Guide Books This new bird guide is a stunningly beautiful book (except for the cover, which is a garish self-advertisement). Using an unusual format with paintings laid out across the top two-thirds of facing pages it shows many species in their natural habitats. The paintings are very attractive, indeed, in the back of the book there are instructions on how to order each plate as a fine art print! (Whether they are really fine art or not will be left up to another kind of critic.) Most species are discussed in a brief text with notes on habitat and range as well as identifying field characteristics and vocal descriptions. Range maps are also included. The book has a soft, waterproof vinyl cover and it is a handy size for field use, taller and narrower than the National Geographic Society guide, and somewhat lighter than the NGS guide (21 oz vs. 26 oz).
This book purports to show all of the birds that can be seen in North America including seabirds and arctic birds that few are likely to see except on special long trips. The book incorporates the 1996 American Ornithologists' Union's changes such as splitting (again!) of the Northern Oriole into the Baltimore Oriole and Bullock's Oriole. This book is advertised for both beginning and advanced birders. But advanced birders may be irritated by the arrangement of the book. Instead of the traditional taxonomic order which shows the evolutionary relationships among species, this book arranges birds by their feeding strategies and adaptations such as bill shape and size. However, many beginning and intermediate birders will undoubtedly enjoy using this book.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - August 11, 1997
- Originally published in the September-October 1997 issue of the Timberdoodle, the newsletter of the River Bluffs Audubon Society.
This compact book is truly a handy bird identification guide for the beginning birder or even for many other birders much of the time. It is an "abridged" guide which offers detailed descriptions of nearly 300 species of the most common birds in the eastern region, with tips on how to locate birds, bird-watching basics, information on breeding habits, ranges and habitats, songs and calls, and more. Coe attempts to include enough species so that an enterprising beginner will not be confused and frustrated by finding birds that are not in the book. On the other hand he was determined not to clutter up the pages with exotic rarities that most of will probably never see.
This book is illustrated with fine full color paintings; especially useful are the "master plates" which serve as a visual index to the rest of the book. It is so small (7.5 x 4.5 x 0.5 in) and so light (7oz) that it easily slips into a back pocket. It's handy size invites you to take it where you might not take more complete guides, e.g., on business trips. This is not a book for the expert birder intent on finding that rare bird for a life list or big events such as the Christmas bird count or International Migratory Bird count Day (although it does have 46 species of warblers, enough to keep most birders busy). But for the beginning or casual birder, i.e., for many of us, much of the time, it will do the job.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - May 1, 1997This book was designed to be a handy reference to help plan outdoor adventures. It divides the state into eight natural landscape regions, identifies 101 nature areas, and presents a general description of the area and featured wildlife, plants and habitats. Examples of natural areas are drawn from many different Missouri ecosystems. An owner (not always the Conservation Department) and a telephone number make obtaining more information easy.
Birders will find this a useful book because each description includes what bird species can be found in the featured area. For example, "The marshes on Rebel's Cove attract ducks, Canada geese, songbirds, muskrat, beaver and river otters. Watch for ring-necked pheasant, bobwhite quail, wild turkeys, redtailed hawks, and owls in the grasslands." Many of the full-color illustrations give tips on bird habits. Want to know where in Missouri to view the endangered least tern? Check the book!
- Reviewed by Linda Vogt - March 1996These two compact wildflower identification guides are both intended to be used be used in the field by amateur naturalists.
Doug Ladd, the Director of Science and Stewardship for the Missouri Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, is the author of Tallgrass prairie Wildflowers. This book is arranged by color and by date of blooming within the colors. The Frank Oberle's color photographs are excellent and very helpful in identification. There is also an excellent introduction to the broad classes of prairies and a history of prairies.
Several years ago Sylvan T. Runkel and Dean M. Roosa, two experienced Iowa naturalists, wrote a similar field guide to prairie wildflowers, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest. The flower descriptions are in approximate order of their blooming time. This book covers fewer species (129) than Ladd does (295) but covers them in more depth and adds information on traditional uses of prairie plants. The photographs, while larger, are not always as dazzling as Oberle's.
These two books are in many ways complementary and if you have room in your pack take them both. But if you only have room for one I would take Ladd's handsome volume.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - January 1, 1996These two useful books are handy travel companions for all birders, nature photographers and wildlife watchers. The Guide to the National Wildlife Refuges is an update of a classic work originally issued in 1979. It describes the habitat and the birds and other wildlife to be seen in 475 refuges and the special features of each refuge. In some cases it describes special management programs or conservation problems at the refuge. In addition it gives practical information such as how to get there, refuge hours, other activities, nearby points of interest and addresses and phone numbers. This is an essential guide for trip planning or learning about our national wildlife refuges.
Are you tired of look-alike motel rooms on your birding trips? If so, here is the book for you. The Birder's Guide to Bed and Breakfasts selects various wildlife refuges parks, nature preserves and hot spots in the U.S. and Canada. It provides information on the birds to be found in each area, how to get there and addresses and phone numbers. Then it describes one or more bed and breakfasts for each area, providing the essential information on rates, number of rooms and baths, pets, etc. In many cases, these B&Bs especially welcome birders. But sometimes it is hard to find suitable human habitation near the birds habitat. Or, as van Hulsteyn says, "Birds often like to nest where there is no place for humans to nest." Still, the author found over 250 B&Bs, most of them convenient to birding areas. And this is an audience participation book: van Hulsteyn invites birders to send her information on their favorite B&Bs.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - April 9, 1994 Books on Environmental Issues The American environmental movement has waged many campaigns for the ecological health and biodiversity of our mountains, forests, wetlands, seashores, lakes, rivers and the oceans. Grasslands have seldom claimed our attention. In Missouri, the Nature Conservancy, the Missouri Prairie Foundation, and the Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources have been leaders in a lonely battle to save our remaining scraps of native prairie.
Richard Manning's Grassland is an attempt to remedy our neglect of the grasslands. It is a plea to change our attitudes toward what was North America's largest biome. Now it is the most altered and degraded. Manning writes, "Our culture's disrespect for its grasslands has produced an environmental catastrophe. It will be the best measure of the maturing of the American environmental movement when it begins to understand and combat this destruction." But our lack of understanding is also resulting in an economic and social catastrophe. This is a rich and brilliantly written book that ranges over the history, literature, biology, politics, economics, sociology and the future of our grasslands.
Homo sapiens evolved in the grasslands of Africa but the dominant American attitude toward the land is a product of the tree culture of northern Europe. Manning believes that we have never understood the prairie and other grasslands of North America. "Just as a forest is not only trees, a grassland is not only grass. It is hundreds, literally hundreds, of species of plants woven together in a complex fabric of interdependencies." We have destroyed this complex fabric. Manning argues that the large mammals which prefer the grassy plains, grizzlies, wolves, bison and elk, have been driven back into mountainous forests. He also believes that the decline of many migratory songbirds is partly related to agricultural practices on the North American plains.
Manning contends that the plowing of the prairie has both environmental and economic consequences. Converting grasslands to wheat fields increases erosion and reduces the biodiversity of the high plains from 250 species of plants to one. It also has produced an unsustainable economy in the Great Plains. The dust bowl era was the first warning but we have forgotten its lessons. In the plains, land under the plow has increased since the dust bowl era. "Farmers began pumping water from the Oglala aquifer onto their fields to insulate themselves from the dust bowl drought. . . Hydrologists suggest that it will be depleted within thirty years," says Manning. We have merely postponed the inevitable by mining the Oglala aquifer to irrigate the plains.
Manning believes that second only to the destruction caused by the plow is overgrazing by domestic cattle. Grasslands were adapted to fire and grazing by free-ranging bison. Now, however, cattle are concentrated on relatively small areas, resulting in water pollution, soil erosion and the invasion of exotic alien plants. Bison are adapted to these dry grasslands; cattle are not. In the middle of the 19th century, the Great Plains supported about 50 million bison. A "century's worth of work, warfare, and technology replaced 50 million bison with 45.5 million cattle," Manning says.
He suggests that we can restore our grasslands by returning to the grass-fire-bison ecology and describes some possibilities. The Flying D, Ted Turner's 130,000 acre ranch near Yellowstone National Park in Montana, for example, is an attempt to both restore the grasslands and make money by raising bison. Thanks to projects like this, the American bison, once almost extinct, has rebounded to a population of 150,000. There are now bison ranches in all 50 states.
Manning occasionally wanders beyond the subject of this book, taking a detour, for example, to discuss chaos theory. But this is a small price to pay for a generally very readable, enjoyable and challenging book.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - January 15, 1996In 1987 Frank and Deborah Popper stumbled upon a startling fact about the future of the Great Plains. These two social scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey had been studying dry socio-economic statistics about the Plains. They realized that 110 of the counties in the ten Plains states are in a slow and probably irreversible decline. The energy boom of the 1970s has gone bust. The farm economy is in serious trouble. Aquifers and populations alike are in decline. The stabilizing prairie grasses have been severely damaged by overgrazing or they have been total eliminated by plowing. The dust is in the wind again on the Great Plains.
In the 1890s the historian Frederick Jackson Turner noted the passing of American frontier. In the 1980s the Poppers, using the same definition of the frontier (less than 2 people per square mile) noted that, in effect, many of these counties are reverting back to a frontier condition. The Poppers came to believe that much of the Great Plains was never suited for a conventional agriculture based on the cow, the plow and the irrigation pump.
But then the Poppers hit upon an astonishing, audacious idea. Rather than see the Plains become a dust bowl again, maybe we can live at peace with Plains and its prairie life. As Anne Matthews, the author of Where the Buffalo Roam, explains: ". . . the Poppers would like to see a quarter of the Plains become a massive ecological reserve which they call the "Buffalo Commons." As the world's largest natural and historic preservation effort, the Commons would eventually return about 139,000 square miles in ten Plains states to open country for use as a wildlife refuge. Maybe, the Poppers suggest, the nation can learn from a hundred years of heartbreak. Maybe we ought not to insist on human will over the wishes of the land. Maybe we should yield to history, and bring back the buffalo, and let them roam."
Naturally, this idea struck many of the 6.5 million current residents of the Great Plains as outrageous, even loony. But the Poppers bravely (or masochistically) set out on several lecture tours of the Great Plains and its nearby cities. Author Matthews accompanied them on these trips and recorded the reaction of the residents. The reaction was usually intensely hostile.
But a few listeners began to see that the Commons could be more than just a refuge for wildlife. It could be a place for people too if they are willing to work with the land instead of against it. It will never be an untouched wilderness again and it won't really be the Popper's "ecological reserve" but it could be a working landscape based on a buffalo economy. Matthews notes that "... the Nature Conservancy and other private preservation groups ... have begun major buy-ups in or near the region, with plans to restock buffalo ... From Montana to Texas, Plains landowners have begun returning enormous acreage to game habitat ... Ranchers in the Northern Plains are starting to run buffalo in record numbers ... Twenty-nine Indian Tribes ... are back in the buffalo business. Curing the economic, social, and spiritual impoverishment of the Plains, all say, cannot be done without reintroducing buffalo and the buffalo culture."
Anne Matthews has written an entertaining and fascinating book about an unlikely pair of heroes on a possibly quixotic quest: restoring a sustainable economy on America's Great Plains. And, although the book is primarily an absorbing human interest story of this pair and their interaction with the proud but beleaguered people of the Great Plains, the reader also learns much about the Great Plains itself, its people, its history and its possible futures.
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - April 9, 1994(Note: Harvey Payne will be the speaker at the December 11, 1997 Christmas Dinner of the River Bluffs Audubon Society and he will have copies of this book for sale. This book is also available at the Last Page Bookstore at 206 E. High St. in Jefferson City.)
This is an impressive book on the Osage Hills of northeastern Oklahoma. It concentrates on the land of the historic Chapman-Barnard Ranch of which 37,000 acres are now part of the Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
Annick Smith is the author of Homestead and the Executive producer of the feature film Heartland and coproducer with Robert Redford of A River Runs Through It. She lives on a ranch near Missoula, Montana. Harvey Payne grew up on a ranch near the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and he took up photography as a hobby after opening a law practice in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Today he continues to practice law in Pawhuska and serves as director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Their deep interest in the grasslands and the people of the Great Plains is brought to fruition in this book.
This book would be worth the price for Harvey Payne's photographs alone but it's much more than a "coffee table book." Smith's text ranges broadly over the plants, wildlife and natural resources of the Osage Hills and the human interactions with them. Chapters on fire and bison explain how the tallgrass ecosystem is maintained. Discussions of the forced migrations of the Indians of the Southeastern U.S. and their confinement to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma make for poignant reading. The book goes on to trace the fascinating story of the Oklahoma land rushes, the cowboy era and the oil boomtowns and how some the Osage Indians have managed to hang on and benefit from the oil revenues.
Finally, Smith describes the politics of preservation and how the preserve came into existence, including the key role of the National Audubon Society's Ron Klataske. This not primarily a bird book but one of my favorite passages in the book (p. 235) describes her nocturnal encounter with some owls on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve:
"The sky over the prairies is red in the afterglow of sunset. The winding gravel road is dark. Light from my headlights rebounds into the deep blue dusk.
"Then at the edge of a barrow pit, I see glowing eyes. Not coyotes or skunks, but owls, owls, owls. I have never seen so many owls. Six fly up in the beams of my headlights. Maybe eight. I see spotlit owl faces, black-ringed eyes, distinct bars on long, hovering wings, pale heavy bodies in sudden flight. These are short-eared owls, a variety I have never seen before. They make no sound. I look up to a flurry of tawny feathers and the owls disappear into the moonless dark.
"I brake my car in the middle of the road, spewing gravel. The birds of prey are gone, but I am breathless. I feel small hairs stand up at the back of my neck. I shiver with the dread and delight of encountering owls in the night. This gathering of owls is a surpassing mystery. I begin to understand why owls hold humans in thrall. Why we think of them as spirits, omens, symbols of wisdom or death - all that and a nameless more. The owls have come to me like music from heaven, and I am blessed. I will never forget the owls that brought magic to my road.
"This is what life is, I believe, why it is so important to preserve what we can of rivers and forests, mountains and prairies. For beyond the lights of anyone's town, beyond commerce and industry, culture and craft, there is a quiet darkness at the quick of things -- a beating of wings that comes only from the wild."
- Reviewed by Dave Bedan - October 22, 1997 Links to Book and Software Sources 
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