Birding Book Club – Best of 2021
November 18, 2021
It is time once more for the most anticipated Birding Book Club of the year, our annual Best Bird Books of the Year episode for 2021. And while it is still November, holiday gift-giving season is right around the corner so we want to get this conversation out there for our listeners’ sake. We are joined by 10,000 Birds book reviewer Donna Schulman and Birding magazine media and book review editor Frank Izaguirre to talk about what we loved this year in bird books.
Also, the New Zealand Bird of the Year is a bat for some reason.Â
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Nate’s Top 5
1)Â Flight Identification of European Passerines and Select Landbirds –Â Tomasz Cofta & Michal Skakuj
2) A World on the Wing –Â Scott Weidensaul
3)Â Birds of Colombia –Â Steve Hilty
4) A Pocket-guide to Pigeon-Watching – Rosemary Mosco
5)Â Birds of Argentina and the South-west Atlantic – Mark Pearman & Juan Ignacio Areta
Donna’s Top 5
1) A World on the Wing – Scott Weidensaul
2)Â Seabirds: The New Identification Guide –Â Peter Harrison, Martin Perrow, & Hans Larsson
3) Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests – Casey McFarland, Matthew Monjello, & David Moskowitz
4) Habitats of the World: A Field Guide for Birders, Naturalists, and Ecologists – Iain Campbell, et al
5) How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origins, Lives and Diversity – Douglas Futuyma
Frank’s Top 5
1) Birds of Colombia –Â Steve Hilty
2) Bird Versus Bulldozer – Audrey L. Mayer
3) Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests – Casey McFarland, Matthew Monjello, & David Moskowitz
4) Naturalized Parrots of the World – edited by Stephan Pruett-Jones
5) Vida, Color, y Canto: Plantas Neotropicales que Atrean Aves – Diego Molina Franco & Paulo PulgarÃn
The American Birding Podcast brings together staff and friends of the American Birding Association as we talk about birds, birding, travel and conservation in North America and beyond.
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As usual, a great episode. I think we’re going to see university presses step in—Yale, Princeton, Cornell, U North Carolina, Chicago—where HMH has left a gap. And the successors to Lynx are still going great guns, though they’ve got to figure out how to produce books at a lower price.
You’re right, though, in any case that much of what Lisa White dared take on will go unpublished now.
The closest thing to the wonderful flight guide is probably (Houghton Mifflin’s!) Reference Guide to Seawatching, though, of course, with a far narrower range of species coverage.
That’s a good point about Reference Guide to Seawatching probably being the closest American equivalent.
I sure hope Lynx lowers the price a bit, but my sense is they are positioning themselves as producing premium books that will always be at that higher price point, perhaps as a way to distinguish from other publishers.