Product Description

In these 50 light and fun original essays, the biggest names in birding dispense advice to birders of every level, on topics ranging from feeding birds and cleaning binoculars to pishing and pelagic birding. Whether satirizing bird snobs or relating the traditions and taboos of the birding culture, each essay is as chock-full of helpful information as it is entertaining.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67106 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-23
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Booklist
This collection of essays, by 50 contributors (David Allen Sibley and Don and Lillian Stokes are probably the most well-known), supplies 50 tips for bird-watching, and here are a few: take field notes, hug your tour leader, think like a migrating bird, linger even after you have listed a bird, play fair when sharing a scope, go birding in bad weather, go birding with kids, learn birdssongs, and keep your binoculars clean. Experienced bird-watchers will be familiar with most of these tips, but the book is a delight to read and will generate new enthusiasm for the hobby. The 25 black-and-white line drawings are hilarious. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Lisa White is a editor for Houghton Mifflin Company titles including: "'Good Birders Don't Wear White."' PETE DUNNE is the author of nine books, including Pete Dunne on Bird Watching, Hawks in Flight, and The Wind Masters. He is the vice president of the New Jersey Audubon Society and the director of its Cape May Bird Observatory and has written columns and articles for virtually every birding magazine as well as the New York Times. Robert Braunfield is a illustrator for Houghton Mifflin Company titles including: "'Good Birders Don't Wear White."'

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
FOREWORD
I find myself in a very uncomfortable position here —and I don't mean facing
a computer screen with fingers dancing over the keyboard. Fact is, I write a
lot— books, articles, columns, you name it. If the topic relates directly or
tacitly to birds, chances are I've dabbled in it. No, my discomfort has nothing
to do with any unfamiliarity. It has to do with direction.
Almost always, when I sit down to write, I know precisely what I'm
going to say and pretty much how I'm going to say it. This time I'm at a loss.
I know what I'm supposed to do, and that is warm up readers for the great act
to follow. But that is also the problem. How can any one writer hope to
introduce a birding audience to the greatest compilation of birding know-how
of all time?
Okay, let's start with what this foreword is not going to do. It is
not going to beguile you with the hints, tricks, shortcuts, and advice that
expert birders bring to bear. That is what the fifty contributors to this book
have done: synthesize more than a hundred years of birding tradition and
approximately twenty-five hundred cumulative years of birding experience.
Who's going to try to compete with that?
This foreword is also not going to fall back on the old tried-and-
true distraction employed by many writers in my position, which is to
expound on my own experiences with birds, birding, and bird study.
Look. I've written whole books filled with anecdotal bird stuff like
that. You passed them by in order to buy this one (and I can't gainsay your
choice).
But in searching for an angle, I do find that I have an insider's
insight that may pique a reader's interest. It turns out that I know virtually all
of the contributors to these pages, recognizing all as colleagues and knowing
many as friends. Many writers have an aversion to speaking about
themselves, so with the authority vested in me, I think it might be fun to offer
readers a peek behind the writer's mask and direct a descriptive word or two
toward the contributing authors of Good Birders Don't Wear White.
Jon Dunn is a noted author and tour leader for WINGS and has
been for many years the final word when it comes to tricky identifications. All
photos of unidentified gulls and Empidonax flycatchers with borderline traits
ultimately find their way into Jon's hands. Jon is affable and serious,
intellectually gifted, and boasts an array of interests (we share a passion for
American history). Tens of thousands of birders are better birders because of
Jon and his teaching skill. If you are not counted among them, you soon will
be.
Jessie Barry, at the tender age of thirteen, was a poster child for
the American Birding Association. She and I appeared together in their
membership brochure. The photo showed me pointing out a bird, Jessie
looking on. I've always wanted to know what happened to the other hundred
photos taken that day—the ones that showed Jessie pointing out birds to
me. As memory serves, they were more representative of our day. Now that
she is at the University of Washington, working on a degree in ecology and
evolutionary biology and in her spare time on a field guide to North American
waterfowl, Jessie's signature expression is "Uhmmmm." When she starts
humming this mantra, it means her binoculars are fused to something really
good andyoubettergetonitFAST.
The last time I heard it, she was looking at a Summer Tanager
from the porch of the person who claims the largest yard list in North
America. The bird proved to be number 307 for Paul Lehman, a Cape May
resident celebrated for his knowledge of bird distribution. Open almost any
field guide. If Paul didn't actually draft the range maps, he was almost
certainly consulted. His hobby is finding new bird species for North America.
His happy hunting ground is the Inuit village of Gambel on St. Lawrence
Island. I don't know whether Paul has actually been adopted by the tribe,
but he is on the tribal leader's e-mail birthday greeting list.
Paul's yard list total now? Just hit 314. Magnificent Frigatebird.
As fortune had it, he was away from home last week, when the Gray Kingbird
perched on the utility lines just down the street from his porch. Yep, you
guessed it, Paul was on Gambel.
When it comes to just plain enjoying birds, few can stand on the
same platform with Victor Emanuel, founder and director of Victor Emanuel
Nature Tours. Victor's signature expression is "Wow." Search the world over,
and you'll find nothing that beats "Wow." But what distinguishes Victor is not
so much the expression as the lavishness with which it is applied. Victor
says "Wow" about almost any bird. A White-eyed Vireo in full view garners
a "Wow." A Northern Cardinal in sunlight earns a "Wow." A Painted Redstart,
dancing through the oaks in Cave Creek Canyon (where Victor and I used to
co-lead his youth birding camps) is always sanctified with a "Wow." Often
several.
And you know, no matter how many vireos or cardinals you've
seen (and I've seen hundreds), when Victor says "Wow," by golly, you get
that sense of wow, too. Wow is infectious. Victor the vector.
I can't begin to express how delighted I was to see John Kricher's
name ranked among the authors. I met John, a college professor and
ecologist, in the summer of 1977. He was teaching a marsh ecology course;
I was struggling to give standing and solvency to an institution called the
Cape May Bird Observatory.
Not long ago I was working on a book project that involved reading
virtually all of the 716 volumes that constitute The Birds of North America.
This comprehensive ornithological work was designed to impart the sum of
knowledge relating to North American birds and, as such, was never intended
to make for light reading. But the intent didn't necessarily preclude this
possibility, and while reading the account for Black-and-white Warbler, I was
surprised by the entertaining and readable quality of the piece. I turned to the
cover to see who the author was, and you guessed it—John's name was
there. Scientist and wordsmith—two great but by no means singular qualities.
This book will introduce you to other contributors who are both
able scientists and capable communicators— Paul Kerlinger, author and bird
migration expert who did his seminal work on migrating raptors by using an
old police radar in Cape May, and David Bird, McGill University professor and
radio show host.
It's a slippery slope I've placed myself on, realizing now that by
singling out just some of the wonderful and talented contributors to this book,
I will inevitably fail to do justice to them all.
It would be unthinkable not to draw the reader's attention to Bill
Thompson III, editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and author of Bird Watching for
Dummies; Amy Hooper, editor of WildBird; and Chuck Hagner, editor in chief
of Birder's World. The talent they bring to their respective magazines is
reflected here, too.
Popular bird magazines are as visually arresting as the birds that
are their subject. So in these pages you'll find contributions from celebrated
photographers such as Richard Crossley and Kevin Karlson (coauthors of the
new shorebird guide), Arthur Morris and Tim Gallagher.
Tim Gallagher . . . Tim Gallagher . . . now where (you are thinking)
have I heard that name before?
Well, if you subscribe to Living Bird, you may recognize him as
the magazine's editor in chief. But unless you've been living in a cave in
Tibet, I'll bet you heard his name associated with the rediscovery of the Ivory-
billed Woodpecker.
Oh, that Tim Gallagher. Precisely.
The slate of writers is just as stellar as the cast of photographers
and includes well-known names such as Don and Lillian Stokes
(birding's "First Couple"), Scott Shalaway (Mr. Backyard Birder himself), the
incomparable (and unsinkable) Judith Toups and, of course, Scott
Weidensaul.
You know, Scott, Roger Peterson once said that if he could paint
like anyone else, it would be Robert Bateman. I just want to go on record
saying that if I could write like anyone else, it would be Scott Weidensaul.
And readers are probably thinking, Well, if he's less verbose than
you are, Dunne, I wish you wrote like Scott, too.
You're right. I'm running out of space. You're running out of
patience. The only things I'm not running out of are talented personalities to
commend to you.
Scott, you're a writer. How do I get out of the jam I'm in? Time for
a deus ex machina? My deus, I almost forgot to mention Kenn Kaufman and
David Sibley, whose celebrated names grace the spines of two of the dog-
eared field guides you most certainly own. And Peter Alden (a guy who was
leading bird tours for Massachusetts Audubon to places such as Africa back
when birders considered a trip to the Everglades foreign travel) and Wayne
Petersen (who leads them now). And Peter Stangel and Paul Baicich, two of
the conservation cornerstones of birding. And Louise Zemaitis and Julie
Zickefoose. Louise and Julie have a great deal in common. In addition to
being wonderful people (and having last names that begin with Z), both are
superlative artists.
From not knowing where to go with this foreword, I find that I have
written myself into a real corner. Hit my word limit and still have a lot of
names to flag. When writers get in a jam like this, they inevitably turn to their
editors, and this foreword has finally inclined to her. Lisa Whi...

Customer Reviews

Not a how-to book, but a delightful read with wonderful illustrations
If you're looking for an encyclopedic how-to book on birding, this is not it. Rather, these essays by some of the top names in the business are reflections on birdwatching experiences with some lessons derived from those often hilarious experiences thrown in. There are some useful tips to be gleaned along the way, no doubt, but what you will really enjoy is discovering the sense of common experience with the writers even if you haven't been to these locales. I found myself chuckling throughout and thinking, "Oh, boy. Yep, that's happened to me." Or, "I've seen that too many times. When will people learn?" It's a good refresher on the do's and don't's, and a refreshing read on a wonderful avocation.

I can't say enough about the illustrations--delightful, amusing, creative, and funny, for starters. They are an excellent addition to the essays. I hope we see more of Mr. Braunfield's work in other books soon. I'm giving the book 5 stars just for the illustrations alone.

Lastly, this would make a great gift for the avid or amateur birder or birdwatcher in your life. You know the ones...they can be found with binoculars at the ready, decked out in white...or not, sometimes on private lands, sometimes on national forests and grasslands. What are those? Read The Forest Service and the Greatest Good: A Centennial History and see.

Good Birders Don't Wear White
Imagine someone, or a group, deciding that it would be a great idea to have a book containing essays by all of the really good contributors to the literature about birds. This is that book. There are fifty essays. The contributors have published books, written articles, edited magazines, photographed birds; in short, they are the cream of the crop. Several are represented on my bookshelves. The cartoonish illustrations in the book are fantastic and match wonderfully well with the text.

The problem with the book is that the useable information content is very low. Regardless of whether you are a beginning birder, intermediate, or expert; you will find a small amount of useable information here while the rest you either knew or didn't want to know. Part of the problem is that there was too little space to develop a thought. Take 261 pages, subtract space for 24 full-page illustrations, take away enough lines for long paragraphs giving the awards and accomplishments of each writer, and provide a lot of white space. Divide that by fifty and you don't allow a writer room to say much.

On the other hand, every reader will find something of value. The last two essays caused me to reflect on what it takes to be a good birder. And then, there are those delightful illustrations.