Here is a great article about Richard and his passion for all things birding: http://www.shorenewstoday.com/snt/news/index.php/act-naturally/16734-bird-is-the-word.html.

With the knowledge of a scholar, the zeal of an evangelist, and the optimism of a press agent, Crossley is now on a mission to make birding cool. If he has anything to do with it, the image of the meadow-dwelling nerd with backpack, bifocals and binoculars will soon be extinct.

What do you think? Can birding be cool? How can birders make the sport more visible and attractive to the masses?

As one of the leading bird book publishers in North America, we are so excited for this movie (in theaters Oct 14). Hopefully it encourages thousands, or even better, millions more people to get out and look at birds. With our complete line-up of field guides and pocket guides to locations in North America and around the world, we’ve got you covered if and when you get out there.

Starting next week, tune in for a new image from the exciting new app, Mammals of North America, based on the best-selling book of the same name.

This week, since Monday was a holiday, I’ll just list some recent reviews for the app:

American Birding Association: http://blog.aba.org/2011/08/figuring-out-furry-friends-just-got-easier.html

School Library Journal’s Touch and Go blog: http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/touchandgo/2011/09/05/review-of-mammals-of-north-america-for-ios/

AppAdvice: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/08/discover-what-lives-in-your-own-backyard-with-mammals-of-north-america

Well-Read Naturalist: http://www.wellreadnaturalist.com/category/wellinformed/news/apps-news/

Credit goes to Peter Unbehauen who asked his friends to review the book in the midst of the
selva de Peru, to the sounds of the gallitos de las rocas.

Photo: Probable Bryan’s Shearwater, Midway Atoll, December 1991. (Reginald David)

So, you are asking yourself — who or what is a Bryan’s Shearwater? and why is Princeton University Press dratting him, her, or it? Well, this is a story almost 50 years in the making.

In 1963, scientists collected a specimen of what they thought was a Little Shearwater. Now, in 2011, DNA testing has revealed that it is actually a new species of shearwater which has been named after Edwin Horace Bryan Jr., who was curator of collections at the B.P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu from 1919 until 1968.

So, why the drat? Well, we should have known that the minute we published the definitive and complete guide to birds of Hawaii, New Zealand, and other Western pacific locales, there would be an exciting new discovery that instantly made it incomplete (still the most complete, mind you, but minus 1).

According to a press release from The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, (via The Birdbooker Report, http://birdbookerreport.blogspot.com/p/new-hawaiian-shearwater.html), this is the finding of a lifetime: “Researchers have rarely discovered new species of birds since most of the world’s 9,000-plus species (including about 21 other species of shearwaters) were described before 1900. The majority of new species described since the mid-1900s have been discovered in remote tropical rain and cloud forests, primarily in South America and southeastern Asia. The Bryan’s shearwater is the first new species reported from the United States and Hawaiian Islands since the Po’ouli was described from the forests of Maui in 1974.”

So, now that everyone’s Hawaiian checklist has gotten a little bit bigger, how will you recognize a Bryan’s Shearwater? According to the release, “the Bryan’s Shearwater is the smallest shearwater known to exist. It is black and white with a black or blue-gray bill and blue legs.” However, as the release notes, the fact that Bryan’s shearwaters have only just now been discovered means they are extremely rare and may even be extinct, so best of luck in spotting one!

Natalie Angier writes a terrific piece about the popular, yet understudied, flamingo in the New York Times today.

I have always been fascinated by these birds, but never more so than after watching them “dance” at the Philadelphia Zoo. A group of at least 24 birds moving forward, back, sideways in perfect rhythm. They were joined by a large duck who kept up fairly well with their fast-paced dance. We may not know precisely why they are dancing (Angier’s article points to research that suggests flocks are trying to coordinate mating times so that young hatch on the same day which increases chance of survival), but one thing we do know is what their nests look like!

Well, here is an exclusive glimpse from Avian Architecture of a field of flamingo nests. Enjoy!

The best-selling Princeton field guide to the land and marine mammals of the United States and Canada is now available in digital form on the App Store. We will be giving the Mammals of North America App away to one lucky follower on our Mammals App Facebook page at:

http://on.fb.me/MammalsNAapp

The random draw for this app will be Friday August 26th at 3:30 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on the Mammals App Facebook page to be entered to win!

All the beautiful and accurate illustrations as well as the easy-to-use functionality of the book have been kept while also adding extra features such as:

• The ability to expand the high-resolution images by tapping or rotating the device
• Photographs that complement the illustrations of certain species
• Calls for over 150 species (including multiple calls for some species)
• Quick swiping through the 462 mammals
• The ability to easily find a species using either common or scientific names and in taxonomic or alphabetic order
• The ability to only show species for a specified postal code
• A compare feature that lets you view two species at the same time on the same screen
• Interactive tracks that quickly link to the associated mammal
• A personal record of mammal sightings that can be exported using email*

*Uninstalling/reinstalling the program will result in the loss of your list; it is recommended that you export the list regularly to avoid any loss of data.
We invite all users to share their comments and ideas on our forum at www.mydigitalearth.com

Please note: This Application WILL ONLY work on an iPhone or iPod Touch (2nd GEN) running OS V3.0 or higher NOT A NORMAL IPOD CLASSIC/NANO, and the download is about 80MB.

Copyright:
2011 Cool Ideas LLC
Application URL:
http://www.mydigitalearth.com
Also available:
Mammals of North America:
(Second Edition)
Roland W. Kays & Don E. Wilson

Birding of course!

Birders (and bird book publicists?) everywhere are obsessing over the release of The Big Year starring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black on October 14th. Don’t believe me?

Read the Birdchick for the low down on the binoculars the guys are carrying, or the Wingnut for an explanation about just what a big year is, or Wild Bird Blog for even more.

So what to do while we wait for the premiere of the first (?) birding movie? Read books of course! Check out our birding and natural history titles here.

John Riutta, of the Well-Read Naturalist blog, has written a terrific article about the history and future of bird book publishing. We are proud to see many of our recent bird guides mentioned in the article at Bird Watcher’s Digest: http://www.birdwatchersdigest-digital.com/birdwatchersdigest/20110910?folio=52.

I know there will always be debates about digital vs. painted, but it does seem as though technology has finally caught up with imagination. All three of the PUP books featured use digital photographs to present birds in realistic poses and activities. To borrow a very early Crossley tag line, PUP seems to be inaugurating a new wave of reality birding (or at least reality birding books!).

Check out The Crossley ID Guide, Hawks at a Distance, and Birds of Eastern (or Western depending on your area of interest) North America.

The July issue of Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association, features artwork and an article by internationally acclaimed wildlife artist (and PUP author!) Albert Earl Gilbert. Gil’s field adventures in Southeast Asia are described in an exciting article entitled “Trogon Quest” (which is loosely based on a blog posting he made here on PUP blog last year), in which he relates his first-hand observations and experiences he and his party encountered doing the research for the award-winning book on tropical birds: Trogons: A Natural History of the Trogonidae. Published in 2010, Trogons was honored as the winner of the “BEST BOOK DESIGN” category in the 2010 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS (IBA), the publishing world’s Oscar. The book also received an award as Finalist in “BEST COVER DESIGN” category.

Albert Earl Gilbert painted over 80 full color illustrations for the book authored by Joseph Forshaw, designed by Derrick I. Stone, and co- published by Princeton University Press and Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Trogons is a natural history of this spectacularly beautiful tropical bird family that includes the Quetzal, the sacred bird of the ancient Mayans and Aztecs.

One of Gil’s paintings is on the cover of the issue (seen above), and 7 other paintings as well as sketches are contained within the article. Gil also has written more about the cover painting in a Web Extra feature on the ABA blog: http://www.aba.org/birding/v43n4p5w1.pdf.

Birding Magazine can be ordered on line through the American Birding Association (ASBA) website http://www.aba.com. To learn more about Gil, head to his website is: http://albertearlgilbert.com.

Click over to read Rosyfinch Ramblings review of Birds of New Jersey by Bill Boyle, Jr. The book prompted the blog reviewer to revisit her first birding checklist and also stirred many memories of the changes in environment and bird populations that have occurred in her lifetime. This is definitely worth reading in its entirety, but here are a few quick excerpts to whet the palette:

In the early 1940s it seemed that every suburban home had Wood Thrushes nesting in their foundation plantings. In springtime, colorful warblers and other neotropical migrants adorned the leafless trees and shrubs. Peregrine Falcons (then called “Duck Hawks”) nested in aeries high on the Palisades along the Hudson River. I looked forward to perusing Boyle’s book with a Rip Van Winkle mind-set, ready to be surprised by the changes in the number and distribution of New Jersey’s birds over more than a half century. I was not disappointed.

…

Paging through this book, my attention was naturally drawn to those old, familiar species of my childhood. How have they fared? Have some of the less common birds changed in abundance? Have new species invaded my old turf? It was a relief to find that Wood Thrushes remain abundant. Of course, House Finches and Cattle Egrets were unknown to me in the 1940s, and I was aware of how they invaded New Jersey by the 1970s, but from Boyle I learned that numbers of both species have since plummeted. Bacterial conjunctivitis caused a 50% drop in House Finch populations in the late 1990s, though they are still widely distributed in the state. The number of breeding Cattle Egrets peaked in the 1980s, but now the breeding population has nearly disappeared from New Jersey.

And perhaps most shocking to a new birder like me who can now count several Red-bellied Woodpeckers on her checklist:

I never saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker during the 1940s and 1950s, though it expanded its range in the 1960s and 1970s, and now the species is common and widespread in New Jersey.

FACT: In the Bottlenosed Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and its close relatives, the pods consist of related females of several generations. Young males form bachelor pods, and older males may form alliances in connection with matings.

Marine Mammals of the North Atlantic
By Carl Christian Kinze

Despite strong public interest in marine mammals and the incredible popularity of whale watching, particularly in the North Atlantic, many marine mammal populations remain little known. This fully illustrated book is a comprehensive and attractive guide to the marine mammals of the North Atlantic–and the only guide to cover all fifty-one species found there. It offers whale watchers and other marine mammal enthusiasts the means to identify the region’s seals, manatees, walrus, and polar bear in addition to its forty species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises.

As a guide, this book will be invaluable to boaters, divers, shore dwellers, and all who venture into or on North Atlantic water. It will also interest aquarium visitors and anyone who has ever wanted to see a pod of whales, school of dolphins, or society of porpoises in action.

* illustrates and depicts the diagnostic features of all 51 marine mammal species occurring in the North Atlantic
* gives full coverage to not only whales, dolphins, and porpoises but also seals, manatees, the walrus, and the polar bear
* features 250 color illustrations
* contains distribution maps for each species and provides information on behavior, reproduction, and feeding for each species
* describes the North Atlantic as a habitat for marine mammals
* features concise text written by a top expert

Available in paperback.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7514.html