cktimes.ca Archives for Nature Link


Nature Link

With Blake Mann

New books

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Recently, I purchased a couple of new books that make for good reading or reference. The first one is simply entitled "Tree". It was written by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady, with art work by Robert Bateman. It tells the story of a single Douglas Fir tree from the release of a seed, to the time the tree dies and falls to the forest floor. It covers a period of five hundred years and the story deals with all the interactions with insects, animals and weather. The story looks at a treeís relationship with all organisms in a tree's life. This small book is about 180 pages in length and makes for a good day's reading. It is available at most bookstores. The attached photo shows the cover.

Another book I just had to obtain was one entitled "Gulls of North America, Europe, and Asia", written by Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson. It is another bird reference guide in the Princeton series, that was released this past fall. It is a comprehensive reference guide that deals with all of the gulls seen on the aforementioned continents. It has paintings and photographs of the gulls in all of their plumages. The text includes descriptions, and distribution and migration. It is obviously the best book on gulls ever published. Every serious bird watcher has to have one!

Gulls are complex birds. They mature over a period of years and have winter and summer plumages, as well as plumages according to age. Gulls can be "two year", or up to "four year" birds, meaning that they take that number of years to mature. These birds can be highly variable in plumage. As well, many hybrid types are known. This new book will be highly useful in learning this interesting family of birds.

The gull book is not a field guide – it is almost 600 pages thick! It is available at specialized nature stores like Point Pelee, or available by ordering over the internet for about $70.00.
Buying books online is the way to go these days. One can get almost any book for reasonable prices. If the book is in stock, shipment can be within a business day or two. I ordered the gull book on a Friday evening and it arrived at the door Monday afternoon. I use Amazon.ca to look for books. Videos, CDs and other things are also available.

I'll just mention another book that appeared last summer. Titled "A Field Guide to the Migrating Raptors of Hawk Cliff", it describes briefly the hawks that are seen during fall migration at the famous Hawk Cliff east of Port Stanley. It is a coil bound book about fifty pages in length, and was published by the Hawk Cliff Foundation. The guide is only available at places like the nature outlets operated by Friend's groups at parks for about $10.00. Some are available through local naturalist clubs also.

Most hawks migrate south in the fall and do not cross large bodies of water. That is why the shoreline of Lake Erie, at various points, is excellent for spotting hawks. Since the 1930's, Hawk Cliff has been a hot spot to see large numbers of raptors migrating westward during appropriate weather patterns.

Next week will be my 100th column/article for CKTimes, so it will be somewhat of a milestone!