RAIN drove down in gauzy sheets obscuring the bulk of the lighthouse 50 yards
away. A group of oilskinned birders grimly scanned the sea and sky, rain running
in rivulets over beards and binoculars. 鈥淧arasitic jaeger, 1000 yards at 3
o鈥檆lock,鈥� yelled one eagle-eyed individual. Forty pairs of binoculars rotated to
the bearing.
New Jersey鈥檚 Cape May may be one of the world鈥檚 most famous birding spots.
That May weekend, it also seemed the wettest. Yet this squinting, squelching
crew, toughing it out against the cold for a few misty glimpses of a bird, were
the inheritors of a noble legacy of obsession. A social history of ornithology
may sound esoteric, but it makes fascinating reading in Mark Barrow鈥檚 hands.
In A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon
(Princeton, 拢24.95/$39.50, ISBN 0691044023) Barrow traces the rise
of ornithology as a science and an outdoor pursuit from the early 1800s to the
1950s. Its origins, its explosive growth from the mid-1800s when private egg and
skin collections numbered tens of thousands and the rush of the brash new
museums to fill their cabinets鈥攁re all documented magnificently.
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Barrow plots the transition in attitudes from a time when trading skins and
eggs was a gentlemanly occupation, to today鈥檚 conservationists. His section on
the progressive development of field guides made me appreciate today鈥檚 accuracy
and quality.
What the naturalists of the late 19th century would have made of today鈥檚
field guides is anybody鈥檚 guess. In the case of Fiona Reid鈥檚 latest work,
envious incredulity is a safe bet. In her Field Guide to the Mammals of
Central America and Southeast Mexico (OUP, 拢45/$55, ISBN
0195064003), she has not only produced masterful, elegant and accurate
illustrations, but has written and researched a text which is concise,
informative and scientifically precise. Covering the 346 mammals of the region,
and with notes on habitat, diet, field signs and similar species, as well as
clear distribution maps and good field keys, this guide is as good as they
get.
Had it rained so hard that even the ducks left, I could have consoled myself
on my wet Cape May weekend with Vera Johnston鈥檚 Sierra Nevada: The
Naturalist鈥檚 Companion (University of California, 拢24.95/
$29.95, ISBN 0520209362), which has enough natural history packed into
its 207 pages to compensate for the absence of all but the best birds.
Beautifully illustrated with her photographs of this Californian mountain
chain, Johnston covers almost every aspect of the region鈥檚 natural history,
embracing geology, rodent ecology, soil types鈥� influence on plants and
pollination biology. An excellent introduction to a region of the US often
ignored by European visitors.
While we venerate the mountains of the Sierra Nevada for their huge hunks of
near-pristine wilderness, John Elder urges praise for Vermont鈥檚 more homely
forests and hills. Famous today for its autumn colours, when the region鈥檚 maples
play 鈥渨reck the retina鈥� with chromatic frenzies from a palette of yellows, reds
and golds, 150 years ago Vermont was nearly barren of trees. In Reading the
Mountains of Home (Harvard, 拢15.50/$22.95, ISBN 0674748883),
Elder hikes through the region as he muses on its sociology and biology and how
its hardwood forests were lost to small farms, themselves now replaced by
blazing maples. In an unusual and insightful book, Elder argues that not all
ecological destruction this century was intrinsically wrong, while showing that,
just because a landscape pleases the eye, there is nothing to say that it must
be natural.
Richard West Sellars鈥檚 Preserving Nature in the National Parks (Yale,
拢25/$35, ISBN 0300069316) continues the theme of admired landscapes
that owes their existence to human intervention. His analysis of the politics
and personalities involved in the preservation of American wildlands reveal
fallibility, chaos鈥攁nd our debt to early conservationists. Steeped in an
intoxicating mix of frontiersmanship and anti-industrial romanticism, they
campaigned and connived to conserve wild North America. What would they have
made of the birders massed on Cape May?