| The Shorebirds of North America | Pete Dunne & Kevin T Karlson | Princeton University Press | 2024 | Hardback | 294 pages, 225 colour photos | ISBN: 9780691220956 |
The Publisher’s View:
A lavishly illustrated, large-format reference book by two preeminent experts on North American shorebirds.
More than half a century has passed since the publication of The Shorebirds of North America, Peter Matthiessen’s masterful natural history of what is arguably the world’s most amazing and specialized bird group. In the intervening decades, our knowledge about these birds has grown significantly, as have the threats to their populations and habitats. Pete Dunne and Kevin Karlson celebrate Matthiessen’s classic book with this updated and expanded natural history of North American shorebirds. This elegantly written book begins by introducing readers to the unrivalled splendor of shorebirds and goes on to cover topics ranging from their biology and habitats to courtship and breeding, flight, the perils of migration, and conservation. Detailed family accounts convey the richness and variety of the five family groups, with incisive, fact-filled descriptions of all 51 species of shorebirds known to breed in North America.
Featuring hundreds of Karlson’s breath-taking photos and drawing on the latest science, The Shorebirds of North America is a worthy tribute to Matthiessen’s enduring work and an indispensable reference for bird lovers everywhere.
The Authors: Pete Dunne is retired director of the Cape May Bird Observatory. His books include Gulls Simplified (Princeton, with Kevin T. Karlson) and Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion. Kevin T. Karlson is an accomplished birder, tour leader, and wildlife photographer. His books include the Peterson Reference Guide to Birding by Impression and The Shorebird Guide.
Fatbirder View:
The publishers’ describe this as an ‘elegantly written book’… and one would expect no less of the likes of Pete Dunne if you have read any of his works. Along with that elegant style, goes, of course, the depth of understanding only embodied in people who have walked the walk for a lifetime. These guys don’t just know birds inside out, their love shines through too, so they are bound to try and share that beauty with the reader… lucky for us, they do it in spades!
This really is a celebration and some of the individual photographic portraits on display here are up there with the best.
If you have a canvas the size of a gallery wall, you might be able to capture something of the essence of waders en masse, in a book-sized photograph much less so. Just like you have to put yourself back at a shoreline or wetland to hear the massed voices of sandpipers and ‘shanks’, ten thousand knot or a flight of curlews, so you need to be there to immerse in their roosting choreography or aerial ballet. Nevertheless, even those photos of the crowd evoke their wonder.
This is an eye-catching volume hefty enough to grace the coffee table, but also informative enough to deserve a place in the study!
Fatbirder