Customer Reviews

Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior, Volume 3

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most books about birds present the species in 'phylogenetic' order, a conventional sequence intended to show the apparent relationships between species. This book, for example, begins with a loon (long considered the most primitive of extant North American species, though recently replaced by the waterfowl) and ends with a hummingbird (a relatively advanced family of 'pre-passerines'); the owls, for example, are kept together to show their relatively close evolutionary ties. Ordering the birds alphabetically, by color, or in any other of the artificial schemes one occasionally encounters, results in scattering closely related species throughout the book, and in the case of alphabetical order, requires revision with every nomenclatural change (does that funny-looking red-billed rallid go under 'm' for 'moorhen' or 'g' for 'gallinule'?).
It's great that the reviewer prepared an alphabetical index, but all birders eventually grow accustomed to phylogenetic order and use it without thinking about it at all.

The Stokes Guides to Bird Behavior are great little references for backyard bird-watching. You may have to wander a little further than your backyard to observe some of these species, but the birds in your neighborhood are probably in one of the three Stokes volumes. Each Stokes Guide to Bird Behavior features 25 common North American bird species. For each species, the authors explain visual displays, auditory displays, territory courtship, nest-building, breeding, plumage and seasonal movement, and provide a calendar so that you can clearly see when these behaviors occur. I wouldn't take any generalizations about bird behavior too seriously because many birds are very individual, and their behaviors and social customs vary accordingly. But these books will give you a good basis for understanding and predicting the behavior of your avian neighbors. You'll enjoy watching your little feathered friends all the more with the added understanding the Stokes Guides provide.

My one complaint about these books is that the bird species are not in any particular order, and neither are they indexed. If you look at the table of contents you will see that the species are not in alphabetical or any other order, and there is no sense to which birds are in which volume or where they are placed in the book. In other words, you have to read through the entire list of 25 species in the table of contents, in each book, to locate the species you want. I have no explanation for this, and I made an index for the books myself to save me from the frustration involved every time I want to look up a species. That is the reason I gave the book(s) 4 stars instead of 5.

In Volume Three: Common Loon, Great Blue Heron, Wood Duck, American Woodcock, Common Tern, Bald Eagle, Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Northern Goshawk, Broad-Winged Hawk, Red-Tailed Hawk, Osprey, Peregrine Falcon, Northern Bobwhite, Rig-Necked Pheasant, Great Horned Owl, Barred Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, Pileated Woodpecker, Purple Martin, Common Raven, Eastern Bluebird, Dark-Eyed Junco, White-Throated Sparrow, and Bobolink.