Thanks to our office move, I’ve been reading quite a bit more than usual, and out walking around quite a bit less. One of the books I’ve gotten from the downtown library is Scott Leslie’s Sea and Coastal Birds of North America: A Guide to Observation, Understanding and Conservation. It’s one of a series of new books put out by the author through Key Porter Books in Toronto. (If only my recent business trip to Toronto had been to these guys! Will I never get to produce a field guide?)
The series actually looks pretty interesting; rather than the usual 2-4 birds per spread, these guides* provide more in-depth treatment of fewer species, devoting 3 or 4 pages to each bird with, as the subtitle suggests, fairly detailed species notes on appearance, habitat, behavior, calls, food, family life, migration, conservation concerns, and, since each species is basically “representative,” a section on related species as well.
*Three of the books in the series have already appeared: Sea and Coastal Birds, Woodland Birds, and Wetland Birds; a fourth, Grassland and Desert, is scheduled to pub this July.
However, some families of birds get better coverage than others. There are 4 loon species in North America, but only Gavia immer, the Common Loon, gets covered here (evidence, if we need it, of the traditional “east coast” bias in bird guides; this guide has an even different twist, given that the author is from Nova Scotia and the publisher is in Toronto). Podiceps auritus, Horned Grebe, and P. grisegena, Red-necked Grebe (perhaps the least common of the 7 North American members of Podicipedidae), are the only representatives of that family in the guide.
North America’s Pelicans, on the other hand, get full coverage, with both Pelecanus erythrorhynchos (American White) and P. occidentalis (Brown) getting nice writeups. The reason I read all the guides I can get my hands on is that you never know when someone will present something in a way that clicks for you. I’m sure I could have, if I’d chosen, researched all the pelican species in Birds of the World, made myself a table of wingspan and body mass, and ranked them in order. But I don’t have to; Leslie has given me the relevant info in exactly the way I needed to have it: simple declarative sentences like “This magnificent species [P. erythrohynchos] is the largest and one of the heaviest birds in North America”; apropos of P. occidentalis, three simple words: “World’s smallest pelican.”
In all my years of seeing pelicans, from San Diego to Boca Raton, I had never realized that our rather large common brown bird with the comical bill is the smallest member of its family. And here, in what looked like a rather lightweight book*, where I hadn’t really expected to learn anything “new,” I’m reminded of how much there is to know.
*I really would have preferred 8-10 pages per species, if we’re only going to get 50 birds in each book, but with the premium paper and the nice 4-color photos, I guess production costs would have ballooned. But so many of these birds have such fascinating life cycles (3- and 4-year gulls, Pelicans taking several years to mature, etc.) that I would have liked to see a “heavyweight” book on these same species…
To get back to the pelican, though: The bird’s remarkable gular pouch has inspired a line of waterproof (go figure!) cases for photo gear and other stuff; a German line of quality pens and office supplies, and some lovely doggerel, including this limerick from Dixon Merritt; the version below gives my favorite wording; the Wikipedia article linked to earlier shows the “definitive” wording, an alternate version, and the frequent misattribution of this gem to Ogden Nash:
Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak can hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week
But I’m darned if I know how the helican.
For no particular reason, I include a photo gallery of P. occidentalis below. Enjoy!
A few identification notes for those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of this bird: it takes 3 to 5 years to acquire full adult plumage. Once the bird reaches adulthood, there are 3 different “looks” per year; quote below from Cornell’s BNA website:
Molt of head and neck produces 3 distinct appearances per annual cycle: Head pale yellow and neck white during postbreeding season; head yellow and neck dark brown just prior to onset of breeding; head white (sometimes speckled with dark feathers) and neck brown during nesting.
You’ll see a lot of immature birds in the photo gallery above.