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I rarely go on a trip without packing binoculars. The chance to visit a new locale means the opportunity to discover a bird I haven't seen before. My biggest travel dilemma often boils down to this: Which field guide do I take? With a shelf full of bird books, it's no easy decision.
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I'm not alone. With an estimated 46 million birders in America today—and birding one of the fastest-growing outdoor hobbies—there should be a ready audience for Scott Weidensaul's Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding and Jonathan Rosen's The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature.
Although both are about birding, these are very different books. Weidensaul's mostly chronological history of birding is chock-full of bizarre characters and historical and personal anecdotes. He comes across as the likeable guy next door: telling stories of watching The Beverly Hillbillies as a child (and hating Miss Jane Hathaway for making birders look like nerds); spinning folksy tales of expeditions where liquor-preserved specimens were lost when the alcohol was siphoned off by thirsty men; and confessing to the shelf-staggering loads of field guides that threaten to take over his house. Although his writing here is not as lyrical as in his superlative Living on the Wind, his grasp of birding and joy in birds comes across on every page. Weidensaul's proverbial glass is full to brimming.
Rosen, on the other hand, is the brooding intellectual for whom birding is a path to self-understanding and a means of moving toward the mystery of something greater than himself. In birding, he writes, "you are eventually forced to recognize that the way to the universal is through the particular." Birds, for Rosen, are symbols of loss and the hunt for something—he doesn't know exactly what, but he yearns for it, nevertheless. His glass is half empty, but he doesn't want it to stay that way.
The history of birding is a vast, sprawling subject, and it's not surprising that Weidensaul struggles to get it going for the first fifty pages or so. Then he hits his stride, and the rewards for the reader are rich. He begins with the Native Americans and white Roanoke settler Governor John White. Rosen starts with the rapscallion genius John James Audubon and a macabre tale about the death of Audubon's favorite parrot at the hands of a pet monkey (Rosen uses this story to frame much of his narrative). Both authors are fascinated by Audubon—"what a damnably awkward challenge Audubon still poses, almost two centuries after his pinnacle," writes Weidensaul—and like countless others, they can't help but be drawn in by his charismatic persona.
Weidensaul's apt to go off on tangents, such as folk names for birds or tracking a vulture or scenes from his own birding life, but the reader will probably enjoy going along for the ride, choppy as it sometimes gets. He admirably covers a lot of ground: the evolution of field guides, the rise of recreational birding, bird conservation, and the bitter divide between amateurs and professionals.
These birders are a motley crew, and their stories make lively reading. Weidensaul includes such ornithological pioneers as Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, and Elliott Coues, as well as contemporary birders Roger Tory Peterson and Kenn Kaufman. For amateur birders like myself, learning about these men (and the few women) who jumpstarted ornithology lends understanding to some common bird names in my field guides (think "Bell's vireo") as well as their Latin monikers (Pica nuttalli, named in honor of naturalist Thomas Nuttall). Weidensaul explains that Eastern birds are often named for a location ("Cape May warbler") and Western birds for a person. I also learned that birders consider it bad manners if you discover a new rarity and name it for yourself. You are supposed to wait until an ornithological friend discovers a bird and names it for you.
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