The Nature of Things

Trees of Western North America by Richard Spellenberg My rating: 4 of 5 stars For those readers and Nature-lovers who need a comprehensive field guide to help them identify the trees of western North America, here is your book. This new guide, soon to be published by Princeton University Press, covers both native and naturalized trees of the western United States and Canada. The territory covered extends as far east as the Great Plains. This book is very easy to navigate. It is divided into two main sections, the gymnosperms and the angiosperms, and within those sections it is further divided into families of trees. Overall, there are descriptions of some 630 species, which the publisher says is more than any comparable field guide. (I guess I'll take their word for it!) An important part of any field guide, maybe the most important part, is the pictures. Trees of Western North America has thousands of meticulous color paintings of trees by David More. These are invaluable identi...

Hawks are a long-time nemesis of mine when it comes to bird identification. In fact, I have several nemeses - hawks, shore birds, sparrows, to name the three worst of the lot. Hawks present a particular problem because one seldom sees them close-up in the field. They always seem to be at a distance and very often on the wing, so the birder is only able to see their belly. Moreover, their plumages are so variable that it is very difficult to isolate field marks that one can point to with assuredness. And then there is the matter of their speed. If you are looking at a Sharp-shinned Hawk, a Cooper's Hawk or one of the falcons, you had better look quickly because these babies are fast! So what's a poor birder to do? Well, we rely on our field guides, but very often those are of minimal help. What we really need is a field guide that will help us identify hawks at a distance. Jerry Liguori, a leading expert on North American raptors, recognized that need and has tried to me...

American birders are used to birding field guides that can be easily carried into the field where the user can refer to them when they see an unusual bird. Richard Crossley comes from another tradition. He grew up in England where the practice was to take a notebook and pencil with you when birding to make notes about or draw what you saw. Then you returned to base and compared your notes or drawings to what was shown in your birding guide books. That tradition has informed his recently released magnum opus , The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds . This is not a book to carry into the field with you, unless you are planning to combine your birding with weight-lifting. This is a BIG book. But it is definitely a book that you would want to refer to after your return from the field for it provides a wealth of information about birds. Here, for comparison of size, are a few of my guides laid out on my dining room table. Crossley is on the left; next is the recently published Stokes guide w...

As an avid birder, I tend to believe that one cannot have too many bird field guides, so I'm always happy to welcome a new one to my overburdened bookshelves. In that spirit, I was very excited to receive my copy of The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America last week. The first thing that one notices about this new field guide is its cover which features the beautiful Painted Bunting on the front, surely one of the most colorful and striking birds on our continent. On the back is another, smaller, picture of a Pileated Woodpecker, the largest woodpecker known for certain to still exist in North America, and one of the more impressive birds to fill our skies. Then you pick the book up and the next thing you notice is that this is one heavy book! It weighs slightly more than three pounds. It's all those pictures, for this is a field guide that uses photographs to illustrate the bird species of North America. It features 854 species of birds, including all the residen...