December 2021https://www.birdobserver.org/Issues/2021/December-2021About Books: Learning Nests and Loving Vultureshttps://www.birdobserver.org/Issues/2021/December-2021/about-books-learning-nests-and-loving-vulturesBook and Video ReviewsWed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:08 GMT<blockquote> <p><strong><em>Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests</em>.</strong> Casey McFarland, Matthew Monjello, and David Moskowitz. 2021. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.</p> <p><strong><em>A Vulture Landscape: Twelve Months in Extremadura</em>.</strong> Ian Parsons. 2020. Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland, United Kingdom: Whittles Publishing Ltd.</p> </blockquote> <p>Although these two books are about birds, they could not be more different. One book is a revised, updated, and expanded field guide to North American bird nests written by three authors. The other book is one man’s paean to just one group of birds and the unique region where he has watched it for years.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px;"><img alt="" src="/Portals/0/Assets/bo49-6/Book_cover_1.png?ver=iNFk17-NINmIR-Oxru7MgQ%3d%3d" style="margin: 12px; float: right; width: 224px; height: 363px;" />When you find a nest, be open to a range of possibilities, and look for interesting clues. (p. 7 <em>Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests</em>)</p> <p>In the introduction to the new <em>Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests</em>, the three authors cite the 1975 <em>Peterson Field Guide to Birds’ Nests</em> by Hal H. Harrison. That old field guide had been a favorite of theirs, but now their personal copies are dog eared and worn, and it has gone out of print. They were a good choice to write and edit this updated and expanded version of that important guide. This new guide covers 650 species and has 750 color photographs and several line drawings. Under species accounts there is typically one accompanying color photograph, but for some species there are more. Under Great Blue Heron there is a shot of a rookery as well as a close-up of a single nest (p. 189). Marbled Murrelet rates four nest shots. This seems odd since so few of us will ever just stumble across the unique nest of that Pacific alcid. I will explain why below.</p> <p>The introductory sections, pages 6–65 of this guide, are well worth reading by all birders. The authors begin with a cautionary note to discourage birders from getting close to birds’ nests. “Well-intentioned curiosity about a nest can too easily lead to the demise of its contents.” (p. 2)</p> <p>It is always tempting to get close to any bird nest just to see what is going on or to take a photograph, but readers of this guide are well warned by the authors to give nests some distance.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px;">Learning to identify nests starts first with acknowledgement that, for birds, nesting is a difficult and taxing behavior that often ends in failure. Our interest in this aspect of avian life can have real consequences for the birds we so admire—many eggs and nestlings never make it through the hurdles of this initial stage of life, even without human disturbance contributing to the odds. (p. 2)</p> To view the rest of the article you'll need to subscribe. Bird Observer publishes original articles on birding locations, on avian populations and natural history, on regional rarities, field notes, field records, photographs, and art work.