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Book Reviews Book Reviews EDITED BY R. TODD ENGSTROM The following critiques express the opinions of the individual evaluators regarding the strengths, weaknesses, and value of the books they review. As such, the appraisals are subjective assessments and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or any official policy of the American Ornithologists’ Union. The Auk 127(3):714–717, 2010 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/127/3/714/5148482 by guest on 28 September 2021 The American Ornithologists’ Union, 2010. Printed in USA. Handbook of the Birds of the World, vol. : Bush-shrikes time of only a few years may be able to cope with such a fever of to Old World Sparrows.—Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott, and change, but not a global handbook on the scale of the Handbook David Christie, Eds. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain. of the Birds of the World (HBW): its present edition is still unfin- pp., color plates, color photos, distribution maps. ished after two decades. In hindsight, then, its decision to keep to ISBN . Cloth binding. $..—With the publi- an old, established, and familiar sequence such as the Wetmore- cation of volume , this monumental -volume project to de- Peters has been most wise. scribe and illustrate the world’s species of birds, begun in , Not so easily accepted are cases in which the HBW’s edi- is now nearing completion. Only the vireos and Old and New tors keep genera in the families to which they were assigned in World “-primaried” oscines remain. The present volume covers the Wetmore-Peters arrangement when molecular research has families, in the following order: Malaconotidae (bush-shrikes), shown them to belong to other families altogether. In most such Prionopidae (helmet-shrikes), Vangidae (vangas), Dicruridae cases in the present volume—e.g., Lanioturdus in Malaconotidae, (drongos), Callaeidae (New Zealand wattlebirds), Notiomystidae Chaetorhynchus in Dicruridae, Grallina in Grallinidae, Notiomys- (stitchbirds), Grallinidae (mudlarks), Struthideidae (Australian tis in Notiomystidae, and Pityriasis in Pityriaseidae—the solution mudnesters), Artamidae (woodswallows), Cracticidae (butcher- makes sense and the outcome is satisfactory. But not so in one in- birds), Pityriaseidae (bristleheads), Ptilonorhynchidae (bower- stance: the inclusion of the cnemophilid satinbirds (Cnemophili- birds), Paradisaeidae (birds-of-paradise), Corvidae (crows and dae) in the birds-of-paradise, Paradisaeidae. Not only molecular jays), Buphagidae (oxpeckers), Sturnidae (starlings), and Passeri- but also morphological and behavioral traits show that the satin- dae (Old World sparrows). The first two families are African, the birds are unrelated to the birds-of-paradise; yet, though this has vangas are endemic to Madagascar, the drongos are widespread been known for a decade and is recorded in the introduction to the in the Old World tropics, and three of the last four are found Paradisaeidae, the satinbirds are kept there as a subfamily. Their throughout Afro-Eurasia. Inserted between them are eight fam- three species are even given the English group name of “bird-of- ilies which, with the exception of the Bornean Bristlehead, are paradise,” to the confusion of the birders who will use this work. centered in or endemic to Australasia. More than that, hiding the satinbirds away among the birds-of- Today the mix of these families in one volume may seem paradise limits general perceptions of their distinctiveness and strange phylogenetically, but it follows the Wetmore-Peters se- relationships, which, in a work of this stature, has ramifications quence that prevailed with little change throughout most of the for other areas of ornithology. In zoogeography, for example, it th century. The entire handbook project is planned on that se- diminishes understanding of the importance of montane New quence (Bock ), which, given its growing disparity with avian Guinea, the home of the satinbirds, as not just a co-inheritor of an- phylogeny revealed by the -year-old molecular revolution, cestral stocks of songbirds but also a primary refuge for them after raises the question: why has the project not followed the molecu- Australia became desiccated in Plio-Pleistocene times. Since the lar lead? It is a question which no doubt troubled the project’s edi- Sibley-Ahlquist work on avian phylogeny in the late th century torial council in the early years—but by now I hope its members (Sibley and Ahlquist and references therein), diverse new are breathing more easily. DNA–DNA hybridization and DNA se- corvidan families have been uncovered in montane New Guinea, quence studies have produced one phylogenetic revelation after the satinbirds among them. another through the past two decades, creating enormous flux as It is customary to introduce each volume in the HBW series further questions were generated and contradictions reassessed. with a scholarly essay on an ornithological topic of significance. The smoke may now have started to clear, but matters are still far In volume the topic is the deserving one of birding, written from settled. Global check-lists concerned with only a name and by Stephen Moss, British natural-history producer with the BBC a thumbnail account of distribution and published with a lead and prominent birding author. If titles describe content, this one, The Auk, Vol. , Number , pages . ISSN -, electronic ISSN -. by The American Ornithologists’ Union. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals. com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: ./auk.... — 714 — JULY 2010 — BOOK REVIEWS — 715 “Birding past, present and future—a global view,” succeeds gener- species, they are much longer for the larger families: to pages ally. The -page essay, plus references, traces the beginnings and for the bush-shrikes, bowerbirds, and sparrows; and to for development of birdwatching to its explosion in the late th cen- the even larger birds-of-paradise, starlings, and crows and jays. tury, driven by the communications revolution—on the ground, in Only in the bowerbirds would I have preferred a leavening of the the air, and in cyberspace—as well as by better optics and a pleth- extended descriptions of behavior at the bower with some theoriz- ora of field guides. It delves into the growth of birding in the devel- ing about the reasons for such behavior; and the individual, cherry- oping as well as developed world, analyzes the socioeconomics of picked display sequences described for some birds-of-paradise the birding society, and goes on to describe how modern birding could have done with further editing and been contrasted more has contributed to wildlife conservation and science, particularly comparatively within and between genera. Previous reviewers have through faunal surveys by the citizen-scientist movement. New commonly criticized a lack of specificity in bibliographic referenc- technology is at the forefront here, with imaging replacing written ing here and elsewhere through the species texts. A bibliography Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/127/3/714/5148482 by guest on 28 September 2021 records of rare or regionally “new” species. The economic value of of author and date is given at the end of each family and species birding is also covered from the aspect of travel and tourism, par- treatment, which refers to a main bibliography of full references ticularly its links to conservation in developing countries. Moss in the back of each volume. It is the absence of a direct connec- concludes with a reasonably in-depth assessment of the future of tion between an observation in the actual texts and its reference birding and its value, addressing its potential impact on rare and in the bibliographies that gives the most cause for complaint. Yet declining species, both good and bad, as well as the effects of po- for me it is not so serious a problem because the references at the litical instability, the possible impact of molecular barcoding, and, end of family and species accounts always quote the authors, and, finally, the spiritual well-being that simple birdwatching and other because most of us know their areas of specialization, finding the outdoor activity bring to humankind. appropriate reference in the main bibliography is rarely difficult. Some of this is rather fanciful. Moss’s observations about As it is, the editors have not changed their policy and format, and DNA barcoding replacing field identification in the near future re- probably will not in the future for reasons of consistency, space, veal a naive understanding of population genetics; and he quotes and readability. This makes ongoing caviling rather pointless. outdated Sibley and Ahlquist () data when drawing attention A highlight of HBW family accounts—rightly praised by to the disturbance created by radical change to taxonomic status previous reviewers—is the multitude of photographs, usually and sequence—though that disturbance is real. Yet this is quib- one and sometimes several per page, illustrating one or another bling. The only serious shortcoming in his essay, given its title, is family trait. And the present volume does not let us down. All in its focus on birding in the United States and Britain among de- all, of the species of bush-shrikes are shown, of helmet- veloped countries, and in former British colonies and Turkey in shrikes, of drongos, of species of birds-of-paradise the developing world, to the exclusion of almost all else. Moss ex- plus the cnemophilids, of crows and jays, of star- cuses this by reasoning that it was in those countries that nearly lings, of sparrows, and all but one of the species of vangas, all the activity has happened, a perception based substantially on woodswallows, butcherbirds, and bowerbirds; and those fami- information published in the English language and which takes lies with just one or two species have all shown.
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