The Wind Birds: Shorebirds of North America (The Curious Naturalist)

Rating:
Summary: Beauty, truth, and feathers.
Review: Now here is a beautifully written and true book about the tribes of shorebirds (plovers, sandpipers, and their kin). In a series of essays on the different aspects of bird structure and behavior (e.g., migration, flight, feeding, courtship), the author draws a complete picture of these wondrous birds. If you've ever stood on a beach and watched flocks of Sanderlings wheeling in unison, flashing alternately white and gray, and wondered about how they live their lives, then this is the book for you. Matthiessen is almost the only writer I know who can combine accurate science with a consistently interesting and limpid style.

Rating:
Summary: compendium of amazing facts
Review: What makes this book difficult is that the author assumes a certain foreknowledge of the 20 or more species of shorebirds discussed. This makes is a bit like reading a text on anatomy without having any background. But even without, it is relatively easy reading once you get into it and just a cursory exsmination reveals some amazing facts and a great wealth of knowledge on the author's part: he will tell you why, for example, mammals are larger in the north and why chicken breast meat is white. There is also a wealth of data on the taxonomy, evolution, migration patterns--which are quite amazing--and other habits of numerous shorebirds, as well as the hunting to near extinction of some of them in the early 20th century and before. The author brings to his work a lifetime of world travel, also.