When thinking of the influences that shaped my career and life paths, it’s a long list: Ranger Rick and National Geographic, Field & Stream and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The Golden Guide series of childhood field guides would have to be near the top of the list.
During the summer vacation, these books were never far from hand, particularly titles like Seashores and Pond Life. They helped me identify the little creatures I’d find on the beach or at farm ponds. I also loved that they provided tips on how to conduct fieldwork (or, at least, a kid-friendly version of it). I learned how to observe, how to ethically collect, how to make sense of tracks and signs.
Books have always helped me make sense of the world, in ways small and large. This installment represents titles that cover some of my ongoing obsessions. Whether you bird or fish or love the beach or just love a good story, I hope you find something here that connects to your own interests.
Top 10 List
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Double Hyenas and Lazarus Birds
By Charles Hood
Charles Hood is a naturalist and birder drawn to pelagic trips and marine creatures. He’s also afraid of water. That makes for an interesting departure point for a set of essays exploring the Pacific Ocean and its inhabitants.
Hood is omnivorous in his interests and possesses a poet’s love of language, both fully on display in this wonderful and wide-ranging collection. He combines natural history observation, science, personal story and interesting diversions as he seeks to understand the world around him, and his own tangled history. He considers albatrosses, sea snakes and objects you find on the beach. He writes of the loneliness of being a solo passenger on an elaborate birding cruise. He offers fresh insights on Melville and Winslow Homer.
There are passages that will make you laugh and others that fill you with sadness. If you love natural history, travel and books, reading Charles Hood will feel like sitting with an old friend who sees you.
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Flight of the Godwit
By Bruce M. Beehler
Shorebirds make some of the longest and most harrowing migrations of any wildlife. Ornithologist Bruce Beehler sets out on a series of road trips to understand the U.S. and Canada portions of these migrations. He focuses on following the Hudsonian godwit and what he calls the “Magnificent 7,” the largest shorebirds in the family Scolopacidae (often referred to as the sandpipers).
This book is an entertaining travelogue, as Beehler travels the backroads of rural America and wildernesses of Alaska and Canada as he follows different stages of the migration for godwits and other birds. He possesses a birder’s enthusiasm for finding new species with a scientist’s interest in understanding these birds and their needs. Interspersed with the travel is natural history information on these birds’ remarkable journeys.
Published by Smithsonian Books, it’s also a beautifully produced volume. It contains black-and-white illustrations by Alan Messer and side boxes with species accounts of the various shorebirds encountered. It’s a great read for birders and those working to conserve migratory flyways.
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The Gull Guide North America
By Amar Ayyash
To the casual beachgoer, a gull is a gull. Maybe a pleasant aspect of the seashore, maybe a nuisance. To a serious birder, gulls represent one of the most confounding and overwhelming bird identification challenges.
This book is for them. This title from Princeton University Press covers the intricacies of identifying gulls at all life stages in exhaustive detail. Five hundred pages, in fact. There are extensive photos and intensive description. It has more details on gull identification than you might think possible.
I admit that, as a birder, I’m overwhelmed by a large flock of gulls and the nuances that go into making a proper ID. And I’m not sure I possess the attention to detail to change that. Still, I love this book and obvious love (obsession?) that went into it. A gull is not just a gull, not if you’re paying attention.
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Alabama’s Best Fly Fishing
By Matthew R. Lewis
Think of dream U.S. fly fishing destinations and your mind probably goes to states like Alaska or Montana. Alabama? Probably not so much. But the reality is Alabama is home to a tremendous diversity of fishes—and fishing opportunities.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the varied fishing found there. I also found solitude and wildness that has become hard to come by on “destination streams” in the western United States.
Matt Lewis offers the perfect guide to the diverse fly fishing opportunities in fresh- and saltwater of Alabama. It’s well written and packed with useful information. But I recommend it for another reason: Lewis gets what makes outdoor experiences worthwhile, and that includes an attention to native fishes, conservation and healthy habitat. He’s a geneticist who works in the field of fish conservation, so he knows that fishing should involve more than feeling a tug on the end of a line. His love of wild places, freshwater biodiversity and outdoor traditions shine through on every page. More fishing guidebooks should be like this.
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Eden Undone
By Abbott Kahler
Here’s one if you’re looking for the quintessential “beach read.” This is non-fiction, but with plot twists and eccentric characters worthy of a suspense novel. This story involves a couple who sought to escape the political unrest enveloping Europe in the 1930s, by setting up their own utopian farm on one of the Galapagos Islands.
While they initially desired to escape the trappings of “modern life,” their lifestyle attracted media attention, which in turn drew other Europeans seeking a utopian refuge. Notable among them were a pistol-wielding baroness and her two lovers.
As so often happens, the line between utopian paradise and dystopian hell is a fine one indeed. As appealing as it might be to escape from the world at large, you can’t really outrun human nature. This one descends into power struggles, fighting and crime, with a storyline that is indeed stranger than fiction.
As a naturalist who has visited the Galapagos and read about the islands extensively, I admit I was not aware of this chapter of their history. It was a time when the islands were essentially a free-for-all, with outlaws cruising the shores, hunters visiting to pursue wild cattle and wealthy elites embarking on semi-scientific expedition cruises. And while the Galapagos certainly faces modern challenges, I’m left feeling a bit amazed the wildlife survived as well as it did.
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Fen, Bog & Swamp
By Annie Proulx
There’s a particular joy in reading an author you’ve followed for decades. In my twenties, Annie Proulx resonated deeply. She’s a reader’s writer, someone who loves books and once remarked she could live in solitary confinement if she had an unending stream of reading material. She’s also a keen observer of the natural world. She’s a bookworm who sold her first literary works to a specialty hunting and fishing journal.
Proulx’s fiction has won most of the major awards, and deservedly so. As Fen, Bog & Swamp demonstrates, her nonfiction is equally compelling. This compact book contemplates peatland wetlands and their destruction. This is not a dry and jargon-filled description of ecosystems.
Proulx’s extended essay tells the natural and human histories of swamps and bogs, with diversions into the meanings of words and her personal history. I love the language and obvious love. It’s often a sad book, as she recounts the recent human history of destruction of these places. But it contains conservation wisdom and hope you won’t find in a white paper or environmental report. I love Proulx’s attention to language and her care for the real world in all its messiness. If we are to save places like wetlands, we need to understand and love them – and books like this can help us on that path.
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