Customer Reviews

What Bird Did That?: A Driver's Guide to Some Common Birds of North America

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

 

 

I'd never heard of this book (1991) til 2001. It's incredibly funny. Written in a pseudo-audobon style, each page has a perky 1x1" picture of the species of interest, and a sharp, color 4x4" photo of its supposed bird splat. (whether globby, loose, white, gray, yellow, small, large, starburst-like, etc). Very very funny.

With all the great Field Guides around it is becoming quite simple to identify a new bird.You are out birding and see a bird sitting atop a tree.You line it up in your bins,take note of the field marks,check your trusty guide,and Presto!You have just found a Painted Bunting.Now,let's crank it up a notch.You're driving along a back road,and SPLAT!!What was that?Now you're in the big league of bird identification.Here's where this book comes to the rescue.Yep! now you can stop the car and check out the characteristics of the splat and determine what bird paid you a visit.This book describes what matches your splat."Small,sometimes only the size of a grain of rice.The coiled,rather gaudy and squishy nucleus is delightfully encapsulated in a semi-opaque,frothy envelope."What you got here,my friend, is also a Painted Bunting;but indentified in a whole new way!However if this is what you got,"Messy and generous,with a definite tendency to splood.The thick,creamy envelope sometimes contains solids of bilious yellow (partly digested gristle and fat) that add a sprightly dash of color to the splay."Check the book,what you got this time is our old friend,the Turkey Vulture.
So,if you want to improve your image with your birding friends get hold of this book and amaze them at the next SPLAT.
Oh yeah;another thing,just in case that splat was with the compliments of a bat instead of a bird;this book will also help you make the differentiation.
A great gift for you or your birdwatching friend.

This is a short guidebook to birds with its smart tongue planted deep in its cheek. It's copiously illustrated with photographs of bird droppings (splays) on car windshields and instructions on how to tell what
species of bird they came from. As the authors say: "A knowledge of each splay is essential to fully describe and understand the variations in ornithological dejecta." It's largely by taking the subject exactly
that faux seriously, but then subverting it with the choice of topic and some very funny invented vocabulary, that they elicit laughs. Here, for instance, is one of their terms of art and its definition:

audibon: Soft sound made by avian dejecta as it strikes a windshield and forms a splay. Audi (l) sound, bon (fr) good, literally, good sound.

The book's kind of a one-trick pony, but a very amusing trick.

GRADE: B+

This is a great book and has a great web site too, at, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk./~design.machine-tanya/ Good book! Great site!

Okay, you are driving along, mature Norway maples lining the street in a Columbus, Ohio suburb, when... BAM! Right in your field of view on your windshield... avian dejecta. It could be an American robin, or maybe even a European starling. In any case, they are both soft and wet. Use your windshield wipers at your own peril. They'll probably smear and reduce your visibility. You might want to just peek around it until you can stop and squeegee it off.

And how did you identify this mess? You may have been studying this book, What Bird Did That? A Driver's Guide to Some Common Birds [ejecta] of North America. You learned how to identify many common species such as the cardinal:

"A small, compact, mainly envelopic splutz, which at times can be brightly colored. Often a sticky, transparent residue replaces the normal secondary envelope. Check nucleus for signs of undigested seeds or insect material" (p. 52).

"Splutz?" "Secondary envelope?" "Nucleus?"

There might be a bit more sophistication in identifying bird droppings than you thought!

"Splay" is defined as "Avian dejecta [excrement] containing both fecal and urate portions, formed in a spread out manner, after ejection from height onto a hard surface [like a windshield]" (p. 63). There also is the "fillmailner:" "Windshield almost completely covered with splay matter. The result usually indicates an excellent days collection or one cormorant" (p. 62).

I once knew a person who had to follow tens of thousands of starlings to their evening roost, then don raingear, go into the roost (many having 3-6 inches of excrement covering the ground), and put out disks to collect dejecta over a certain period of time. It was a test of a method for determining the numbers of starlings in a roost. Yuck. I know... I've been in a couple of these roosts.

But now that I have my What Bird Did That? guide, I know I can see a flock of birds, and just drive underneath them, inspecting their splays for proper identification.

Unless, of course, I'm hit by a turkey vulture: "Messy and generous, with a definite tendency to splood. The thick, creamy envelope sometimes contains solids of a bilious yellow (partially digested gristle and fat) that add a sprightly dash of color to the splay" (p. 25).

This book is probably most entertaining to one who has "been there, done that."