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Then I found myself handing it around to people as I would share a cartoon or funny email. "Zip through it over lunch," I said, "Take it instead of a magazine while you're waiting for your oil change or dentist appointment."
And so I learned what this book is best for: for a few bucks, you can pass a smile around to your friends. The eye-catching cover is hard for anyone to resist, and the illustrations are great. If you know someone who's been adopted by a stray animal, this is perfect for them. But if not, pass it on anyway. It's a light, funny read that will make anyone smile.
In Grime's hands this unusual bird manages a truly universal appeal. I loved the pleasure it seemed to take in sneaking up behind a skittish cat and sending the cat vertically airborne with a sudden cackle. Then there's the pet store employee who tries to explain that they don't carry chicken feed, because a chicken is not a "particular animal." Grimes has an eye and ear for gem moments like these.
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It's an example for every bird field guide.
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Just how intensive my use of the book has been came clear to me with the arrival--"long-awaited," in the reviewer's cliche--of the second edition. As I read through the new treatments of areas long familiar to me, I discovered that (like many NJ birders) I'd actually memorized verbatim great chunks of the first edition, and that I noticed every new word and every new turn of phrase in the revised accounts. If it is true that every obsession is at its base religious, then this book truly is the birder's bible.
The birder's bible: divine in inspiration, certainly, but here and there the mortal nature of its human author peeks through. As anyone who has ever written anything knows, it is even more difficult to revise than to write, and this revised edition has some flaws that were not apparent in the first. There are far more copy-editing errors this time around, and the index--more important than ever, given the new book's rather breathless layout--is not an infallible help (just try to find the main entry for Merrill Creek!). Compared to the enjoyably expansive style of the first edition, the new entries strike me as occasionally a bit too concise, a problem that might have been eased by simply eliminating even more of the old sections treating sites that, like the Institute Woods, now offer (in Boyle's words) "the mere shadow" of their former glory; valuable space is also sacrificed to a number of new full-page illustrations.
These things having been said, the book is still an outstanding example of the bird-finding guide. The maps seem to be largely up to date and accurate (Sussex County birders: are Rockport and Blackdirt marshes really the same place?), the annotated species list is even more useful than in the first edition, and the binding isn't likely to crackle and peel. It will take only weeks, I am sure, for New Jersey birders to start quoting this new Boyle, chapter and verse.
For us locals, "Bird Finding" is great for those days when you want to hop in the car and travel to somewhere a little different, or if you want to explore a familiar destination a little more closely. The book offers detailed directions (although some of the exit numbers and streets have changed since its publication date), including which trail to follow, which tree to investigate, etc. Its accuracy is remarkable. It's clear Bill Boyle knows each location intimately and visits them often.
This is a must-have for any birder living in the state (and there are lots), and any vacationer planning to spend more than a weekend in New Jersey.
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You, as a reader, will also benefit from the maps, pictures, and historical background that is also included in this book, which will hopefully also help people to realize that cultures like the native Alaskans (and any other culture that doesn't have TV, flush toilets, aluminum siding, strip malls, microwavable food, press-on-nails, or other "civilized" accoutrements) are, in fact, human, and human on a scale that few people who own a housefull of mass-produced paraphernalia that they don't need.
Mostly, though, as I stated before, Wallis has a tremendous sense of prose. Her wtriting is very immediate and unadorned. Many would call it "simplistic", but it is the kind of "simplistic" that is almost impossible to do well - very much like Asimov's writing in that regard. Few authors can manage to write so tightly and without excess and still write damn well, and Wallis is absolutely one of them.
Wallis, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your book, for your sharing, for the culture that raised you, and for your honesty.
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This is a must read. A wonderful story of love, hardships, and more love, REFUGE is a truly breathtaking piece of art.
In the spring of 1983 a significant rise in the Great Salt Lake began to flood her beloved Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and at the same time cancer cells began to flood her mother's body. As owls, avocets and egrets struggle to survive the rising waters, Williams' mother struggles to find peace and comfort in dying. Where mother nature is damaged, mother Tempest is too.
Williams has a truly poetic ability to tie the spirit of land and of family into one beautiful image. "I am reminded that what I adore, admire and draw from Mother is inherent in the Earth. My mother's spirit can be recalled simply by placing my hands on the black humus of mountains or the lean sands of desert. Her love, warmth, and her breath, even her arms around me-are the waves, the wind, sunlight, and water.", she writes.
In the process of dealing with so much pain and loss Williams shifts from a casual observer of life's folly to passionate activist. Ultimately she puts the pieces of puzzle together to see a picture of generations of cancer certainly tied to exposure to the on-going nuclear testing by the American government in the Utah desert. William's chilling awakening to the manipulation of the environment by man in the name of progress should serve as our own wake-up call to the capacity of destruction that we have tolerated.
Landscape becomes refuge and offers hope of healing. Williams writes, "It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. "
This book is a wonderful testament to life and to the power and capacity for regeneration and healing. The book also provides very poignant and heartfelt lessons on embracing our dying and our loss and celebrating life in every moment.
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So William Fiennes defines his quarry, not to hunt, but to observe, as he follows them on their 3,000-mile spring migration from the Gulf of Mexico to Baffin Island where their breeding grounds are located. Just as certainly as the geese desire to return to familiarity, so does the author. Having just recovered from a lengthy illness before starting on his trek, he writes, "my frustrations were mollified but not resolved by the kindness of those close to me, because no one, however loving, could give me the one thing I wanted above all else: my former self."
Nipped by the same bird-watching bug as his father, Fiennes found himself curious about "the mysterious signals that told a bird it was time to move, time to fly," and asking, "Why did birds undertake such journeys? How did they know when to go or where?"
But mostly it would seem he just wanted to be part of the adventure, for early on he provides this textbook answer to his own questions: "A snow goose, like all migratory birds, inherits a calendar, an endogenous program for fattening, departure, breeding, and molt. This schedule is essentially fixed, but it can be fine-tuned by environmental conditions." Interspersed throughout the book - between his tracking of the geese by car, bus, train or plane, and conversations with those he meets in transit - are snippets of information about how these migrating habits came to be known.
The obvious question would seem to be if they can winter comfortably in Texas or Mexico, why would the geese want to make such a jaunt in the first place? The answer: "In the high Arctic latitudes, snow geese find large areas of suitable nesting habitat, relatively few predators, an abundance of food during the short, intense summers, and twenty-four hours of daylight in which to feed."
Put that in your travel brochure and you'll find the place swarming with geese every year around the end of May!
The birds typically leave the south in late-February or early-March to embark on their 3-month odyssey north. Last year, Fiennes, who is from Britain and had never seen a snow goose, carefully scheduled his time so he could accompany them.
He describes their first meeting in Texas: "Drifts of specks appeared above the horizon ring. Each speck became a goose. Flocks were converging on the pond from every compass point..." until finally, "whole flocks circled over the roost, thousands of geese swirling round and round, as if the pond were the mouth of a drain and these geese the whirlpool turning above it."
Lesson #1 in bird watching: it can be a messy avocation. The next time the geese return to their roost, Fiennes says, "I took shelter inside the car, wise to the turd squalls."
He spots other species in his travels, describing them just as beautifully as he does the geese. For example, he shares, "when I saw eight tall, slender birds with the long necks, legs, and bills of herons, and shaggy tail bustles, and the dainty gait of ballerinas, I knew instantly that they were sandhill cranes, the oldest species of bird in existence...which, it was once believed, helped smaller birds migrate by carrying them on their backs. These sandhill cranes would themselves soon be leaving for Arctic Canada...."
The trip doesn't entirely go the way he thought it would ("On maps the flight of snow geese...was a flawless, unbroken arc, the curve of time from one season to another. But the reality was different...a stop-start, stage-by-stage edging towards the north, with geese flying from one resting area to the next, proceeding only as far as the weather would allow"), but there are little victories along the way. Soon after Fiennes arrives in Aberdeen, South Dakota the local newspaper reports 340,000 snow geese have arrived at the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge within the last 24-48 hours. "I couldn't believe it," Fiennes exudes, "I'd reached South Dakota on the same day as the geese."
The sojourn could also be fraught with peril, more so for the geese than for Fiennes, as he relates, "Once, near Elgin, Manitoba, snow geese were seen flying northeast during an electrical storm. The flock, 300 yards wide and three-quarters of a mile long, was flying at about 180 feet. Witnesses described a flash of lightning, a thunderclap, an entire portion of the flock falling to the ground, struck dead."
Finally reaching Baffin Island, Fiennes found himself in a different world: "It was ten o'clock, evening, but the light still held to the idea of day, with no sign that night was imminent or ever expected," and "The silence was something you could hear...a steady white drone." His guide confides, "Sometimes I'm out there. I'm out on the land, and it's like the void. It's like a sentence or two before Genesis."
This is a good book to be reading with spring approaching - or when you want it to approach - for following the migration of the geese is akin to tracing the permeation of warmer weather as it spreads across the continent. With winter still clinging to parts of the landscape, we need to hear phrases like: "The afternoon was beautiful: unambiguously spring."
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I'd recommend this book as one you'll finish quickly, share with a friend or two, and want to read again yourself one day.