“Book Reviews” from Nebraska Bird Review (September 1987) 55(3)

Authors

Date of this Version

9-1987

Document Type

Article

Citation

“Book Reviews,” from Nebraska Bird Review (September 1987) 55(3).

Comments

Copyright 1987 Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union. Used by permission.

Abstract

Life Histories of North American Diving Birds. A. C. Bent. xiv + 240 + 55 pp. ot photographs. 5.375 x 8.5, Dover Publications, Inc. New York, paper, $6.95. Life Histories of North American Gulls and Terns. A. C. Bent. x + 338 + 93 pages of photographs, 5.375 x 8.5, Dover Publications, Inc. New York, paper $8.95. Dover has reprinted their original reprints of these books in the Bent series with no changes.

Wild Animals I Have Known. Ernest Thompson Seaton. xxvi + 356, 5 x 7.75, Penguin Books, New York, paper, $7.95. If this sounds familiar, it is. It was first published in 1898, and is now reissued as a part of the Penguin Nature Library.

Songs of the North. Sigurd Olson. xx+ 168 pp., 5 x 7.75, Penguin Books, New York, paper, $7.95. Howard Frank Mosher says in his introduction that these twenty selections from Olson’s writings fall in three overlapping categories: autobiographical, why he decided to teach, guide, and write; adventurous, his canoeing ventures into the Quetico-Superior Wilderness Area (and beyond) when it was wilderness; and interpretative, based on northern phenomena.

The Mammals of Britain and Europe. Anders Bjarvall and Staffan Ullstrom. 240 pp., 7.5 x 10, bibliography, index. Penguin Books, New York. cloth, $39.95. This book covers the animals (including wallabies, which have established feral colonies in England, bats, seals, walrus, dolphins, porpoise, and whales).

The Mute Swan. Mike Birkhead and Christopher Perrine, xiv+ 158 pp., 6.5 x 9.5, photographs, line drawings, bibliography, index. Penguin Books, New York, cloth. $36.95. The contents cover range and habitat, history and customs, Swan numbers, life-history studies; territories, breeding and life cycle; food and feeding, causes of mortality, and the future. There are Mute Swans in Europe, in Ireland, and feral flocks in North America, but the focus of this book is on England, with Scottish data frequently used.

The Birds of Israel. Uzi Paz, viii + 264 pp., 7.5 x 10, 60 color photographs by Yossi Eshbol, 29 drawings, bibliography, index, map of Israel in end papers. Penguin Books, New York, cloth, $26.95. This book covers 91 resident species, 33 summer residents and breeders, 121 passage migrants (39 of which breed in small numbers), 94 wintering species, and 127 accidentals (some with only 1 record), and 1 extinct, a total of 467. For each of these there is a description and an indication of its abundance.

A Field Guide to Seabirds of the World. Peter Harrison. 318 pp., 5.25 x 8.5, 741 color photographs, about 155 line drawings, range maps, bibliography, index. Penguin Books, New York, paper, $24.95. This is, as the title indicates, the pocket guide version (60,000 words) of the author’s 220,000-word Seabirds: An Identification Guide and includes the rediscovered Fiji (Macgillivray’s) Petrel, and the new Amsterdam Albatross.

Birding around the World: A Guide to Observing Birds Everywhere You Travel. Aileen R. Lotz, xiv + 266 pp. 6 x 9.25, basic glossary, basic bibliography, index, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, paper, $10.95. A “how-to” type of book—equipment, definitions, methods, whatever.