Customer Reviews

A Concise History of Ornithology

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Being quite an ornithological history buff, I recently received this book as a present from a very good friend and for the first time was very disappointed in such a book. In a few words it is very confusing and poorly written. The contents are what you might expect and indeed the whole gamut of the ornithological history is covered from early times to the modern era. So what is the problem? As the author is covering a subject, let's say bird evolution, he mentions a person and immediately goes off on a tangent discussing the birth date, life history, etc about the person forgetting all about bird evolution. One or two paragraphs - or worst still pages - later he returns to the subject at hand i.e. bird evolution. By that time I had totally lost the thread he was talking about in evolution and was totally confused.

The other point I found useless was that of the 255 pages in the book a full 62 pages are devoted to appendices giving lists of how different authors, over the years, set out the taxonomy of the various families. This may be of interest to the taxonomic specialist but to the general reader it is a total waste of almost 25% of the book!

The one redeeming feauture is that the last chapter on 'Ornithology and Ornithologists in the 20th century` written not by the author but by John Coulson is excellent and gives an excellent account of the developments in ornithology in the 20th century. I wish the whole book had been written like this.

The book has many photographs of the people connected with birds.

Each chapter is stuffed with names of ornithologists, collectors, and collections that seem to overwhelm any attempt to convey a progression of the science. For example the different approach of Linnaeus (systematics) and Buffon (dynamic nature), seems to be glossed over. Perhaps in the 30 appendices (60 pages), one glimpses Walters real interest in the changing taxonomic classification over time and geography. Taxonomy is the emphasis, and just a slight mention of ecology, for example of Baird who first noticed that individuals of same species tend to larger in colder regions. By covering such a broad geography, it seems to slight any particular area, for example North American ornithology is covered in 8 pages. The inclusion of portraits of the scientists, artist drawings of the birds, or prints from title pages of the books were very welcome (most interesting is Ole Wormius's Museum from 1655)! By focusing on individuals, the contributions of particular universities are also downplayed.

I actually find that the heaping up of facts makes this a useful quick reference. Unfortunately, there are not a few passages here that are taken without attribution from Paul Lawrence Farber's 1982 "Discovering Birds," which disappoints.