Bird News: Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island [Hardcover]

E. Vernon Laux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 1999

As Darwin found on the Galapagos, an island provides the perfect laboratory in which to chart new finds and learn universal truths. With the enthusiasm of the devotee, columnist E. Vernon Laux documents a year in the life of the Martha's Vineyard bird population and provides a bird's-eye view of the seasons on New England's most celebrated island. He reports on the characters that watch and the creatures that are watched in the skies and waters, beaches and mudflats, fields and forests of the Vineyard. Laux also lovingly describes his own discovery: the chickmouse, a hybrid of two common species. In his sometimes dramatic, sometimes serene corner of the world, Laux explores complex relationships through acute observation and enthusiastic attention.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There was a time, and not so long ago, when the little island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, was the undiscovered hunting ground not only of the well-to-do, but also of birdwatchers from all over the world. The island has since been "discovered," overrun by tourists and casual visitors. Birdwatchers have changed, too; as E. Vernon Laux writes, tongue securely in cheek, "Birding is no longer the exclusive domain of little old ladies in sensible shoes and dottering Englishmen." But the birds have not changed, and Laux paints an exceedingly affectionate portrait of their lives in this little corner of the Atlantic Ocean, a place full of swallows, loons, kinglets, warblers, buntings, woodcock, orioles, murrelets, gulls, blackbirds, and other birds--some 300 species in all.

Laux sings the praises of watertight boots and rubberized, close-focusing binoculars. He writes with clarity of the ecology of swamps and the harshness of a New England winter. He honors his fallen fellows, notably the great birder Roger Tory Peterson, and he encourages newcomers to the pleasures of ornithology. And he airs a few unabashedly eccentric sentiments, including a hurrah for hurricanes, whose winds sweep onto Martha's Vineyard all kinds of unusual bird species that make a birdwatcher's day. "This may not be a sane reaction," he admits. It is certainly a passionate one, and in this gentle book Laux does a fine job of sharing his love for birds of all kinds. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

"Most birds undertake perilous migrations with no guides, maps, or experienceAit is a wonder that any survive," opines Laux, an ornithologist. A bird's life, as he describes it, is a nearly constant frenetic round of athletic activity. After heavy rains, innumerable young birdsAnot yet fully featheredAget soaked and freeze, or else starve. Laux writes with rare passion, knowledge and insight about birds, finely tuned biological marvels honed by millennia of evolving and surviving. Attractively designed and complemented by b&w photographs and sketches, this unusual book melds Laux's crisp essays with his "Bird News" columns for the Martha's Vineyard Gazette into an informal year-round log of birdwatching on Martha's Vineyard, the popular Massachusetts tourist spot and birders' island paradise. Roseate terns, snow buntings, short-eared owls, little blue herons, yodeling common loons, turkey vultures, orchard orioles and a multitude of other speciesAsome local, others migrantAwing their way through Laux's daybook. In democratic, grassroots fashion, the text incorporates the sightings of a network of fellow bird enthusiasts spread out over the Vineyard's shores, tidal flats, towns and forest. What saves this ornithological diary from becoming a cluttered, repetitious catalogue or recital of colorful and exotic bird sightings is Laux's uncanny empathy with our feathered friends and his lyrically precise observations of the island changing through the seasons. He makes birdwatching a continual adventure, a way of relating to nature and the planet.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows (July 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581130
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581132
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,296,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb, literate account of bird life on Marth's Vineyard., February 3, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bird News: Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island (Hardcover)

Bird News provides a year in the life of Martha's Vineyard birds, with the author/observer charting feathered marvels both native and imported. A report by month and day allows for intimate first-person seasonal observations which prove revealing and involving. Highly recommended: a literary bird journal.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Local knowledge is fine, but style counts too., February 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Bird News: Vagrants and Visitors on a Peculiar Island (Hardcover)

The author, Vaux, loves birds, has lots of birding friends, lives on an island that attracts a remarkable number of species, and writes a column on birding for his local newspaper. As a description of the birding life on Martha's Vinyard, this book is serviceable. His descriptions of Razorbills, for example, are evocative. Unfortunately, most of the book consists of recycled, apparently not re-edited, newspaper columns. There is some interesting local information in these columns, which I appreciated. On the other hand, too much of the book consists of items describing how Mr. and Mrs. Homer Pettifogg III, new and rich visitors to the island, saw a Rose-breasted Grosbeak on May 21, 1998, and had no idea what it was until your humble author arrived to straighten them out and share their whiskey. If you enjoy such trivia, then this is the book for you. However, if you want something a bit more limpid and inspiring than provided by this author's clunky writing style, you might want to look elsewhere.