The Raptor Literature in Eastemasia Concems (8

kr- l1 TheRaptor Literature Lr,ovo F. Krrr relevant raptor literatrye, rather than providing a thor- The Peregrine Fund, oughhistorical review. We focuson regionsmost famil- 5668 W. Flying Hawk Lane, Boise, ID 83709 U.S'A. iar to us, and have touchedlightly on the raptor literature of someparts of the world. Ron G Blr.srrll Raptor researcherssuffer from two chronic prob- Doldersummerweg 1,7983 LD Wapse,The Netherlands lems: too little information and too much information. Traditionally,most researchers, regardless of their dis- Lucrl LIU Snvrnrrcruus cipline,have suffered from a lackof accessto thewhole Research Center for Biodiversity, spectrumof global literature. Few libraries offer com- Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115 prehensivecoverage ofall typesofraptor literature,and even now, the major online abstracting services, Jnvcnxr Snnnclltx althoughextremely valuable, do not yet provideaccess Falconry Heritage Trust, to the full text of most articles.Language differences P.O. Box 19, Carmarthen,Dyfed SA335YL, U.K. also have posedperennial barriers to communication, and few, if any, abstractingservices adequately cover the literaturein all of the world'smajor languages. Now, with a flood of information on its way onto INTRODUCTION the worldwide web, we run thb risk of descendingfrom the InformationAge into a stateof information chaos. We are currently experiencinga dramatic change in As a result,raptor literatureis becomingincreasingly scholarlydisciplines, as we shift from traditionalprint vast and amorphous.In his chapteron this topic in the publicationsto electronic forms of communication. first editionof this manual,LeFranc (1987) stated that Duringthis transition,many venerable joumals are pro- approximately370 and 1,030 raptor-relaledpublica- ducingparallel electronic versions and others are com- tionswere listed in the 1970and 1980issues of Wildlife pletely discontinuingtheir print versions. Many Review,respectively. By now, we suspectthat at least librariesare discarding large quantities ofpaper copies three times as many useful raptor-relatedarticles are of infrequently consulted publicationsand turning being publishedannually. It is impossiblefor any but insteadto electronictext, datastorage, and information the world's largestresearch libraries to keeppace with hansfer. Simply put, the world of information storage this torrentof information,yet stayingabreast of current andtransfer is a moving target. studiesis a prerequisitefor effectiveresearch on raptors That said,this chapterprovides a briefoverview of or any othertopic. i importantrecent global raptor literature, lists the major Although the Internet makes it possible to gain i I technicaljournals with usefulraptor content, and high- accessto an enormousamount of information, users . lights l the most important databasescontaining raptor may find it difficult to deal with the overwhelming mass 1 literature.Emphasis is on identi$ing entry points into of detail that has accumulatedon the web, much of it i i I l2 THE RAPTORLITERATURE trivial, redundant,or unrelated.For example,a recent intendedfor both scientific and lay audiences,and (July 2006) searchon the term "falcon" using Google includereference works on familiesand species,hand- yieldeda total of 53,200,000hits! Refiningthe search to books, encyclopedias,review articles,bibliographies, "PeregrineFalcon" resulted in 2,860,000matches. Nar- and most popular magazinearticles. Appendix 1 lists rowing the searchto "PeregrineFalcon eggshells" still joumalsthat regularlypublish papers about raptors. yielded33,900 matches. For researchers,the secondaryliterature serves as Clearly,plowing through this seaof information is an invaluablegateway to the primary literature.Howev- unworkablefor the averageraptor researcher. Efficiency er, becauseof the inevitable errors in transcription, of information fransfer dependsupon its organization; omissions,and misguided nuances of interpretationthat thus, focused databasesand indexes are worttr their find their way into handbooksand review volumes, weight in gold. Such schemesare now appearingon researchersand reviewersalways should consultthe many fronts, but someonemust pay for the work. Thus, original sourcesof datacited in their paperswhenever the most comprehensiveliterature-abshacting services possible. require subscriptionfees, which can be prohibitively high for most individual usersand smallerinstitutions. The RaptorLiterature by Topic Some even require a fee to publish on the web. The EntomologicalSociety ofAmerica, for example,recent- Generaltreatnents. There are now scoresof books on ly begancharging authors, who arewilling to pay for the raptors on the market intendedfor a generalaudience, privilege,immediate web accessfor theirpapers. If this but probablythe best introductionto the naturalhistory results in the cancellationof many print subscriptions, and conservationofbirds ofprey is the one editedby the price of this servicewill increase(Walker 2006). Newtonand Olsen (1990), which managesto be popu- Ultimately, this approachmay leadto the demiseof lar and authoritative.The two-volume set on hawks, paper publicationsand traditional subscriptions.At the eaglesand falconsof the world by Brown andAmadon very least, a market-drivenhansition to open access (1968)is a classicand, although a bit dated,remains an (albeit for a fee) to all articles,at leastthose in major sci- essentialpart of any raptor library. The Handbook of entific journals, is likely. But as Worlock (2006)warns, Birds of the World volumes treating diurnal birds of "Outsidethe consortia,and in the less-developedworld, prey and owls (del Hoyo et al. 1994, 1999)provide a genuinepoverty of accessis emergingas neverbefore, good overviewsof eachraptor family, concisespecies with the scholarly rich and poor divided sharply on accounts,and nice illustrationsofall species. accessand on the ability to stay abreastof thefast-mov- It would be difficult to overestimatethe importance ing researchbase." We hopethat solutionsare found to of the body of work publishedby the World Working suchinequities. And indeed,some ofthe developingsys- Groupon Birdsof Preyand Owls (WWGBPO).Now 30 temsdescribed in this chapterhold that promise. yearsold, this group was originally part of the Interna- tional Council for Bird Preservation(ICBP), which sup- ported world conferenceson raptors n 1975 and 1982 OVERVIEWOF THE RAPTOR (Chancellor1975, Newton and Chancellor1985). Sub- LITERATURE sequently,the WWGBPObecame independent of ICBR and under the guidanceof Bernd Meyburg, has met in different countriesat intervals of a few years,with the Typesof Literature proceedingsof each meeting usually being edited by ln general,scholarly literaturefalls into two broad cat- Meyburg and Robin Chancellorand publishedin ever- egories, "primary literature," which presentsoriginal thickening volumes (Meyburg and Chancellor1989, findings and ideasand is intendedfor a scientific audi- 1994;Chancellor et al. 1998,Chancellor and Meyburg ence,and "secondary literature," which consistsof gen- 2000,2004;Yosef et al.2002).The WWGBPO,which eral works suchas compilations,reviews, or other syn- now claimsover 3,000members worldwide, also pub- thesesof information, derived from primary sources. lished four volumesof Bird of Prey Bulletin, presenting The former includesbooks, journals, symposiavol- the results of regional conferences,and a volume umes, dissertations,theses, and absfiacts,as well as specificallydevoted to eagles(Meyburg and Chancellor unpublishedreports, which often are referredto as the 1996).In aggregate,these publications provide the best "gray literature." Secondaryliterafure publicationsare available overview of global raptor conservationand THE RAPTORLITERATURE 13 researchdirections over thepast three decades, and the Poyser(now under the imprint ofA&C Black),present- meetingsthemselves have created a world community ly with nine monographson diurnal raptorsand two on ofraPtorresearchers' owl species,and the Neue Brehm-Bilchereiseries, Families and groups of raptors. Presently,the best which was startedin 1948by ZiemsenVerlag in what senel;aloverviews of the diurnal birds of prey are the was then EastGermany and continuedsince 1992by 6ooks by Ferguson-Leesand Christie (2001, 2005), WestarpWissenschaften after the reunionof both Ger- which contain an enormousamount of useful informa- manies.This scholarlyseries includes monographs on at tion and attractivecolor plates, illushating multiple least 17 diurnalraptor and eight owl species,some of plumagesof eachspecies. The odd disconnectbetween which are rather outdated, while others have been ihe in+ext citations and the bibliographiesof these updatedor entirely rewritten.Among titles in the former booksis disconcerting,but thesetwo volumesremain series,those by Newton (1986)on the EurasianSpar- usefulas quick references. A similarvolume on owlsby rowhawk(Accipiter nisus) and Ratcliffe(1993) on the Kdnig et al. (1999)is the bestoverview of thosefami- PeregrineFalcon (Falco peregrinus) are especially lies,including detailed information on owl systematics important.Arlequin Pressalso has produced a smaller, basedon recentmolecular genetics studies. but important,series of monographson severalBritish Amongthe manygeneral treatments of owls, those raptorspecies (e.g., Carter 2001). by Mikkola(1983), Voous (1988), and Duncan (2003) The completelist of importantraptor speciesmono- areparticularly outstanding. World conferences on owls graphsis obviously too long to enumeratehere, but

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