Rare Birds of North American by Steve N.G. Howell: A review
Rare Birds of North America by Steve N.G. Howell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Readers might at first be misled by the title of this book. Rare Birds of North America is not, in fact, about the endangered and rare species of endemic birds of this continent. Rather, it is a comprehensive illustrated guide to the birds that don't belong here but manage to find their way here anyway. These are the birds that are referred to as vagrants. They are native to some other part of the world - East Asia, Western Eurasia, Africa, the Southern Hemisphere, islands - but, for some reason, they have turned up on this continent. The book explains how and why these vagrants arrive here. The "how" is simple enough. Birds have wings and they tend to use them to fly to different places. Though they generally follow fairly well-defined routes in migration and in their wanderings about the planet, sometimes when they are in flight something might happen to steer them in a different direction. Most ...