Thanks For The Mammal Reads

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Way back last year -- on December 25th -- I wrote a post about a wild animal that we observed at our bird feeder. In case you don’t remember or didn’t see the post, here’s another picture of this wily creature:

Actually, if you didn’t read it, I’d like you to scroll back to Dec. 25 and read that post and tell me: could you tell that I was trying to be humorous, or was it just too subtle?

The reason I ask is that, in that post, I didn’t mention what kind of squirrel it was. I was trying to strike a familiar chord with all those people who have had their bird feeders emptied by voracious squirrels. This has happened to a lot of people, but it isn’t always the same kind of squirrel. In the U.S. and Canada there are at least eight species of tree squirrels, plus various ground squirrels and chipmunks, that will come to bird feeders at least occasionally. If I had started to get technical about the particular type of squirrel that was chowing down at our feeder, the post would have bogged down in detail.

It was sort of like saying: "Don’t you hate it when your neighbor’s dog barks all night?" instead of saying, "Don’t you hate it when your neighbor’s three-year-old female beagle-spaniel mix with three white paws and one brown paw barks all night?" If your statement is more general, it’s easier for people to relate.

Anyway, after that blog post was published, I got three anonymous comments -- one mild, two (not published) pointedly snarky -- taking me to task for not identifying the species of squirrel. "Do you think all squirrels are the same kind?" "Are you so narrow-minded that you can’t even identify the squirrels in your own yard?"

So -- okay, the animal at our feeder was an Eastern Fox Squirrel. Our area of northwest Ohio also hosts Eastern Gray Squirrel and Red Squirrel, as well as Southern Flying Squirrel, but the Eastern Fox Squirrel is more common out in the farm country with scattered towns and scattered groves of trees.

To quote from published information: "Very common in many areas east of the Rockies, in open woods and parklike areas with large scattered trees and an open understory. It is often found in the same forests as the Eastern Gray Squirrel, but because it favors more open habitats, it is more numerous in the midwest ... Less arboreal than some of its relatives, this squirrel spends a lot of time foraging on the ground ... Like most tree squirrels, Eastern Fox Squirrels have a varied diet. Acorns and other nuts are staple items, but they also eat flowers, buds, seeds, bark, fungi, birds’ eggs, insects, and sometimes carrion. They also raid bird feeders, but because they are not as agile as Eastern Gray Squirrels, they are more easily foiled by strategic placement of feeders in places they can’t reach."

I’m happy to say that the source of that information is the Kaufman Field Guide to Mammals of North America, written by Nora Bowers, Rick Bowers, and myself, published in 2004 with a slight update in 2007. So, um, to answer the question from one person who commented on the Dec. 25 post: Yes, I do know what kind of squirrel it was.

The book’s treatment of Eastern Fox Squirrel includes a full page of text, a range map, a diagram of the tracks, and six color illustrations. That’s more detail than some species receive, but every North American mammal is treated in the book. I hope I don’t sound too horribly conceited in mentioning this book, but I'm proud of the way it turned out. It’s an excellent guide -- not because of me, but because of hard work by Nora and Rick Bowers as writers and photographers, by Stacy Fobar as managing editor for the project, by Eric Powell on digital graphics, by expert consultants Christine Hass, Nancy Mann, and Ronnie Sidner, by my editor Lisa White at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and by more than 50 photographers who contributed to the book. If you’re interested in wildlife, I would encourage you to consider picking up a copy.

Okay, enough of this. Who cares about mammals, anyway? Let’s get back to birds!

Never again would birds' song be the same

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: It isn’t often that ornithologists get to document an abrupt change in the song of an entire species of bird, but this is exactly what happened less than four years ago.
Moreover, it happened with a very common bird, the White-throated Sparrow. This beautifully marked native sparrow nests across the eastern two-thirds of Canada and parts of the northeastern United States, winters commonly in most eastern states, with small numbers throughout the west. It’s a backyard bird for literally millions of bird watchers. You would expect that a sudden change in its song would command the attention of legions of birders. But as far as I know, only one reference book has documented this change in vocal pattern.

That reference (I must admit) was my own field guide. It was published in 2000 as the Kaufman Focus Guide to Birds of North America, with a brightly colored cover featuring a Scarlet Tanager. In 2004, however, the marketing department at the publishing company decided that they should change the name of the series from Kaufman Focus Guides to Kaufman Field Guides. So they designed a new cover, the current one that features a bright Yellow Warbler on a white background, and it was issued in early 2005.

I insisted that if we were going to change the cover design, I had to make some improvements to the interior of the book as well. They didn’t want me to do a complete revised edition (and besides, we were busy with the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects), but they said I could make essential changes: adding 8 pages to the introduction, improving a few illustrations, updating some maps, changing some scientific names to conform to the latest pronouncements of the American Ornithologists’ Union. And making an important change to the description of one bird’s voice.

If you find yourself in a position to compare the editions of the focus / field guide, look up the White-throated Sparrow. In the older edition it’s on p. 350, and its song is described as Oh, sweet, Canada-Canada-Canada. In the newer edition, White-throated Sparrow is on p. 358, and its song has changed to Oh, sweet, Kimberly-Kimberly-Kimberly.

Sorry, Canada, but those are the facts.

This morning Kim called me to the window. In the garden was a White-throated Sparrow, foraging on the ground, crisp and bright among the new frost. It had not been there the eve before, and this seemed a gift of this special day, as if song or laughter had carried it aloft and placed it here. The bird wasn’t singing but in my heart I could hear it anyway.

Viva la Guia, Indeed! BEWARE--This gets kinda mushy!

Kim Writes: When Kenn and I first started getting acquainted, it was a loooong distance relationship that took place almost entirely by phone. He was still in Tucson, Arizona, and I was in Carey, Ohio.

I still remember the very first words he said to me when I finally got up the nerve to call him on the phone. In a very deep (and very sexy) voice he said, simply ~ “This is Kenn.” It took me a couple of seconds to recover and respond because my heart was saying, "This is the love of your life!" I love it when my heart's right!!

After the initial “wow moment” our conversations deepened, and we shared things with each other that we’d never shared with another soul. I was totally in love with him after the first two or three conversations---and then he told me about the Guia! He was fighting to get it published and facing some pretty serious adversity. The costs were mounting, and he sounded determined, but battle weary. I was incredibly moved by his vision and dedication (fueled by stubbornness) and I gave him every bit of positive energy I had and expressed my total -- all out belief in this book and what it could do! Well, obviously Kenn and good prevailed, the Guia became a reality, and I fell completely in love with this amazing man!

Inspired by an idea "borrowed" from Tucson Audubon, I developed a Guia donor program through the Observatory. BSBO purchases copies of the book from the publisher at a special rate. People "purchase" a book at a special donor rate of $12, sign a name plate identifying them as the donor, and BSBO ships the books off to several partners across the U.S. and Mexico to be used in programs that reach out to our Latin American brothers and sisters. The whole idea is that if we can create awareness and appreciation for birds among this huge audience, it's that much more support for conservation. You can learn more about the program--and donate a book!--through the BSBO website.

One of our biggest partners is the Sonoran Joint Venture. Through their Education and Outreach Coordinator, Jennie Duberstein, we have arranged for hundreds of donated books to be shipped to SJV. SJV has offered a number of training workshops over the past few years, focusing on topics such as how to be a bird guide, basic bird identification, and bird monitoring. The following is an excerpt from an article written by Jennie for our Observatory newsletter. Jennie writes: Initially we went to these workshops armed with a stack of ten copies of the English version of the Kaufman Guide to the Birds of North America (generously donated by the Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt Company), a hodge-podge of other English language North American field guides, and a handful of donated pairs of binoculars of varying quality.

Although having field guides in English made it challenging, workshop participants still gained basic skills in how to use a field guide and binoculars to identify and monitor birds. But when you don't have your own field guide or binoculars, it makes it very difficult to put your new skills to use.

The publication of the Kaufman Guía de Campo a las Aves de Norteamérica has provided the SJV (and Spanish-speakers everywhere) with a fabulous new tool. Participants in our workshops are now able to not only look at the pictures in a field guide, but read about habitat, behavior, diet, and other important life history information about birds. And thanks to the generous donations of members and supporters of Black Swamp Bird Observatory, the SJV has been able to provide each workshop participant with his or her own copy of the Guía.

How cool is that?!! I feel so blessed and so honored to play a small role in getting the Guia out there and into the hands of people who might just change the world.

To date, more than 500 copies of the book have been donated! 500 copies!! A huge thank you to Kenn, Jennie D, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, Tucson Audubon, and all of the donors who believed in this book and its potential enough to be a part of our mission!

Viva la Guia

From Cloud Nine over Ohio, Kenn writes: Lisa White, my editor for the last several years at my publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, e-mailed me a short while ago with some very good news.

First, some background. From the time my field guide to North American birds was published, in October 2000, I had this ambition to bring out a version of the book in Spanish. I'd been living in Arizona, traveling a lot in California and Texas and Florida, and I knew that I heard a lot of Spanish being spoken on the street. The latest census figures at the time showed that something like 28 million U.S. citizens spoke Spanish at home. Of course, I knew that most of those individuals were bilingual, and could use an English-language bird guide if they really wanted to. But my whole aim was to get more people interested in birds. So I figured, why not give them a bird guide written in the language in which they were most comfortable?

The opportunity came a few years later. The publisher decided to change the cover design of the book (the first edition had had a Scarlet Tanager on the cover), and they gave me the opportunity to make changes to the interior of the book as well. Since they were having to reprint it anyway, they gave me the go-ahead to get the book translated into Spanish, to bring that edition out at the same time as the new English printing.

It was, I admit, a time-consuming and expensive project. I found a great translator, Patricia Manzano Fischer, who works on bird conservation in Mexico. We enlisted great help from the Mexican ornithologist Hector Gomez de Silva. Still, I had to edit all the Spanish text to fit the page layout, and I put up the money to pay for the translation myself. I definitely lost a lot of money on this project, but I wasn't trying to make a profit, I was trying to make a difference. And we've had some great feedback from the border regions and from northern Mexico, indicating that thousands of people are actually using the book and getting a lot out of it: students, biologists, park rangers, naturalists, teachers. At least in some measure, the Guia de campo Kaufman a las aves de norteamerica is achieving its goal of bringing more people into an appreciation of birds.

The first printing came out in 2005 and has been selling slowly and steadily since. What Lisa White told me today is that this book, this Spanish-language bird guide, is about to go back for a second printing. Right now the economic climate is really tough for publishers, and it means a lot to me to know that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt believes in this book enough to invest in another printing.