Good Birders Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips From North America’s Top Birders
October 27, 2008
Alight and fun collection of birding advice, with contributions from Kenn Kaufman, David Sibley, Pete Dunne, Tim Gallagher, Don and Lillian Stokes, Bill Thompson III, and forty-four others. Original essays from the biggest names in birding dispense advice to birders of every level, on topics ranging from feeding birds and cleaning binoculars to pishing and pelagic birding. Whether satirizing bird snobs or relating the traditions and taboos of the birding culture, each essay is chock-full of helpful information and entertaining as well. Pete Dunnes lively foreword kicks off the collection of essays, which are organized by category. Half of the essays are illustrated with delightful black-and-white line drawings by artist Robert Braunfield.
Customer Review: Not a how-to book, but a delightful read with wonderful illustrations
If you’re looking for an encyclopedic how-to book on birding, this is not it. Rather, these essays by some of the top names in the business are reflections on birdwatching experiences with some lessons derived from those often hilarious experiences thrown in. There are some useful tips to be gleaned along the way, no doubt, but what you will really enjoy is discovering the sense of common experience with the writers even if you haven’t been to these locales. I found myself chuckling throughout and thinking, “Oh, boy. Yep, that’s happened to me.” Or, “I’ve seen that too many times. When will people learn?” It’s a good refresher on the do’s and don’t’s, and a refreshing read on a wonderful avocation.
I can’t say enough about the illustrations–delightful, amusing, creative, and funny, for starters. They are an excellent addition to the essays. I hope we see more of Mr. Braunfield’s work in other books soon. I’m giving the book 5 stars just for the illustrations alone.
Lastly, this would make a great gift for the avid or amateur birder or birdwatcher in your life. You know the ones…they can be found with binoculars at the ready, decked out in white…or not, sometimes on private lands, sometimes on national forests and grasslands. What are those? Read The Forest Service and the Greatest Good: A Centennial History and see.
Customer Review: Good Birders Don’t Wear White
Imagine someone, or a group, deciding that it would be a great idea to have a book containing essays by all of the really good contributors to the literature about birds. This is that book. There are fifty essays. The contributors have published books, written articles, edited magazines, photographed birds; in short, they are the cream of the crop. Several are represented on my bookshelves. The cartoonish illustrations in the book are fantastic and match wonderfully well with the text.
The problem with the book is that the useable information content is very low. Regardless of whether you are a beginning birder, intermediate, or expert; you will find a small amount of useable information here while the rest you either knew or didn’t want to know. Part of the problem is that there was too little space to develop a thought. Take 261 pages, subtract space for 24 full-page illustrations, take away enough lines for long paragraphs giving the awards and accomplishments of each writer, and provide a lot of white space. Divide that by fifty and you don’t allow a writer room to say much.
On the other hand, every reader will find something of value. The last two essays caused me to reflect on what it takes to be a good birder. And then, there are those delightful illustrations.
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