the United States and the site of the Battle of Long Island in 1776.” It has “jaw-dropping views” and famous graves. “There are also infamous birds, such as the flock of Monk Parakeets that have taken up residence in the gothic spires of the gatehouse.” As with all of the major site descriptions, there is a listing of key species by season—so that you know this is a spring warbler hangout.

Or some useful suggestions about Randall’s Island: “Food is hit or miss here … One tip to score lunch: if there is construction going on, look nearby for a food truck.” All of the major site descriptions include information on how to get there by public transportation (if an option), in a car, or on foot. For Randall’s Island there are pedestrian walkways on the busy RFK Triborough Bridge but there are also the at-grade Randall’s Island connector from th Bronx, “with no schlepping up and down the Triborough’s staircases,” and the footbridge over the East River at 103rd Street.

Northern Manhattan’s Sherman Creek and Swindler Cove, “once a spot known for illegal dumping,” now form the centerpiece of the New York Restoration Project (thank you, Bette Midler). The birding here is “good but not great” although this is one of the few places in Manhattan where shorebirds can be seen with regularity. The authors point out that Muscota Marsh in Inwood a short distance away is better for peeps. They also note that “This can be a pleasant outing with non-birding friends, who will enjoy the gardens” of native plants while you do your birding thing. But if you really want to deal with those non-birding companions, try nearby Fort Tryon Park, “an elegant woodland with beautiful stone bridges, lovely gardens, leafy pathways, and breathtaking views over the Hudson … if the birds are not cooperating, the art [at the Cloisters] will more than satisfy.” With all those flowers keep an eye out, especially in the fall, for a hummingbird other than a Ruby-throated.

There are warnings. Four Sparrow Marsh in Brooklyn, for example: “Even though it was once designated Forever Wild, that status may not protect it from development … we cannot recommend the site for safety reasons.” Calvert Vaux Park, also in Brooklyn, is excellent for winter ducks (especially huge rafts of scaup), Horned Lark, and “interesting sparrows, some of which may also be lurking on the unused baseball fields to the north.” The shoreline, the authors point out, accumulates a huge amount of trash and insofar as few people “use the lonely area near the water … make sure you take along a friend.”

The book is full of interesting and sometimes off-beat birding tips. What about a former garbage dump such as the now reclaimed landfill at Freshkills on Staten Island? This ambitious park-in-progress in not yet fully open to the public but you can get a visitor permit from the New York City Parks Department or join a birding tour by the local nature organization. Mariner’s Marsh Park, temporarily closed for the removal of nasty chemicals, offers old-growth and transitional woodlands as well as ten connected freshwater ponds, each one somewhat different. Check for the park’s reopening. The authors claim that this will become a real birding hotspot. Almost all of the sites in the book include postal addresses, telephone numbers, and websites in addition to information about organized walks, trail conditions, opening times, entrance fees, parking, food stores and cafés, restrooms, poison ivy, and ticks.

In Queens the Rockaway Beach (Arverne) Endangered Species Nesting Area is dedicated to the protection of Piping Plovers, Least Terns, and American Oystercatchers. “You are going to be glad that you brought your scope,” the authors write, “as the viewing is from afar so as not to disturb the birds, which as protected by the Urban Park Rangers.” The Queens Botanical Garden and its counterparts in Brooklyn and the Bronx are excellent venues for birds, bees, and butterflies due to the native plants. The scale of the Queens and Brooklyn gardens “makes finding and viewing birds a cinch.”

Of course any site guide to the New York City area must have ample write-ups of the major parks. Central Park gets a detailed dozen pages. Coverage in Manhattan of the Battery, Washington Square, Union Square, Madison Square, Bryant Park, Riverside Park along the Hudson River, Carl Schurz Park along the East River, and Inwood Hill is ample and focused. The same attentive writing about a site and its birds can also be found for the other boroughs: Prospect Park, Forest Park, Alley Pond, Van Cortlandt, Pelham Bay, Clove Lakes, Clay Pit Ponds, and all of the units of Gateway National Recreation Area, including Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge—to name just a few of the larger and more popular areas.

And keep in mind that a third of the book (beyond the space limitations of this review) is about birding on Long Island, from Jones Beach to Montauk Point—and a lot in between.

Deborah Rivel, who has supplied the truly fine photographs, is on the board of New York (state) Audubon. Kellye Rosenheim is New York City Audubon’s director of development as well as a bird walk leader in Central Park and elsewhere. So it is no surprise that the front matter to this volume is replete with information ranging from pelagic birding to hawk watches to help for injured birds to birding ethics. The back matter includes bar charts noting the seasonal abundance of the species found in the area covered by the book plus lists of rarities and accidentals and a useful bibliography. The maps deserve special praise for their accuracy and clarity.

Why New York City with just Long Island added on? The book is over 300 pages as it is, so I suppose a publishing decision about what to include and what not to include was inevitable. Montauk is over a hundred miles from the city. There are key birding areas in Westchester or at Bear Mountain, Sterling Forest, and even Bashakill that are somewhat closer—not to mention New Jersey. Based on the likely popularity and success of this site guide, perhaps the authors are planning a sequel to cover the northern reaches. I certainly hope so.

The Unfeathered Bird
Katrina van Grouw
Princeton University Press, 2013

The first thing you notice about this book is the alert and watchful attitude of the male Indian Peafowl (or peacock) on the dust jacket. He is dark and jagged, dangerous looking and has a full set of ghostly display feathers that make his head come off the page in your direction. He is staring at you with no eyes. He is, after all, a skeleton and the threat he poses is more of a dare. He seems to ask, “Do you have the nerve to see what’s inside? It might change your appreciation of your beloved birds. And change is always risky.” 

The skill to create this masterful drawing along with the intelligence and nerve to use it in such an important place are indicative of the high level of work and unfettered creativity to be found inside. The drawings reveal detail and shape so well you feel you should be able to pick up the bones and rotate them for better understanding. Even more impressive is the way artist/author van Grouw manages to get a drawing of a skeleton to impart something of the behavior of the bird. Or maybe, by revealing such detail of form, she is demonstrating the way structure and behavior are linked, influencing each other in an eternal dance of changes. This might be one of the reasons the book exists at all. 

In fact, she says just that in the introduction, but not until after she rushes to reassure the squeamish that there are no “guts or gizzards” included in the book. While this is technically accurate, there is a gray area where you could accuse her of transgressing the spirit of the statement. The “ick” response is generally triggered by the presence of soft tissue, especially if it looks wet or slimy. You will find windpipes (tracheae), tongues, voice boxes (syrinxes or syringes) and muscles in some of the drawings. Probably the worst offender is the Trumpet Manucode (p. 278, a bird-of-paradise) with its “extraordinary coiled windpipe” which may well be taken for a pile of intestines were it not for the neatness of the coil. Thus, the extremely sensitive reader might be bothered by this breach. To her credit, however, van Grouw made these soft parts as dry as the bones, but still just as alive. Her treatment is well within the spirit of her promise. 

Her second disclaimer, that there is “no biochemistry and very little physiology” is completely accurate. I did, however, have to crack open my Webster’s 11th to be sure of that. It would indeed be difficult to cover much biochemistry or physiology without the organs, tissues and cells, a.k.a. “guts and gizzards” dispensed with in the first disclaimer. So, having fenced off these two big areas of anatomy from our fragile senses, what remains? Morphology – and the book has it in spades. 

The organization of the material in the book is as logical as it is delightfully unorthodox. Rather than covering the various aspects of avian structure in modern taxonomic order she reaches back to “the first truly scientific classification of the natural world – the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus”. What her book has in common with that one is a concern with outward appearances and the structures which form them. She invokes the concept of convergent evolution as an explanation of the underlying logic. It serves well. However, if you are disturbed by this heresy, try to remember this is ostensibly an art book. It just happens to have a more than generous helping of clear, understandable text to help you comprehend what is in the drawings. 

The book is divided into two uneven parts. The small first part uses more familiar species, to Europeans at least, to demonstrate and explain the basic structures common to all birds. Van Grouw is thorough but doesn’t belabor the point she is making. As an example, there are six drawings revealing the left leg and foot of a Mallard covering two adjacent pages (pp. 16-17). The text describes how the leg fits together and how it articulates, but it is all in plain English, with little reliance on technical nomenclature. She does call a “thigh bone” a femur, but a hip is still a hip and a knee is a knee. She wants you to understand the basic structure so when you look at the leg of another bird, a Southern Screamer for example, you see the same parts, but also the differences – that is, after all, the point of the book. She isn’t trying to bury you in information. To prove my point (and belabor it a bit), she describes the scaly, unfeathered part of a bird’s legs and feet, but did not once use the term podotheca. 

The second, and by far the larger part of the book, describes anatomical structures found in birds with shared behaviors or niches and therefore, similar adaptations. Obviously, there isn’t room for treatment of every species with a shared feature, so van Grouw describes the basic elements using a single species. Then she brings in descriptions of variations on that theme using both image and text. When you have finished reading the section and looking at the drawings you haven’t learned how to differentiate a Mallard from a scoter, but you know they are as different as they are similar. You can pick up an incredible cache of information if you want it, but that isn’t a requirement for enjoying the book.

Perhaps the one feature that distinguishes this collection of bird drawings from others is van Grouw’s ability to show how all these bones relate to each other in a live bird. Each skeleton exudes the nature – personality if you will allow it – of the species it is. You can feel the weight of a heavy bird like the Maribou Stork (p. 176); likewise the lack of it in the White-throated Hummingbird (p. 81). The Common Black-headed Gull (p. 151) has its bill open, its neck a little extended, and its wings a bit out and down. You can almost hear it complaining. The same is true for the Jackass Penguin (pp. 112-113) only its upside-down head is tucked under its belly as if it were braying at something low and behind it. These are very believable, active poses you are not going to find elsewhere. 

Van Grouw’s sense of humor adds to the mix, too. High on the list in this category is a skeleton Budgerigar (p. 57) perched on a dowel, not a branch, looking at itself in a mirror with an attached bell. I won’t try to explain it. It’s too deep and too funny all at the same time. There is also a Eurasian Sparrowhawk (p. 40), no feathers, with a Eurasian Collared Dove in its talons – caption: “Feathers removed and feathers being removed.” Priceless! 

Finally, the book ends with European Robin (p. 282) – dare I say “Cock Robin” – and he (it) is most assuredly dead. As dead, in fact, as all the others are alive. It’s as though van Grouw intended to accentuate the lack of life in this drawing just to point out how much of it there is on the preceding pages. The point was well made. All that remains is the index, but even there a Mallard is laughing at you to begin it and showing you its backside to end it. You get the feeling he’d stick out his tongue if he had one. It would be easy to dismiss this work as “just another coffee table book” if you didn’t look at anything but its size and shape. And certainly, it would serve well in that capacity, but there is much more to this volume than some pretty pictures and some words nobody will care to read. There is a synergy of element and effort in this work that produced a volume I will treasure for a long, long time. 

To Katrina van Grouw, I say bravo. And thank you. Now, get to work on the one with guts and gizzards. I can hardly wait. 

The Warbler Guide
Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle, Drawings by Catherine Hamilton
Princeton University Press, 2013

The Warbler Guide joins an ever-growing list of reference guides aimed at aiding in the identification of single groups of birds. Seabirds, hawks, shorebirds, hummingbirds, pigeons, woodpeckers, and sparrows, to name just a few, have all had guides covering them published in the last twenty to thirty years. Some groups have had multiple treatments. Indeed, this is not the first treatment for New World warblers. That distinction probably goes to Warblers of the Americas: An Identification Guide by Jon Curson, David Quinn, and David Beadle (1994, Houghton Mifflin Co.), closely followed in time by Warblers by Jon Dunn and Kimball Garrett (1997, Houghton Mifflin Co.). Though both books were from the same publisher, the former covered the entire family including Central and South American species, while the latter (part of the Peterson Field Guides series) covered only species north of the Mexican border, as does the new Stephenson and Whittle book. 

The two earlier warbler guides followed an older field guide tradition of being illustrated exclusively, or nearly so, by paintings while the new guide uses photographs. I must confess to a longstanding bias towards artwork over photographs in field guides. 

However, the tremendous increase in the capability of photography with the advent of digital technology and the huge increase in the availability of quality photographs is forcing me to reevaluate my old biases, at least for some uses. I still think good artwork works best for the traditional field guide, especially for new birders and country wide guides. But for specialty guides focusing on specific groups such as this guide, the ability to present over a thousand photographs as this guide does, showing birds from many different angles demonstrates that photography is adding new dimensions to the identification guide. Artwork, however, is not completely obsolete. There are two pages (pp. 114-115) of drawings illustrating undertails by Catherine Hamilton as well as two pages of silhouettes (pp. 544-545) and probably hundreds of drawn icons. 

In its use of photographs this guide seems to me to be like the recent Crossley Guides (The Crossley Guide: Eastern Birds by Richard Crossley (2011) and The Crossley Guide: Raptors by Richard Crossley, Jerry Liguori, and Brian Sullivan (2013), both Princeton University Press). These books are attempting to give the birder the kind of broad experience with seeing birds from many angles and situations that in the past was only possible with years of field experience. While they can certainly help immensely with that goal there is still no substitute for actual time spent in the field. 

The first thing that needs to be said about this guide is that it is not a field guide! This is in no way meant as a criticism. I don’t think the authors intended birders to be carrying this guide around in their back pockets – it is just too big and heavy for that! It will, however, become I believe, a constantly used resource for the vast amount of information contained in it about warbler ID. The book begins with 130 pages of introductory material on the organization of the book, what to look for in identifying warblers, ageing and sexing warblers and the single largest section, learning and identifying warbler songs, chip notes and flight calls. The information is generally clearly presented and often extensively and well-illustrated. I did note a small handful of things that I thought were slips or odd choices. There is a well done and fairly extensive four page (pp. 12-15) “Topographic Tour” labeling the various parts and feather groups and the terms for them that will be important in understanding identification points in the main species accounts. However, four pages later in a section on “Facial contrast” the captions of the illustrations of Townsend’s and Blackthroated Green warblers refer to “auriculars”, but that term is not defined until p. 27. In the topography section the auriculars are labeled “cheek patch”. A similar mixing of terms occurs on p. 27 where in a photo of the head of a male Blackburnian Warbler it is described as having a “Distinctive triangular cheek patch” while on p. 28 a female Blackburnian is described with “dark facial marks form a triangular pattern”. I also found a couple of the choices of species to illustrate points to be a little odd. On p. 26 a photograph merely labeled “Redstart” is used to illustrate the behavior of flashing tail and wing feathers while feeding. The “Redstart” pictured is a Painted Redstart from the southwest. Why not use a picture of an American Redstart, a far more common and widespread bird that many birders will encounter? Similarly, on p. 30 the bird chosen to illustrate “eyelines” is a Golden-cheeked Warbler which has a limited range in Texas. Why not a Blue-winged Warbler, widespread in the eastern United States? These are I admit minor points and I have had enough experience with publishing that I suspect a number of these choices may have been made by photo editors, rather than the authors. 

The heart of the introductory material is the large section on warbler vocalizations. In teaching warbler songs, rather than the transliterations (i.e. a Yellow Warbler’s sweet, sweet, oh so sweet) used in most guides, the authors use sonograms, an illustrative method pioneered in field guides by Chandler Robbins, Bertel Bruun and Herbert Zim in their classic Birds of North America field guide (1966, Golden Press). However, Stephenson’s and Whittle’s use of sonograms is far more extensive and elaborate than in that earlier guide. Serious warbler students will want to download the companion audio files available for $5.99 from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library website at: macaulaylibrary.org/guide/the-warbler-guide.

The introductory material ends with an extensive set of usually double page “quick finder” charts to aid in rapidly narrowing down an identification of a warbler. There are spreads of photos of warbler faces, full profiles of side views, 45° angle views, underside views, and illustrations of spring and fall eastern warblers and one spread of western species. These are followed by the previously mentioned two pages of undertail drawings. Finally, in keeping with the authors stress on learning warbler vocalizations there are 22 pages of sonogram “finder charts” to help in narrowing down and identifying warbler songs, chip notes and flight calls. I cannot in this short review do justice to the authors’ extensive and truly impressive organization and presentation of this sonogram material. All of this is introductory to the extensive presentation of sonograms of warbler songs in each individual species account to be found in the main part of the book. The coverage of warbler vocalizations is truly the most ground-breaking part of this very impressive guide. 

The main part of the book is, of course the actual species accounts. Once again, the authors use an innovative approach in their arrangement of the species accounts. Rather than a traditional taxonomic sequence found in many guides or some arbitrary arrangement by color or habitat or some other chosen character, the species are arranged alphabetically by English name. When I saw this arrangement upon first opening the book I was prepared not to like it, being a traditionalist and usually favoring a taxonomic sequence, but the more I used the book the more I found the arrangement quite handy. There is a two-page (pp. 540-541) presentation of the current thinking on warbler taxonomy. 

The individual species accounts contain information on field marks, close-up photos of “Distinctive Views”, a section of “Additional Photos”, a section on “Comparison Species”, a section on ageing and sexing, range maps, and of course, an extensive presentation of sonograms of songs with comparisons to similar songs of other 

species. A problem I found with some of the range maps is that where a river forms the boundary between states, the river is shown, but not the heavier line of the state border. This can be confusing, especially along the Rio Grande on the Texas/Mexico border. 

At the back of the book are some pages on “Similar Non-warbler Species”, two pages on hybrid warblers (though Brewster’s and Lawrence’s, included here, already had a spread in the main species accounts), a quiz and review section, flight photos and discussion, charts of measurements and habitat and behavior information and a glossary. 

Two-page accounts for seven warbler species found only on the US/Mexico border (Crescent-chested, Fan-tailed, etc.) are included in the back of the book after the Yellow-throated Warbler account, though the Table of Contents in the front places them in alphabetical order with the rest. There is no mention that this is a section of border rarities. These seven accounts contain a glaring layout error: for each species the three “ Additional Photos” are unlabeled on the bottom of the first page of the write-up and the “Comparison Species” photos at the top of the second page are mislabeled as “Distinctive Views”. 

Overall, this is a very impressive guide and the few problems I have noted can be easily corrected in later printings or editions. 

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More on the Warbler Guide

In my review of The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle (2013, Princeton University Press) in the October 2013 issue of the Linnaean News-Letter, I mentioned among the many features of the book a series of two page “quick finders” that compare various views of warblers. These “quick finders” are available online as free downloads from the website thewarblerguide.com. They are available in either PDF or JPG file formats. Also available for free download at the website is a PDF file of a four page guide to ageing and sexing of fall eastern warblers. In addition to thumbnail photographs illustrating various plumages and brief descriptions of the relevant marks to look for, the guide lists which species cannot be aged and/or sexed in the fall. 

After the October issue of the News-Letter came out, Linnaean member Rick Wright informed me of a major paper on warbler songs by Lynds Jones published in The Wilson Bulletin over a hundred years ago (Jones, L. 1900. Warbler Songs. Wilson Bulletin 12(1):156). As in the new Stephenson and Whittle guide, Jones attempted to simplify the learning of warbler songs by grouping the species by characteristics of the songs with no regard to the then accepted taxonomic arrangement of the warblers. Jones describes the songs of forty-six species, stating that “eleven species [have] yet to be studied.” The Jones paper can be downloaded at sora.unm.edu/node/3075. The paper is a fascinating look at the state of knowledge of warbler songs before the advent of modern aids such as recordings and sonograms. I thank Rick for bringing it to my attention. 

Birders: The Central Park Effect
A Film by Jeffrey Kimball
Music Box Films, 2012

On occasion an individual has a vision coupled with the ability and drive to translate their vision into something we can all feel and understand. Jeffrey Kimball, Society member and former Council member, has done this in his excellent film Birders: The Central Park Effect. Jeff shot, wrote the narration, produced, and directed the film, scheduled to be shown at the Society’s meeting on January 8, 2013. Daniel Baer edited the film. Jeff’s wife, Pamela Hogan, and Tom Casciato are the executive producers. Since starting the film five years ago, Jeff has been totally committed to it. Working about half of each year on the film for the first four years, he took out a bank loan in the fifth year so he could work full time on the film and finish it.

In his film Jeff highlights the green habitat that is Central Park in the midst of Manhattan’s concrete pavements and buildings. It is an area for recreation for New Yorkers, as well as a valuable habitat for migrant and resident birds. Jeff concentrates on the birds and birders in Central Park. His camera work is excellent. His narration and dialogue lead the viewer though the park in different seasons of the year, underlining through remarks by the people birding in the park, what a wonderful habitat it is for birds and birders.

Jeff was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Bay area. In high school he played drums in a band, but said he didn’t have a sense of rhythm. He also tried acting, but felt self-conscious in front of a camera. He went to Stanford for his undergraduate work. The summer between high school and college was a turning point for him. He became aware that what he really wanted to do was go into film. That summer he discovered three films, among the many he watched, that he found fascinating: A Clockwork Orange, Casablanca, and Chinatown. He found a different thing interesting in each. In A Clockwork Orange he admired how the music and visuals were used to create a technical tour de force. Casablanca had a compelling story and in Chinatown the camera work and music were skillfully combined to create a mood. That fall he entered college and took a course in film aesthetics. Later his first film production course was in the making of documentaries.

At twenty-five Jeff came to New York to enter New York University for his Master of Fine Arts in film. He met his wife, Pamela Hogan, who makes documentaries, in the larger film community of New York City. While living and working in New York, Jeff still does a lot of work in California, returning to San Francisco several times a year. When he began working he worked in editing rooms for a variety of types of films before doing music for feature films. He organized the music for among others, Good Will Hunting, A Bronx Tale, Flirting with Disaster, and Swingers.

While in New York Jeff signed up for Joe DiCostanzo’s American Museum of Natural History bird walks in Central Park. He was delighted at the number of birds it was possible to see there every day. During the winter after he joined Joe’s walks, Chuck McAlexander called him and asked him if he wanted to go birding in the park in January. Jeff must have hesitated, because Chuck assured him you could see birds in Central Park in the winter. They saw twenty-six species that day. Again, Jeff was impressed and excited that here was a place in the middle of New York City where you could see birds any day of the year and both his wife and Tom Casciato told him he had reached a stage where he was in a position to make a movie on the birds of Central Park. And so it began…

Jeff knew he wanted to film many birds for his production, and thought he might have to film birds in other places, and then include them by noting that they were also found in Central Park. As he worked he found there was no need to film elsewhere and he took many beautiful shots of birds, all in Central Park. After two years he had enough footage of birds for the film and began filming people birding in Central Park. There were definitely talking points he hoped to bring out in interviewing birders in the park and wrote out questions before he met people to walk and talk in the park. Sometimes he was surprised by the answers he elicited. When I saw the film I was impressed by how articulate the people involved were, which, in part, is a tribute to Jeff’s skilled questioning in combination with excellent editing by Daniel Baer. Jeff said often the characters in the film came together in the editing room. All the people in the film sound natural and seem to be enjoying themselves.

In the first version of the film there was no narration. Those who attended a screening in 2011 thought narration would help to move visuals along, as for example, to make changes in seasons clear. Jeff world premiered his film at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin Texas in mid-March of 2012. HBO picked up the domestic TV rights to his film for a year. HBO will be premiering the film on July 16, 2012 at 9:00 pm. It will then be available on HBO On Demand. They have exclusive rights for six months and after that it can be shown on iTunes or available on DVD. A number of other groups have expressed an interest in Birder’s: The Central Park Effect, so stay tuned.

Jeff fits birding in when traveling with his family by birding early and returning in time to have breakfast with everyone. When his sixteen year old son, Ryder, saw Birder’s: The Central Park Effect, he said: “I get it, I get why you do it.” which pleased Jeff because he is concerned people understand the importance of parcels of land like Central Park and the value to humans and to wildlife in saving them. Jeff’s stepson, Aaron Profumo, will enter the Yale Drama School this fall, an exciting step for the whole family. Who knows, in the future Jeff and his stepson may meet on a set on opposite sides of the camera!

When Jeff finished Birders: The Central Park Effect he treated himself to a trip to Texas where he saw seventeen life birds.

As noted above, Geoffrey Nulle has scheduled a showing of Birders: The Central Park Effect for the Linnaean meeting on January 8, 2013. It is a documentary that has never been done before; a film you shouldn’t miss. Bring your friends. If they are not birders they will see an aspect of the park new to them. If they are birders they will appreciate Jeff’s focus on the park as a wonderful place for birds and birders, something to be valued and protected!