Dr. Avery took a bit of a well deserved break over the holiday season, but now with turn of the year having passed, he’s back at his books and has brought us his thoughts about a book that I was not previously aware: Susanne Masters’ “Wild Waters; A Wildlife and Water Lover’s Companion to the Aquatic World.”
Down the road from our home is a grove of Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees. Native to the area, “Doug Firs” are easily found in most any field guide to trees that encompasses a geographic range in which northwest Oregon is included. However at the edge of this little grove is another tree – deciduous and smaller – that long perplexed me. Nothing in guide after guide to which I turned for guidance seemed to have anything quite like it depicted.
In 1819, the renowned Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray walked from Aberdeen, Scotland to London, England in order to visit the natural history collection at the British Museum. If the modern M6 had been available to him, this would be a distance of 548 miles – one way. However because Mr. MacGillivray took a more scenic route that included Ben Nevis, the distance he walked totaled 837 miles; a distance he covered in approximately eight weeks.
There are two basic patterns of thought when it comes to field guides of bird species. The first is to obtain one that covers a large number of species, including any possible rarities, so that any bird seen while afield is within the scope of potential reference. The other is to select one that is […]