BRINGING BACK THE BIRDS

Photographer Deutsch teams up with the
American Bird Conservancy and noted ornithologists in a collection of full-color
photographs and essays that explore the wonder of all things avian.

A love for birds comes through clearly
in this comprehensive collection. Deutsch’s plentiful, stunning photography
showcases various winged beauties of the Americas, including Colombia and
Ecuador’s dramatic-looking, violet-tailed sylph; the yellow Canada warbler; and
the United States’ bald eagle with its impressive wingspan. This hefty guide is
both a happy celebration of birds and a warning about their potential future destruction;
in a foreword by Jonathan Franzen, the novelist and amateur birder warns that
many birds depend on multiple habitats, so their survival depends on land
conservation in more than one location. (The book opens with Margaret Atwood’s
previously unpublished poem “Fatal Light Awareness,” in which the speaker
mourns the death of a thrush that flew into a window.) However, an upbeat introduction,
“Birds Are Amazing” by American Bird Conservancy president Michael J. Parr, reveals
how the New Caledonian Crow smartly uses tools in the wild to extract grubs
from rotten wood. In “The Power of Birds,” John W. Fitzpatrick, the executive
director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, eloquently describes a 1970s
recording of the beautiful but haunting song of a Hawaiian bird—the sole
survivor of its species. In an informative essay, “Migration,” naturalists Kenn
Kaufman and Kimberly Kaufman delve into how flight patterns connect the
Americas. And Peter P. Marra, the director of the Migratory Bird Center at the
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, offers compelling, up-to-date
scientific tidbits in “Migratory Connectivity,” such as the fact that flight-tracking
devices can now weigh as little as 3.4 grams. In another essay, Clare Nielsen,
communications VP at the American Bird Conservancy, details how black-pepper
vines make wonderful habitats for birds in Guatemala. Overall, the book is brimming
with bird facts, and that information can be shocking at times, particularly
regarding endangered species.