Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Birds June 20, 2008
This is a wonderful book, of interest even to those who never take a pair of binoculars into the woods in the hope of glimpsing a favorite bird. Scott is a literate, knowledgeable, and entertaining writer who navigates deftly through the history of birding in the United States.
Recently we heard him give a talk based on this book--if you have the chance to read or to hear him, don't miss out!
What a storyteller Scott Weidensaul is June 20, 2008
I found as a lover of American history that this book naturally added context to so much history I already knew. Scott Weidensaul wrote a bird watching book for the rest of us. Most books I read, I give away. This book I not only will keep my own copy but I will buy more to give to others which is my highest prize.
Exposing American Ornithology's Roots, Warts and All May 18, 2008
A great synopsis of the personalities at the roots of ornithology in the New World. The author shows us the development of birding in America, from its roots as an amateur avocation to the snobbery of the early professionals and back to the amateur "citizen scientists" birders of the current era. He includes some of the personality clashes and egos of the greats in American birding. A good read for those interested in birding and its history.
 Nice Birding History April 1, 2008
Very interesting book for experienced birders as well as beginners. Learned a number of interesting facts and where all those bird names, like Wilson's Warbler, came from. It was very helpful in preparing to give a talk on the history of birdwatching!
"New Jersey is a birder's dream" March 4, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Scott Weidensaul opens his book with a Hopi observation that certain nightjars sleep through the winter in a "deathlike trance." "Ridiculous" said the experts; then hibernating Common Poorwills were discovered by modern ornithologists in the 1940s. "Sadly, I don't know the Hopi ... for 'We told you so.'"
Many more stories follow:
John White was governor of the ill-fated colony at Roanoke, which had vanished when he returned from England with supplies in 1590. His paintings of Indians were better, but he created good bird images as well.
Mark Catesby, the 18th-century English naturalist and painter who was the first to portray birds in their natural surroundings. He traveled throughout the southeast shooting and painting birds and writing about the new wildlife he was finding in America for his public back in England.
John White, John Lawson, William Bartram, Lewis and Clark, each are mentioned. Then two giants, Audubon and Alexander Wilson. The two met in a store in Louisville and parted with mutual disgust and jealousy. Wilson was peddling his paintings of American birds and Audubon was just beginning to plan his collection of American bird paintings. The story is a bit convoluted, but Weidensaul resolves it (and others) very well.
He writes about what Audubon and Wilson must have seen. "Simply imagine the raw spectacle of a healthy, undiminished continent's worth of songbirds over washing the winter-gray land with movement and color, the incalculable hundreds of millions of warblers, vireos, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, flycatchers, and more. Even today, after centuries of erosion, the great aerial ballet of spring migration is a staggering thing to see. In those days, it must truly have been breathtaking. The question isn't why were these men ensnared by America's birds: the question is why wasn't everyone struck dumb by them."
Weidensaul moves on to the arrogant Elliott Coues, who "remained firm in his belief that the path to ornithological wisdom issued from the muzzle of a shotgun," resisting the trend toward identification by sight in the field.
Florence Merriam, whose "Birds Through an Opera-Glass," published in 1889, when she was only 26, "was, in a sense, the first field guide to American birds." The role of women in early American ornithology has been sparsely documented. Weidensaul gives a bit of credit: Martha Maxwell, Florence Merriam Bailey, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway, Minna B. Hall, Cordelia Stanwood and Mabel Osgood Wright -- all collected birds, or wrote about them. Hemenway and Hall, started the movement to ban bird feathers in women's fashions, which led to the modern conservation movement. [Somehow Weidensaul overlooks the importance of Theodore Roosevelt in this era.]
There's a good discussion of Roger Tory Peterson, whose field guides made the specialized knowledge of ornithologists available to many amateur bird lovers. Weidensaul concludes the biographies with some leading birders of today like David Sibley, Rich Stallcup, Pete Dunn and Kenn Kaufman. He even touches on Jane Hathaway, a character in "The Beverly Hillbillies," "the tall, mannish spinster ... who'd pop up with a pith helmet and a pair of binoculars, so starchy, so prim, so nerdy, though no one used that word in those days."
The "Angry Ladies" at the turn of the last century fought against Shotgun Ornithology, represented best, perhaps, by William Brewster who bought 61 Ivory Billed Woodpecker skins from an advertiser in "The Auk", the American Ornithologist's Union. As incoming president of the AOU addressing the Audubon Society, he said: "I do not protect birds, I kill them."
Today Weidensaul argues that the battle is not yet won. Birders, he says, are preoccupied with lists, and the protection of birds primarily in the hands (and wallets) of hunters eager to continue to shoot birds. He admires "listers," who devote enormous resources and ingenuity to seeing as many species as possible and the sophisticated tools for precise identification.
But he quotes Joseph Hickey: "Bird watching is much more than this. It is the art of discovering how birds live." Weidensaul fears that birders are not sufficiently committed to conservation of the very creatures they feed and study and list. Nevertheless, he sees "a few tentative stirrings" of a more holistic approach, suggesting that "bird study is poised to enter what could be a fresh and, I hope, golden age."
I hope so too. This book encouraged me to watch our feeders with more care, but also to plan even more bird friendly plants for our garden this summer. Best of all, Weidensaul maintains an excellent blog on new developments; Google: Scott Weidensaul .
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