With new books on Natural History coming out every day, it's easy to over look references of the past, many of which contain information and perspective rarely included in new material. These older classic texts, written in the late-19th and early-20th century, are well worth owning and stand up well against modern reference materials. This is the first entry in what will theoretically be a continuing series on nature works of the past.
This month's entry is John Richard May's 1935 work The Hawks of North America produced by the "National Association of Audubon Societies".
Modern works on specific bird groups usually fall into regional field guides that focus on identification or world-wide compilations that may include ecological and biological information, but suffer from a lack of regional familiarity and, arguably, too much information packed into too tight a space. The focus on identification in modern works is an artifact of the growing birdwatcher demographic where figuring out what a bird is is all too often the be-all end-all of the outdoor experience. Natural history is often given short-shrift and, when provided, is often written in a terse, no-nonsense style that is more like reading a dictionary than a work of prose.
One of the things that separates what I call pre-Peterson field guides from those we might call the "modern era" guides is the approach to species accounts and this is well illustrated in May's Hawks. May's work stands on the cusps of the change in style for field guides. The illustrations of hawks in flight are actually by Roger Tory Peterson, signed with his early "arts and crafts" block style. But the illustrations provided with the species accounts are by the great Allan Brooks in his far more naturalistic, composition-trumps-field-marks style.
Each species account begins in a way that is typical of early field guides. It is a relaxed personal account of the author's experiences with the species, sprinkled with anecdotes from other experienced observers. The writing style is chock full of adjectives and compound sentences. No effort is made to economize space or modify the author's voice into something more homogenous. We know exactly how May feels about hawks. He is decidedly pro-raptor, but understands the concerns of those who may feel differently. He suggest that referring to Red-tailed Hawks as "Hen Hawk" is a "sentence to death without a fair trial." He pleads for the protection of White-tailed Kites extolling in italics for emphasis:
"An earnest and immediate effort should be made to arouse public opinion, through education, to save the pitiful remnant of this beautiful species before it has completely vanished...."
One doesn't find this kind of passion in modern species accounts and while that may make them seem more objective, it also makes them less readable.
But May doesn't skimp on the just-the-facts natural history. Each account is further broken down into the then recognized subspecies. A written description of each is provided. Range maps are included. The feeding habits are well documented with anecdotal accounts of prey species taken and quantitative tables showing stomach content analysis of collected specimens. There is a level of detail here that one simply does not see in modern works- in part because this older narrative form is out of style and wouldn't even necessarily occur to modern authors.
The species accounts also include colloquial names for each species. Red-shouldered Hawk, for example, is also known as Singing Hawk and Northern Harriers (Marsh Hawks) are also called Bog-trotters by some. Having a source for these often forgotten regional epithets is an important cultural component that even Peterson included in the earliest versions of his field guides, but later dropped when "standardized English vernacular" became the rule.
So, if you are genuinely thinking of becoming a birder for the long haul- someone likely to own more than a half-dozen bird books- John Richard May's Hawks of North America should be close to the top of your books-to-find list at your local used-book emporium.
Modern Hawk-watchers bibliography-
Clark, W.S. and B.K. Wheeler. 1987. Hawks (Peterson Field Guide). Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
Dunne, P., D. Keller and R. Kochenberger. 1984. Hawk Watch: a guide for beginners. Cape May Bird Observatory, Cape May, NJ.
Dunne, P., D. Sibley and C. Sutton. 1988. Hawks in Flight. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
Ligouri, J. 2005. Hawks from Every Angle. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Wheeler, B.K. 2003. The Wheeler Guides to Raptors (split into east and west). Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Wheeler, B.K. and W.S. Clark. 1995. Photographic Guide to North American Raptors. Academic Press, London.
Posted by mbalame at March 18, 2007 7:46 PM